BATON ROUGE, La. – The Council on Watershed Management approved 40 flood risk reduction projects for conditional funding awards today as part of the Louisiana Watershed Initiative’s Round 2 funding opportunity for projects that benefit at-risk, disadvantaged communities throughout the state.

Following the pre-application phase, watershed region steering committees prioritized projects submitted in their respective regions that align with LWI’s long-term resilience goals. LWI state agencies then reviewed the regionally selected projects for CDBG-MIT eligibility and recommended 40 regionally prioritized projects, totaling $221.8 million, to the council for conditional Round 2 awards.

“When Louisiana received federal flood mitigation funding following the 2016 floods, we committed to using these dollars to reduce flood risk through a watershed-based approach guided by science and data—and LWI is doing just that,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said. “I’m incredibly proud of the extensive work our state and watershed regions have done through this initiative to fund projects that will make our state more resilient for years to come.”

The Round 2 funding awards are contingent on project applicants’ completing, and receiving state approval of, a feasibility study and full application.

The state will support applicants by providing engineering services, such as hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, additional technical assistance and project scoping support to enhance project pre-applications if needed and support the development of full applications. The state will evaluate full applications based on the outcomes of the engineering studies.

To see the projects approved for conditional awards, and for more information on Round 2, click here.