Project Update — LNRP’s Coastal Resiliency Community Impact Project
Extreme rainfall events as the result of climate change have increased over the last half-century in our region, and scientists expect these trends to continue. Combined with land cover changes including increased urbanization, heavy precipitation will continue to lead to flooding, erosion, declining water quality, and negative impacts on transportation, agriculture, human health, and infrastructure.
In response to the challenge of climate change, LNRP launched the Coastal Resiliency Community Impact Project (CRCIP) in late 2020 and spent 2021 engaging Lake Michigan’s coastal communities. Together with Linda Reid of Water365, our goal in crafting this initiative is to assist Wisconsin’s coastal communities in becoming better prepared to address the negative impacts of climate change, including infrastructure and erosion issues and heavy rainfall events. With these impacts accelerating in frequency and intensifying in scope and cost, coastal communities will face an increasing challenge to prepare, adapt, and mitigate. We believe this Coastal Resiliency opportunity will prove valuable resources to our municipal partners working to identify, plan, fund, and execute relevant community projects.
More specifically, our Coastal Resiliency Community Impact Project provides resiliency training and consulting services to coastal communities. Thanks to generous funding provided by Fund for Lake Michigan, we will provide this at no monetary cost to our municipal partners. The only requirement to participate is a leadership and time commitment from municipal leaders, which we celebrate as an important investment on behalf of those communities and citizens.
In late 2021, we were joined by the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Cities Initiative and American Rivers in further building a network of resources. LNRP also sits on the steering committee of CALM, a Collaborative Action for Lake Michigan Coastal Resiliency effort funded by NOAA. Our collaborative team has put together a fact sheet that outlines the projects for each of our partners and how it brings together our collective actions.
Additionally, LNRP and Water365 are partnering with American Rivers, WaterNow Alliance, and OneWater Econ to produce a series of workshops for Wisconsin communities. The series of workshops are aimed to provide municipal leaders and water resource managers with practical knowledge about approaches to funding climate resiliency initiatives. The workshops will cover topics on debt-financing, incentivizing private-property GSI implementation, and accessing state and federal programs such as the Clean Water State Revolving Funds (CWSRFs). Participating communities will be encouraged to develop funding or financing strategies linked to current priority projects as well as future community needs.