Recovery Act: NOAA Coastal and Marine Habitat Restoration Project Grants

Description

NOAA delivers funding and technical expertise to restore coastal and marine habitats. These habitats support valuable fisheries and protected resources, improve the quality of our water, provide recreational opportunities for the public’s use and enjoyment and buffer our coastal communities from the impacts of storms and sea level rise. Projects funded through NOAA have strong on-the-ground habitat restoration components that provide social and economic benefits for people and their communities in addition to long-term ecological habitat improvements. Through this solicitation, NOAA seeks to openly compete funding available for habitat restoration under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Applications should be submitted for any project that is to be considered for this funding, even for those projects put forth to the Federal government as examples by internal and external restoration partners or submitted as applications to other NOAA competitions. Competition will ensure that the most beneficial restoration projects are selected to fuel America’s near-term economy, realize significant ecological gains, and ensure that projects are truly “shovel-ready.” Applications selected for funding through this solicitation will be implemented through a grant or cooperative agreement, with awards dependent upon the amount of funds made available to NOAA for this purpose by Congress. NOAA anticipates up to $170 million may be available for coastal and marine habitat restoration; typical awards are expected to range between $1.5 million to $10 million. Funds will be administered by NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation.

High priority will be given to applications for projects that:

• Have the greatest potential to achieve ecological benefits and maximize jobs creation/preservation;
• Can begin within the first 90 days of the award start date;
• Can be completed within 12-18 months;
• Have the greatest potential to be sustainable and provide lasting benefits of regional or national significance;
• Identify specific goals and outcomes, with appropriate ecological and economic performance metrics;
• Propose sufficient, cost-effective monitoring appropriate to the scope and scale of the project to evaluate a project’s benefits;
• Are consistent with NOAA species recovery planning efforts if located in areas where recovery planning efforts for Endangered Species Act listed species are underway;
• Request funds primarily to implement physical, on-the-ground coastal habitat restoration (as opposed to funds for general program support, overhead and travel).

Because the purpose of these funds is to quickly stimulate local U.S. economies through habitat restoration, applications for projects lacking opportunity to generate employment through restoration implementation or provide long-term economic benefits will not compete well and are discouraged.

Eligible Entities

Eligible applicants are institutions of higher education, non-profits, commercial (for profit) organizations, U.S. Territories, and state, local and Indian tribal governments. Applications from Federal agencies or employees of Federal agencies will not be considered. Federal agencies are strongly encouraged to work with states, non-governmental organizations, municipal and county governments, conservation corps organizations and others that are eligible to apply. The Department of Commerce/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (DOC/NOAA) is strongly committed to broadening the participation of historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribal colleges and universities, and institutions that work in under-served areas. NOAA encourages applications involving any of the above institutions.

Available Funds

NOAA anticipates that up to $170 million may be available for coastal and marine habitat restoration; typical awards are expected to range between $1.5 million and $10 million. NOAA will not accept applications requesting more than $20 million or less than $500,000 under this solicitation. There is no guarantee that sufficient funds will be available to make awards for all applications. The number of awards to be made as a result of this solicitation will depend on the number of eligible applications received, the amount of funds requested for habitat restoration projects by the applicants, the merit and ranking of the applications, the amount of funds made available by Congress, and the amount of funding, if any, put toward American Reinvestment and Recovery Act projects outside this solicitation.

Cost Sharing

There is no statutory matching requirement for this funding. NOAA typically leverages its Federal funding with matching contributions and/or partnerships from a broad range of sources in the public and private sector to implement locally important coastal and marine habitat restoration. To this end, applicants are encouraged to demonstrate partnerships and/or some portion of non-Federal match for NOAA funds requested to conduct the proposed project.

Facilities and Administrative Costs

For this solicitation, the Federal share of the indirect costs must not exceed the lesser of either the indirect costs the applicant would be entitled to if the negotiated Federal indirect cost rate were used or 20 percent of the Federal direct costs proposed. For those situations in which the use of the applicant’s indirect cost rate would result in indirect costs greater than 20 percent of the Federal direct costs, the difference may be counted as the non-Federal share.

Key Dates

Applications must be postmarked, provided to a delivery service, or received by www.grants.gov by 11:59 PM EDT on April 6, 2009.

More Info + Submissions

Agency: Department of Commerce (DOC)
Expires: April 6, 2009

Submissions for this opportunity are not handled by RI STAC or RI EPSCoR. Please follow the link below for more information on the opportunity and how to submit a response.

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