The Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) is accepting public comments for the Round 6 Community Flood Preparedness Fund (CFPF) draft manual. The purpose of this manual is to provide guidance regarding the policies, criteria, conditions, and procedures for determining project eligibility and awarding grants and loans from the Virginia Community Flood Preparedness Fund to local governments per §10.1-603.25 and §10.1-603.29 of the Code of Virginia; and as required by the Clean Energy and Community Flood Preparedness Act.

The comment draft of the Round 6 manual uses the text of the previous manual from Round 5, with updates to account for recent legislative changes and incorporate stakeholder feedback.  These changes include:

• The addition of Tribes as eligible applicants (reflects legislative change);
• The inclusion of the Chief Resilience Officer of the Commonwealth as one of the entities establishing the grant manual and making awards (reflects legislative change);
• Capping per-grant amounts for capacity building and study grants, and for the development of resilience plans;
• The inclusion of language promoting consistency and collaboration between overlapping local governments when developing resilience plans, and requirements that resilience plans are consistent with hazard mitigation plans and other similar plans;
• Language specifying that the Advisory Review Committee will consider the progress and management of active CFPF grants by an applicant when making recommendations;
• Requiring applicants who are awarded grants in the Coastal region to register their projects/initiatives in the DCR Coastal Resilience Web Explorer;
• Applicants seeking funding for a project in Round 6 must have an approved resilience plan before the beginning of the Round;
• Property acquisitions will only be considered if they provide community-scale benefits or are a part of an acquisition plan that provides community-scale benefits;
• Projects proposing to protect or provide flood mitigation benefits either to or using public recreation areas (parks/beaches/etc) will also be evaluated on their benefits to areas outside of the public access area; 
• A prohibition on studies that would duplicate existing data; and
• Various updates to budget submission requirements.

In addition to the changes highlighted above, DCR is seeking feedback and comment on the following potential changes that are not currently incorporated in the text of the draft manual:

• Allowing applicants to “renew” a capacity-building grant used to hire new staff for one additional cycle of funding.
• Limiting capacity building grants for hiring and training to staff to low-income geographic areas.

After reviewing public comment and making any necessary and appropriate amendments, the official manual will be published to the DCR website.  DCR intends to host at least one public meeting (which may be virtual) during the comment period to solicit feedback from interested parties. 

Link to Draft Manual: https://www.dcr.virginia.gov/dam-safety-and-floodplains/document/round6-cfpf-manual-final-for-comment.pdf