Federal government cancels CRMC, RISG, NBNERR public shoreline access grant

May 8, 2025, WAKEFIELD – The federal government has terminated the grant that the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) and its partners, Rhode Island Sea Grant and the Narragansett Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (NBNERR), were using to develop the Rhode Island Public Shoreline Access Management Plan.

In a letter dated May 5, 2025, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Acquisition and Grants Office informed the CRMC that the awarded project activities, funded through a non-competitive Inflation Reduction Act grant available to all state coastal programs, were no longer aligned with the Administration’s objectives.

“As part of efforts to streamline and reduce the cost and size of the Federal Government, the Department is reprioritizing funding and staff to support only those activities directly related to its current programmatic goals and mission priorities,” the letter states, adding that after reviewing the grant award, the Department determined that it was not “relevant to the current focus of the Administration’s objectives.”

This funding would have allowed the CRMC and its partners to create a Public Shoreline Access Management Plan modeled after CRMC’s Special Area Management Plans and addressing and overcoming public shoreline access barriers in Rhode Island, specifically in underrepresented communities. The CRMC planned to create and hire a Municipal Liaison to foster coordination between the CRMC and Rhode Island's 21 coastal municipalities, facilitate improvements to the CRMC's rights-of-way program and Adopt-an-Access Program, and provide support for municipal-led shoreline public access improvements.

The Plan itself would have prioritized building and expanding quality relationships and partnerships with neighborhood, citizen, and underrepresented coastal community groups, ensuring public access for all that is resilient in the face of climate change. It would have included internal guidance for use by CRMC staff and its Council to more efficiently designate and protect rights-of-way and ensure those ROWs designated will be resilient to climate change and sea level rise.

It would have allowed CRMC to create and manage new elements of a database that would be added to the existing CRMC ROW database to include assent-required public access points (Section 335), Urban Coastal Greenways, and other data to assist CRMC in prioritizing areas vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise.

“While the CRMC and its partners are disheartened that we cannot continue this project in the way we anticipated, we do want to maintain connections with the shoreline access and other community members we have worked with, as well as higher education institutes, NGOs, and other state agencies,” said CRMC Executive Director Jeff Willis. “We also want to continue improving shoreline public access for all, holding events and other educational opportunities and meeting with interest groups to share information and foster connections.”