The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced an investment of $132 million from the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (IIJA) over the next five years to protect and restore estuaries, funding projects to address climate resilience, prioritize equity, and manage other key water quality and habitat challenges across 28 estuaries along the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts and in Puerto Rico.
EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan highlighted the investment during a visit to Caño Martín Peña tidal channel in the San Juan Bay Estuary system as part of his Journey to Justice tour visit to Puerto Rico.
“Communities have been waiting for far too long,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “This funding is an important investment in equity, clean water and resilience for some of our most treasured water resources.”
The National Estuary Program (NEP) is a place-based program that, since 1987, has funded projects that restore water quality and ecological integrity across 28 estuaries of national significance. The IIJA funding will accelerate work on Comprehensive Conservation Management Plans, which are structured frameworks for protecting and restoring estuary resources and meeting water quality needs. Additionally, NEPs have been at the forefront of addressing climate impacts and environmental justice disparities in their watersheds.
The announcement includes guidance for NEPs on how EPA will administer program funding from the IIJA. The guidance provides key information, including equity strategies, reporting requirements, and flexibility to the NEPs to address the priorities in their watersheds that are defined by local, city, state, federal, private and non-profit stakeholders. EPA expects NEPs to accelerate Comprehensive Conservation Management Plan implementation, develop strategies and practices that enable these program areas to be resilient and adapt to changing climate conditions, and make investments that ensure water quality and habitat benefits of this program are realized by disadvantaged communities.
“This guidance is a major step toward Santa Monica Bay realizing on the ground protections from the very real impacts of a changing climate, including sea level rise,” said Tom Ford, Chair of the Association of National Estuary Programs, Director of the Santa Monica Bay National Estuary Program, and CEO of The Bay Foundation.
More information about the NEP funding is available here.
