Manomet Inc.

grant award: $100,000; year awarded: 2022

Sea-level rise, combined with incompatible coastal engineering practices, is rapidly altering the quantity, availability, and quality of soft-sediment tidally influenced ecosystems on the US Atlantic Coast and threatening the biodiversity that depends on them. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) dredges a large amount of sediment annually from the nation’s inlets and waterways for navigation and commerce. Beneficial use of dredge material (BUDM) can restore habitat by creating natural and nature-based features that foster coastal resilience efforts and can be used to support sustainable coastal management initiatives. Manomet Inc. will create the structure needed to scale this critical practice by engaging state, federal, and NGO partners to identify successful BUDM habitat projects, further refine priority opportunity areas, develop project concepts, and empower state and local partners to use this information for implementation projects. Their strategy is to infuse sediment management practices state by state, throughout five states along the Atlantic (ME, MA, NJ, DE, and VA).