State agencies preview draft coastal resilience districts, invite public input

Catherine Antas, Undersecretary for Decarbonization and Resilience at the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, and staff from the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management on Wednesday previewed draft “coastal resilience districts” intended to help coastal communities plan and coordinate responses to sea‑level rise, storms and erosion.

"Resilient Coast continues to be a priority of the Healey‑Driscoll administration," Antas said, noting the work stems from the statewide Resilient Mass plan and that the materials being shared are draft and seeking public feedback. The Resilient Coast framework is co‑led by EEA and CZM and is intended to guide regional collaboration rather than impose regulatory boundaries.

Panelists described three primary datasets used to draw the 15 draft districts: mapped coastal natural resources (salt marshes, barrier beaches, dunes and coastal banks), watershed/subbasin boundaries to reflect how water moves across jurisdictions, and the Massachusetts Coastal Flood Risk Model (MCFRM), which projects the 0.1% annual‑chance (1‑in‑1,000) coastal flood extent in the 2070 time horizon. "MCFRM . . . includes a high rate of sea level rise and more intense tropical cyclones," the MCFRM analyst said.

Officials emphasized limits to the current mapping: the MCFRM-driven districts focus on coastal hazards (storm surge, sea‑level rise and erosion) and do not yet include precipitation‑driven or compound flood risk from stormwater, pluvial events or combined sources. Deanna Moran, Chief Coastal Resilience Officer at CZM, said the team recognizes that omission and plans future phases to incorporate compound‑flood modeling and to periodically update the science and district boundaries.

The meeting also addressed community concerns. Antonio, speaking for a small town with a roughly $15 million municipal budget, said small communities lack staff and capacity to pursue grants and implement projects; panelists said one goal of the district approach is to facilitate resource‑pooling and regional grant applications to help lower‑capacity municipalities. Participants urged care in technical language—one commenter asked that staff distinguish beach erosion from bluff erosion because bluffs often supply sediment to beaches.

CZM staff showed examples of successful regional work: a South Shore shared beach nourishment project, an Outer Cape sediment‑movement data portal, and collaboration on the Island End River in the Boston Harbor region where Chelsea and Everett are seeking a $50,000,000 FEMA Building Resilience for Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant supported in part by prior CZM and EEA grants.

Organizers demonstrated an online map viewer and a survey that lets users drop pins to identify local opportunities or challenges and prioritize plan elements. The survey and map are linked from the Resilient Coast landing page on mass.gov; the project team said the survey is open until Nov. 18 and another public meeting will be held this fall or early winter. Officials said they will catalog Q&A, chat and Mentimeter input and return with a draft report for public comment this winter.

Readouts of the district characterizations and the underlying delineation analysis are not yet published; staff said the three primary datasets used to draw boundaries are publicly available (MCFRM, watershed/subbasin GIS layers and natural‑resource mapping via the state's MassMapper site) and they will post links to those resources.