Charlottesville and the Town of Scottsville have been awarded grants from the Virginia Community Flood Preparedness Fund to help plan and begin projects to address the effects of recurrent flooding and extreme weather.
Charlottesville will receive $94,276, while Scottsville will receive $123,346, it was announced Thursday in a press release.
“The Community Flood Preparedness Fund will provide an estimated $75 million a year to improve the resilience of our commonwealth, including targeted funding for Virginia’s most vulnerable and underserved communities,” Gov. Ralph Northam said in the release. “This funding is only possible because of our participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which continues to lower costs for families facing severe weather and frequent floods.”
Scottsville plans to use its grant money for a survey and floodplain map amendment for two vulnerable areas of the town.
In its application, the town says it has two related problems of mapping which “threaten safety and impair economic growth.”
“First, the old tire factory appears to [be] wrongly labeled as floodplain when it should not be,” the application said. “A [Federal Emergency Management Agency Letter of Map Revision] process will facilitate the factory’s adaptive reuse. Second, the historic downtown enjoys levee protection, but the level of flash flood protection is uncertain, given development in the watershed and global climate change. Updating the hydraulic models and maps with newer technology is important.”
Charlottesville plans to use its grant money to develop a resilience plan.
“The project will result in a city-wide Charlottesville Resilience Plan for improving flood protection and prevention in a whole community approach to resilience,” the city’s application said.
The city applied for these grant funds to contract with an expert consultant to facilitate the plan’s
Development, the application said. The consultant will co-create the plan at facilitated workshops with city staff to increase staff expertise and capabilities. Ultimately, the plan will include an implementation strategy identifying funding opportunities, a schedule for implementing programmatic strategies and infrastructure projects and potential public and private partnerships.
The grants are financed by the sale of carbon emission allowances under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. RGGI is a collaborative effort among Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states to combat climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector, while also driving economic growth.
Since earlier this year, the Community Flood Preparedness Fund has provided more than $32.3 million in funding to local communities, with more than 72% of all funding going to low income geographic areas, the release said.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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