Newport Harbor shipwreck report gifted to RI State Archives
Principal investigator D.K. Abbass and Representative Joe McNamara present the final report to Secretary of State Gregg Amore on Tuesday.
- Newport City Council will vote on a resolution to create a capital project for climate resiliency and disaster relief funding.
- The project would collect and redistribute grants from various sources, including FEMA, for repairs and mitigation efforts.
- The resolution was prompted by winter storms in 2023-2024 that caused damage to city infrastructure, such as Elm Street Pier.
A new resolution the Newport City Council will consider passing at its April 23 meeting seeks to create an umbrella capital project through its Capital Project Fund dedicated to collecting and redistributing grants the city receives for climate resiliency projects and natural disaster relief.
“(U)p to this point, the city has not had an opportunity or mechanism to collect disaster damage reimbursements for future repairs and mitigation-related improvements to be performed,” the resolution states.
The resolution points to the disaster declaration Rhode Island received in March 2024 as a result of storms in December 2023 and January 2024. These storms flooded the region and damaged some parts of the city’s infrastructure, most notably Elm Street Pier, which suffered the loss of several support pilings and gussets during the storms.
This declaration, made by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, made it possible for municipalities across the state to apply for Hazard Mitigation grants. According to the resolution, the city has already been working with FEMA and the RI Emergency Management Agency to assess the financial impact of the Winter 2023-2024 storms. Communications Director Tom Shevlin told The Newport Daily News that the city has already received some funding for Easton’s Beach and the seawall on Ocean Drive, and the city is hoping to get up to 75% reimbursement for repairs made to Elm Street Pier.
It seems the project will not disappear after the grants from those specific winter storms are used up. Instead, the resolution states only that it will be used for resiliency and disaster recovery-related funding that the city receives through federal, state, municipal and private funding sources. In addition to funding for repairs, the resolution states the project will collect and distribute grant funding for damage mitigation and preservation of city-owned buildings “threatened” by climate change-related storm events and natural disasters declared officially by the federal, state or municipal government.
