Special to the Record
The City of Chelsea has received a $313,600 climate resilience grant from the Healey-Driscoll Administration to launch its “Stronger, Smarter, Greener: Implementing Resilient Zoning & Design in Chelsea” project that will bring together industry experts, City staff and community members to design zoning updates that ensure new development and redevelopment advances the community’s climate goals. This work is set to begin as soon as possible.
Awarded through the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program, which is administered by the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA), these competitive grants support communities in identifying climate hazards, developing strategies to improve resilience, and implementing priority actions to adapt to climate change. Chelsea’s project is one of 54 projects to have received action grant funding in the latest round of applications.
“The results of this project will ensure Chelsea and its residents become more adaptable to changing environmental conditions such as rising sea levels, stormwater and heat by incorporating climate science-informed flexibility into our zoning based on emerging data,” said Kristen Homeyer, Resilience Manager of the North Suffolk Office of Resilience and Sustainability (NSORS), which works in Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop.
These funds will be used to incorporate climate-resilient strategies into the City’s zoning code. Strategies may include adopting standards proven in the public realm to mitigate heat island effects and minimize the impact of flooding, and result in an overall greener Chelsea.
Chelsea identified these projects as urgent and necessary in its efforts to address ongoing climate change impacts that include extreme temperatures, extreme storms and flooding, and sea level rise.
The City’s departments of Housing & Community Development and Permitting & Land Use Planning are committed to working with partners at GreenRoots and La Colaborativa to engage residents in this process and explain why making these updates is essential to meeting the community’s climate goals.
These strategies will support equitable, inclusive decision-making and ensure that Chelsea’s Green Zoning policies directly reflect the needs and experiences of its most climate-vulnerable residents.
This project builds on Chelsea’s climate 2018 resilience planning process. The MVP program, created in 2017, provides funding for community-driven climate resilience planning and action. Ninety-nine percent, or 349 out of 351 of the Commonwealth’s cities and towns, are participating in the program and over $210 million has been awarded for local climate resilience planning and projects. Communities originally enrolled in the program by completing the MVP Planning Grant process (MVP 1.0), which then opened up access to apply for an MVP Action Grant, or implementation funding.