FEMA awards $71.8M for Western Bays Resiliency Project

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency has awarded $71.8 million to help fund the Western Bays Resiliency Project.

The project is aimed at replenishing tidal wetlands to prevent flooding, sewage back-up and unhealthy living environments in the Reynolds Channel and the Western Bays.

The $71.8 million federal grant was awarded through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which provides funding to state, local, tribal and territorial governments to rebuild in a way that reduces, or mitigates, future disaster losses in their communities.

The goal of the Western Bays Resiliency Project is to reduce the discharge of nitrogen into Reynolds Channel and Long Island’s Western Bays by eliminating Bay Park Wastewater Treatment Plant discharges into the channel. Treated water will be transferred from the treatment plant up to an already existing aqueduct and then down to the Cedar Creek Water Pollution Control Plant where it will then discharge out to the Atlantic Ocean.