Alexandria has been awarded $525,000 to support planning for the city’s ongoing flood mitigation efforts.
The grant funding comes from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation’s (DCR) Virginia Community Flood Preparedness Fund (CFPF). The funds will go to support the development of a “new comprehensive Flood Resilience Plan.”
According to a release:
The first of its kind in Alexandria, the Flood Resilience Plan was identified as a need to create a more resilient City in the updated Energy and Climate Change Action Plan. The Flood Resilience Plan will support future efforts of the Flood Action Alexandria initiative which works to help mitigate flooding across our community. It will address hazard identification, flood mitigation, flood preparedness and response, policies and regulations, funding strategies, and communication and information dissemination.
The Flood Resilience Plan expands on the past Neighborhood Investigations with a new engagement effort to communicate with residents across the city to learn about first-hand experiences with flooding. The Plan will include efforts to reach communities who may have language or social barriers, or a lack of technology access. Engaging with impacted community members has shown to be very effective and will help create a more informed Plan.
The grant is a 75/25 match for the $700,000 project, with the City providing $175,000 in matching funds to develop the plan.
“Since the program launched in 2021, the City has received more than $6.4 million in CFPF grant funds, totaling more than $11.3 million for flood mitigation efforts across the city,” the release said.
Since historic floods in 2018 and 2019, the City of Alexandria has been working on major flood mitigation projects, though progress has been frustratingly slow at times.
An infrastructure map on the city’s website shows the 84 current projects in various planning, design and construction phases.
