Governor Kathy Hochul of New York has announced that 25 municipalities throughout the state will receive grants totalling more than $11.6 million via the State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Climate Smart Communities Grant program.
In addition to lowering greenhouse gas emissions and assisting communities in adapting to the ongoing effects of climate change, funding enables municipalities to carry out projects that frequently result in long-term cost savings to taxpayers.
These projects include lowering the risk of flooding, moving or retrofitting crucial infrastructure, and boosting community resilience to extreme weather.
Governor Hochul said, “The significant funding under New York’s Climate Smart Communities Program is critical in supporting local efforts to protect residents and infrastructure from the effects of climate change.”
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“We continue to see increasingly extreme weather each year and these grants help empower locally-driven, bold action to help meet New York’s ambitious climate goals while setting an example for other municipalities to follow,” she added.
The Climate Smart Communities Grant Program was launched in 2016 as a competitive 50/50 matching grant program for municipalities to carry out projects targeted at greenhouse gas mitigation and climate change adaptation. A strategy to become certified as a Climate Smart Community may also include specific planning and assessment tasks.
36 per cent of the total grant money awarded this round in the implementation and certification categories went to projects in underprivileged areas that bear a disproportionate burden of environmental pollution, and 66 per cent went to projects in municipalities that house underprivileged areas as determined by the Climate Justice Working Group’s draft criteria.
Additionally, the program backs the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which mandates that by 2050, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 85% from 1990 levels.
Since the program’s inception, DEC has given towns grants totalling more than $50 million to help fund regional climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives. More details regarding this funding program are accessible on the DEC website.
Story was adapted from New York City.
