Belmont Awarded Climate Change Grant

By Jeffrey North

Belmont has received a $195,000 Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) grant from the Massachusetts Climate MVP Program to identify Belmont’s current and future stormwater flooding risks from climate change. The project, known as the Stormwater Flood Reduction and Climate Resilience Capital Improvement Plan, will include the development of a 2-D stormwater model to assist in locating flood risk areas and evaluating how to make those areas more resilient. 

The primary goals of this project are to understand the town’s vulnerability to flooding and climate change on a street-by-street basis using an enhanced town-wide 2-D drainage hydraulic model, and to identify and prioritize infrastructure improvements. Infrastructure improvements are especially important in environmental justice communities because they help reduce current and future flood risks while providing other benefits such as increased social equity, water quality, and open space improvements as well as urban heat island reduction with nature-based solutions. 

Other goals include:

• Engage residents in shared solutions for climate change impacts through public outreach. 
• Address high-priority action items identified during the MVP process. 
• Improve the existing 1-D drainage model by creating a 2-D model upgrade with an enhanced climate evaluation. 
• Document current and future flooding problems in Belmont using the revised model.
• Integrate Belmont’s drainage model into the regional 2-D hydraulic model to evaluate both the impacts of the planned regional interventions on Belmont and Belmont’s planned improvements on the regional system. 
• Identify site-specific green infrastructure/nature-based controls for implementation. 
• Identify any needed grey stormwater infrastructure improvements.
• Identify the associated benefits from resilience improvements for prioritization.
• Create an action plan.

The MVP program provides support for cities and towns in Massachusetts to plan for climate change resiliency and implement priority projects. Belmont’s MVP plan can be found on the town’s website on the Office of Community Development page at bit.ly/BCF-MVP.

Nearby, the city of Waltham was awarded a $362,000 MVP grant for that municipality’s project, Bringing Climate Resilience to Beaver Brook. Waltham’s previous flood mitigation and stormwater improvement plan ranked resiliency measures in Beaver Brook as a top priority for mitigating flooding in an environmental justice neighborhood. This project will implement flood mitigation including brook restoration design, permitting for brook restoration and stream crossing improvement, and preliminary design for wetland storage.  

More information about the grants awarded to other towns and cities can be found at bit.ly/BCF-MVPGrants.

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Environmental Justice Communities

According to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, a neighborhood is defined as an environmental justice population if one or more of the following four criteria is met:

• the annual median household income 65% of the statewide annual median household income or less
• minorities comprise 40% or more of the population
• 25% or more of households lack English language proficiency 
• minorities comprise 25% or more of the population, and the annual median household income of the municipality does not exceed 150% of the statewide annual median household income.

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Jeffrey North is managing editor of the Belmont Citizens Forum Newsletter.