The Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) is accepting public comments for the Round 5 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 5 manual uses the text of the previous manual from Round 4, with minor updates to account for recent legislative changes . Given the success of this prior round, and general stakeholder understanding of how the CFPF functions under the Round 4 Manual, DCR believes that it will function as a useful baseline for interested parties to submit comments.

In addition to general feedback, DCR encourages stakeholders to provide comments on:

• Definitions;
• Eligible activities;
• Periods of performance for the various activities supported by the CFPF, and in particular whether a 5-year period of performance may be appropriate for capacity building, resilience plan implementation, and projects;
• Match requirements and scoring; and
• The availability of both short and long-term loans for projects.

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.