Haverhill, West Newbury and Lawrence are sharing in nearly $30 million in state grants designed to help communities prepare for flooding, heat waves and wildfires.
Haverhill joins Lynn and Holyoke to use $150,000 for the Building on HEAL program. It supplements a two-year U.S. Environmental Protection Agency effort, Healthy Environments Advance Learning, that ended last year. Led by Massachusetts Asthma Action Partnership, it targeted areas impacted by asthma, extreme heat and COVID-19.
The state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs said, however, it made an effort to recruit rural and small towns into the Massachusetts Vulnerability Preparedness Action Grant program, with $11.1 million going specifically to those areas.
In West Newbury, for example, $426,938 was awarded to work toward development of alternatives to address flooding and erosion along River Road and the bordering Merrimack River shoreline. Lawrence’s River to Refuge: Tower Hill Waterfront received one of the larger awards of a little more than $1 million.
“Communities throughout our region continue to demonstrate strong leadership in preparing for the impacts of climate change, and these MVP Action Grants provide critical resources to support those efforts,” said Senate Minority Leader Bruce E. Tarr, whose district includes West Newbury.
While the state continues to pay for extreme weather preparedness, it has recently omitted the term “climate change” that previously appeared in its statements on the subject.
The state said the money is intended for on-the-ground improvements, such as rebuilding parks with shaded spaces where residents can cool off during heat waves, protecting wetlands that reduce flooding in neighborhoods and designing safer, more affordable housing on higher ground. Other projects include new wildfire evacuation routes, culvert upgrades to stop roads from washing out and emergency plans to protect people most at risk.