CZM Habitat Protection and Restoration Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) Competition

Coastal areas support communities and are home to natural infrastructure, including forests, wetlands, floodplains, and dunes. These not only support productive fisheries, coastal recreation, and other coast-dependent economic activities, but also protect these coastal communities from storm impacts and other coastal hazards. The National Coastal Zone Management Act established a national system of state and territorial Coastal Zone Management Programs and stated that there is a national interest in the effective management, beneficial use, protection, and development of the coastal zone. The Coastal Zone Management Act notes that coastal habitat is ecologically fragile and consequently extremely vulnerable to degradation or destruction by human alterations. Funding under this opportunity will enable approved coastal programs to protect and restore these ecologically significant habitats within the nation's coastal zone, including conserving lands that protect coastal habitat or lands that play a critical role in helping coastal communities build resilience to storms, flooding, inundation, erosion, tsunamis, sea level rise and lake level changes, and other climate-related hazards affecting the U.S. coastlines.

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) supports NOAA's efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change. A key pillar is resilience to climate change and its impacts, throughout our communities and ecosystems. Specifically, this NOFO seeks projects that enhance coastal resilience. Coastal areas support the nation's largest and often fastest-growing population centers as well as key natural assets. Strengthening coastal resilience means preparing and adapting coastal communities to mitigate the impacts of and more quickly recover after extreme events such as hurricanes, coastal storms, flooding, and sea level rise. Habitat restoration and natural and nature-based infrastructure and solutions are critical to doing so by protecting lives and property; sustaining commercial, recreational, and subsistence fishing; recovering threatened and endangered species; and maintaining and fostering vibrant coastal economies and lifestyles.

This NOFO along with the NOFOs for National Coastal Resilience Fund; Transformational Habitat Restoration and Coastal Resilience Grants; Coastal Habitat and Resilience Grants for Underserved Communities; and National Estuarine Research Reserve Habitat Protection and Restoration grants aims to fund projects that support the overarching goal of enhancing coastal resilience. This NOFO focuses on projects by coastal zone management programs approved by NOAA under the Coastal Zone Management Act.

This announcement solicits applications from Federally-approved coastal management programs for projects relating to:

1. coastal habitat restoration;

2. coastal habitat restoration planning, engineering, and design; and

3. coastal land conservation.

Projects are expected to be scoped in a manner that would allow them to be completed within three years of the start date of the award, with the potential of up to five years.

This competition has a mandatory pre-proposal/letter of intent. Only applicants whose pre-proposals strongly align with program objectives and goals, as determined by NOAA through the review process described in Section V.A, will be invited to submit full applications. Pre-proposals must be submitted by the deadline stated in Section IV.D. For details regarding the suggested content of pre-proposals, please see Section IV.B.