The National Estuary Program (NEP) Coastal Watersheds Grant (CWG) Program is a nationally competitive grants program designed to support projects that address urgent and challenging issues threatening the well-being of coastal and estuarine areas within determined estuaries of national significance. Restore America’s Estuaries (RAE) will be administering the NEP CWG Program in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a pass-through entity with funding provided under Cooperative Agreement 83967501.
The goals of the CWG Program are to:
- Address urgent and challenging issues that threaten the ecological and economic well-being of coastal areas and estuaries;
- Achieve on-the-ground or tangible quantifiable improvements in coastal and estuarine habitat conditions and the health of living resources;
- Apply new or innovative approaches, practices, methods, or techniques for preventing, treating, and removing pollution entering estuaries
- Establish or improve sustainable local capacity to protect and restore coastal watersheds and their living resources; and
- Support and expand promising approaches for watershed resilience and adaptation.
This program offers an opportunity to make meaningful, on-the-ground change via thoughtful, strategic decisions regarding projects. This grant program funds projects within the 28 NEP watershed geographic areas and selected adjacent areas. In order to address the critical issues facing our nation’s estuaries, each RFP round in the CWG Program will identify a unique combination of priorities. For this RFP, projects must address one or more of the following priorities:
- Recurring harmful algae blooms;
- Flooding and coastal erosion that may be related to sea level rise, changing precipitation, or salt marsh, seagrass, or wetland degradation or loss;
- Impacts of nutrients and warmer water temperatures on aquatic life and coastal ecosystems, including low dissolved oxygen conditions in estuarine waters; and
- Contaminants of emerging concern found in coastal and estuarine waters such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and microplastics.
Please Note: The internal competition mirrors the solicitation's Letters of Intent requirements.
Institutional Limit: 3 Proposals
Internal Deadline: April 14, 2023 4:45 pm
