Woonsocket receives $300,000 in grants to improve city parks

Four communities in the Blackstone Valley have received grants totaling $700,000 from the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank to help finance an assortment of infrastructure resiliency improvements, from rain gardens to stormwater management projects.

Woonsocket received $300,000, while Pawtucket and Central Falls received a combined $400,000.

Woonsocket’s allotment represents two grants of $150,000 each, one of which will allow the city to complete four small projects. They include:

• Installation of vegetated swales into an existing drainage system to enhance the entryway to River’s Edge Park and capture more rainwater runoff from the Blackstone River Bikeway before it enters the Blackstone River.

• A rain garden at River Island Park to complement the scenery in existing sitting and walking areas.

• Vegetated swales and rain gardens at Bernon Memorial Park, aimed at making the ballfields usable for a larger portion of the year and to give various play areas a more partitioned look.

• Installation of permeable paving, stormwater planters, gravel and sand filtration at the parking lot on Main Street opposite City Hall. The project is designed to demonstrate how increasing the amount of vegetated cover in a parking lot can decrease the heat absorption of large, paved surfaces.

In addition, Woonsocket received $150,000 to reduce flooding in the area of Iron Rock Brook and Mendon Road. A deficient culvert is blamed for regular street flooding that adversely affects the flow of traffic and regularly causes basement flooding in at least one residence, located at 1262 Mendon Road. The city intends to use the grant to resize the culvert and to design a “green infrastructure solution” near Good

Shepherd Catholic School that would be incorporated into the student science curriculum.

Pawtucket and Central Falls propose using their $400,000 grant for an assortment of improvements in the Transit Oriented Development District, including tree plantings, stormwater management and heat reduction projects, according to the RIIB.

The Valley cities were among seven cities and towns that received a total of $1.5 million in RIIB grants recently. Other communities granted money include Newport, Bristol and Warwick.

“The Infrastructure Bank is committed to working with our municipal partners to accelerate investment in critical infrastructure and nature-based solutions that better prepare Rhode Island communities for a changing climate,” said RIIB CEO Jeffrey R. Diehl. “We look forward to building on the success of the first two rounds of the program and strengthening relationships with communities statewide to proactively identify the resources needed to make needed resilience projects happen.”

With support from The Nature Conservancy, RIIB over the past year completed Community Resilience Building workshops and developed a prioritized list of plans and projects. Participating municipalities submitted proposals for action grants, with a 25 percent local match requirement. The recipients were chosen as a result of a competitive review process, Diehl said.

RIIB also named six municipalities to participate in the third round of funding this year, including Cumberland and East Providence.

“The majority of infrastructure and assets at risk to climate change in Rhode Island are owned and managed by municipalities, but these communities often lack the staff capacity, funding, and expertise to plan and prioritize resilience projects,” said Shaun O’Rourke, managing director of program and business development at RIIB and the state’s chief resiliency officer. “Rising sea levels, increasing heat, and extreme storm events will have long-term effects on local infrastructure and residents. The Municipal Resilience Program is collaboratively building a statewide pipeline of priority projects with municipalities to more effectively and efficiently respond to these climate impacts that we are already experiencing.”