How an economically disadvantaged rural community secured federal funding to protect its ecosystems while improving critical transportation infrastructure.

Project Location:
City of Riverton, Iowa

Contact:
Cara Morgan, cara.morgan@goldenhillsrcd.org

Funding Programs:
FEMA Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Direct Technical Assistance

Project Description

Riverton, Iowa, an Economically Disadvantaged Rural Community, received a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) Direct Technical Assistance (DTA) grant and then a subsequent award of a BRIC Competitive Grant to develop a road improvement project that will help create a new riverine ecosystem. These project components will provide natural areas for flood water storage and wildlife habitat, as well as contribute to the project’s effectiveness and positive benefit-cost ratio. Riverton Road is the main east-west highway that leads into the city, so it is a high priority to keep this lifeline open and accessible at all times for emergency services and other critical community services. The project also includes strong multi-jurisdictional partnerships between the city, county, state agencies, and a non-profit partner.

Interview

What advice would you have for someone else applying to this?

This project has been a very collaborative effort, demonstrating the need in the region to complete this project. This particular project has been on people’s minds for a long time, but the county never had the money to fix the low lying road. When we started talking about writing this grant and receiving the funding, we had a lot of help from Iowa Homeland Security, while ensuring that the county remained at the table at all times. The City of Riverton, Fremont County, and Iowa Department of Natural Resources are all major partners in the project, creating a win-win to both improve resilience and build up the wetland habitat. 

What challenges did you come across and how did you navigate them?

One issue we faced was ensuring that the FEMA BRIC staff understood the project well. Getting the staff on location really helped. Additionally, having Iowa Homeland Security on board helped, especially since they are well-versed in the benefit-cost analysis and were able to give useful advice.

What were the areas of support that helped you in the process (contractor, grant admin, project ID/planning, education, project design)?

At the state level, having a watershed plan and the flood case study through the Watershed Iowa Approach really helped save a lot of time for this project. Without these things, it is uncertain whether we would have had the time to do a similar case study and get the BRIC application done. All of our BRIC partners have been very helpful, in addition to our local partners with the City of Riverton. Having our partners really step up was critical to ensuring that this project got done.

Did/do you have a budget and/or plans for monitoring and measuring project success?

The city currently does not have plans. However, there are multiple measures of success, both environmental and social, when looking at the direct impacts this project will have.

Did you use the new FEMA BCA toolkit? How was it?

We are still in the process of working through the BCA toolkit, the additional expertise has been very helpful in this process.

About the funding program