Overcoming Roadblocks to Sustainable Communities
To help community stakeholders throughout the state think of possible strategies to adapt to storms, rising sea levels and other coastal problems, Delaware Sea Grant (DESG) helped put on the sixth annual Resilient and Sustainable Communities League (RASCL) Summit last month with a theme of Overcoming Roadblocks to Resilience and Sustainability.
RASCL is a network of 22 state agencies, non-profit and community organizations who all work in some form on resiliency to climate and weather events, as well as sustainability in general. Danielle Swallow, Delaware Sea Grant (DESG) Coastal Hazards Specialist and a founding member of RASCL, served as the host and moderator for the workshop.
Swallow said that this was the first in-person conference since 2019 and it was great to connect and network with community stakeholders face to face.
“The goal of the workshop is to present information to attendees that they can act on,” said Swallow. “We gear a lot of that information toward our community level — the folks who are planning and working at the community scale.”
Since the theme this year was Overcoming Roadblocks to Resilience and Sustainability, Swallow said they wanted the stakeholders to learn about some of the inherent challenges that exist in trying to carry out community-level plans.
“We presented on information that is necessary to help a community mitigate flooding or plan for more clean energy in their community or think about how vulnerable populations might be disproportionately impacted by climate change,” said Swallow. “We wanted to identify the barriers and challenges to achieving those goals and explain how we can overcome them.”
For the past two years, the federal government has been issuing funds for these issues through the Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. While this is no doubt a positive for the state, with more money pouring in for large-scale infrastructure and community-level projects, it is important for communities to know how to apply for these funds and to have the capacity to see the projects through to the end.
Presentations were given on a wide range of topics, such as how RASCL members are coordinating with the state and community partners to spend Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding on climate resilience initiatives, and local success stories involving the restoration of Wilmington’s rivers and a stakeholder-led process to make resiliency recommendations to the Lewes City Council.
The keynote speaker was Nicole Majeski, secretary of the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT), who spoke about how DelDOT has hundreds of road segments in the state that routinely flood. To deal with this issue, they have set up an entire division devoted to Transportation Resiliency and Sustainability.
Jim Pappas, the director of that division, spoke next about supply chain challenges that the department faces and how they deal with problems such as inflation — noting that prices have increased and $100 worth of construction in 2019 cost $133 in 2021.
Swallow served as a presenter on one of the afternoon’s two panel discussions, presenting on how Delaware Sea Grant and RASCL formed the Waterways Infrastructure and Investment Network (WIIN) to help secure a $220,000 federal grant to help the towns of Milford and Slaughter Beach develop a nature-based investment strategy for the natural resources of the Mispillion and Cedar Creek watersheds.
Together these watersheds support an internationally recognized flyway for migrating birds and one of the highest concentrations of horseshoe crab spawning areas in the world. They also contribute to the economic health and coastal resilience of the communities. WIIN is a coalition of partners helping Milford and Slaughter Beach investigate the value of these resources as well as ways to sustain and enhance the many benefits they bring.
Swallow said that she received great formal and informal feedback about the workshop.
“One gentleman came up to me and said the presentation I gave on the WIIN Project really inspired him because he wants to work on mobilizing support for more bike trails in the Ocean View area of Delaware,” said Swallow. “He told me, ‘Your presentation made me realize I’ve got to form more partnerships and form a coalition of people.’ Outcomes like that are the reason we do the summit.”
Swallow also said audience members benefitted from the presentation by Chase Barnes, assistant policy scientist at the University of Delaware’s Institute for Public Administration (IPA), about the Grant Assistance Program (GAP) run through the Joseph R. Biden Jr., School of Public Policy and Administration.
According to the GAP website, GAP is a new state-funded initiative that provides free technical grant assistance to local governments for infrastructure initiatives and other competitive and formula grant opportunities. Swallow said the service, and the RASCL Summit’s role in connecting representatives with that service, is hugely beneficial for the many communities that don’t have anyone with the necessary time, skills or understanding to navigate the different grant application requirements.
“As a result of the summit, we have communities signing up for information sessions to see if they can get help from the GAP program,” said Swallow. “RASCL is partnering with the GAP program to lend our expertise on resiliency matters, and they’re providing the grant writing assistance to help communities develop the grant proposals.”
Article by Adam Thomas