Resilient Coastal Communities Program

Project Overview

The City of Wilmington has recently been selected to participate in the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program, which is helping coastal cities prepare for the rising risks of storms, flooding, and other coastal hazards.  This program will enable us to examine closely how these events affect our neighborhoods, public infrastructure, and natural areas, and identify projects that can be quickly moved into design and construction.

Building a more resilient City of Wilmington requires careful, thorough planning efforts using sound, locally relevant data. City of Wilmington has been awarded $85,000 in the form of technical resources on behalf of the N.C. Division of Coastal Management’s (DCM) Resilient Coastal Communities Program (RCCP). The funds will cover phases one and two of the program, which runs from September 2025 to September 2026.

Objectives

The objectives of this program include:

• Addressing barriers to coastal resilience in North Carolina at the local level, such as limited capacity, economic constraints, and social inequities
• Assisting communities with risk and vulnerability assessments and developing a portfolio of planned and prioritized projects
• Advancing coastal resilience projects to shovel-readiness, or ready for implementation; and
• Linking communities to funding streams for project implementation.

Community Action Team

The City has teamed with the following organizations to provide insight that will guide the planning worked needed to shape practical solutions for Wilmington: 

• UNCW
• Cape Fear River Watch
• North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality
• Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization
• Voyage
• Wilmington Downtown Inc
• New Hanover County
• Cape Fear Council of Governments.

For more information or to share feedback on areas of concern, view the project website below.

Resilient Coastal Communities Program