Chesapeake Bay Program Office Fiscal Year 2023 Request for Applications for: Methodologies and Tools to support Climate-Resilience Communities, Training Modules, and Modeling to Estimate the Impact of Future Hydrology on Urban Best Management Practic | EPA I R3 CBP 23 15

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The Environmental Protection Agency, through its Chesapeake Bay Program Office, released a Fiscal Year 2023 competitive grant opportunity titled "Methodologies and Tools to support Climate-Resilience Communities, Training Modules, and Modeling to Estimate the Impact of Future Hydrology on Urban Best Management Practices." The program is part of the Chesapeake Bay Program's long-running effort to fund projects that reduce and prevent pollution while improving the Chesapeake Bay's living resources. This particular request emphasizes the growing need to manage pollution-control and stormwater practices in ways that reflect future climate conditions, especially the expectation of more frequent, more intense rainfall that can overwhelm existing infrastructure and reduce the effectiveness of standard approaches.

At the core of the opportunity is the idea that best management practices (BMPs) in the Chesapeake watershed need to be assessed and upgraded through a climate-resilience lens. The work is intended to support a multi-agency partnership that can examine how vulnerable current BMPs are under projected future hydrology, and then help communities move faster toward adopting stormwater management practices that are either redesigned or specifically adapted to remain effective as rainfall volumes and intensities increase. In practical terms, the grant is aimed at building or improving the methods, tools, training resources, and modeling capacity that planners, stormwater managers, and decision-makers need to understand risk and make better investments in urban stormwater controls.

The funding instrument is a cooperative agreement, which generally means the EPA expects to have substantial involvement during the project period compared to a more hands-off grant. The opportunity is categorized as discretionary funding and is listed under an Environment and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) activity category, aligning it with broader federal priorities around infrastructure, resilience, and environmental protection. The associated CFDA (assistance listing) number is 66.466, which corresponds to Chesapeake Bay Program support.

Eligibility is broad and aimed at organizations that can meaningfully contribute to Bay restoration and climate-resilient stormwater practice. Eligible applicants include state, tribal, and local governments, non-governmental organizations, interstate agencies, and academic institutions, with the formal eligibility phrased as "Others" and clarified in the full announcement's additional eligibility text. This structure is typical for Bay Program competitions, where interdisciplinary teams and partnerships are often needed to produce tools and guidance that are usable across multiple jurisdictions in the watershed.

In terms of scale, the opportunity lists an award ceiling of $1,880,000 and anticipates making one award. That signals a preference for a single, relatively large, coordinated effort rather than multiple smaller, disconnected projects, which fits the stated goal of supporting a partnership approach to vulnerability assessment, tool development, training modules, and modeling improvements. The announcement was created on August 8, 2023, with an original application closing date of September 22, 2023, establishing a fairly typical federal application window for a specialized technical competition.

Overall, this opportunity is best understood as a targeted investment in climate-smart stormwater and BMP management for the Chesapeake Bay watershed: improving the technical backbone (methods and models), creating practical resources (tools and training modules), and accelerating on-the-ground adoption of stormwater practices that can keep delivering pollution reductions even as the climate shifts and hydrologic conditions become more extreme.

• The Environmental Protection Agency in the environment, infrastructure investment and jobs act (iija) sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Chesapeake Bay Program Office Fiscal Year 2023 Request for Applications for: Methodologies and Tools to support Climate-Resilience Communities, Training Modules, and Modeling to Estimate the Impact of Future Hydrology on Urban Best Management Practic" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 66.466.
• This funding opportunity was created on Aug 08, 2023.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Sep 22, 2023. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $1,880,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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