The Town of Warren and the Bristol County Water Authority were among the recipients of over $2 million in
matching Climate Resilience Fund grants issued by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

Five municipalities and three community organizations are to receive $2,022,146 for eight projects to restore and improve the climate resilience of local communities, infrastructure, and coastal habitats. The CRF is funded through Green Bond approved by voters at the 2024 election.

“Rhode Island continues to face increasing challenges from more frequent and intense weather events from climate change. In 2026, we experienced record snowfall in February, drought conditions throughout the Spring, and then higher than average rainfalls in July,” said DEM Director Terry Gray.

Gray continued, “Additionally, NOAA declared this July as the hottest July on record in our country. Our state’s communities face significant stresses and diverse risks from rising seas to severe storm events, flooding, and erosion. These grants provide vital support for projects that strengthen the resilience of our communities, underscoring the importance of the voter-approved Green Bonds that make them possible. We urge Rhode Island voters to approve the 2026 Green Bond in November.”

The BCWA receives $350,000 to remove and safely dispose of an asbestos-coated pipeline from the salt marsh in Warren. Once removed, restoration of salt marsh hydrology will be conducted by project partner Save the Bay.

According to BCWA Executive Director Steve Coutu, the abandoned above-ground pipeline, called the Shad Factory Pipeline, was built around 1911 and was once used to transport raw water from the Shad Factory Pond in Rehoboth to the former BCWA treatment plant on Child Street.

The pipe is located on the salt marsh along the east side of the Palmer River behind the Swansea Country Club golf course. The total above-ground length is a little over 3,000 feet, with 1,125 feet in Swansea and 2,050 feet in Warren.

"Save The Bay has a strong interest in the removal of this pipeline. Given its age and deteriorating condition, it is considered a coastal hazard," Coutu said.

Following removal of the pipeline, Save The Bay will conduct salt marsh restoration activities. Coutu said Wenley Ferguson, Director of Restoration for Save The Bay, was instrumental in helping BCWA prepare the application and secure the grant.

Ferguson and Save the Bay have been at the fore of several other local projects, including restoration efforts on the Kickemuit River and Jacob's Point.

The Town of Warren receives $95,000 earmarked for work to be done at the town beach. It's part of a long-term multiphase strategy to address climate change impacts along Warren’s coastlines.

The Warren Town Beach Resilience Project component is intended to design "nature-based infrastructure to stabilize the eroding shoreline, adapt to sea-level rise, and improve public access to the waterfront."

Town Planning and Economic Development Director Bianca Policastro said the grant monies are earmarked for an over-arching engineering analysis of the beach. The study, she said, is necessary to seek further funding for any related construction.

"The goal of this is to use this funding from RIDEM to do an analysis, get feedback from stakeholders and move forward with the engineering design of what the seawall and the beach could look like," Policastro explained.

The director elaborated, saying "Policy-wise, concrete seawalls are kind of going the way of the DoDo bird. Yeah. The Warren beach seawall is man-made during the Industrial Revolution to make way for the railroad. And we have seawalls going around a significant part of our coastline.

"So what we're trying to determine is do we need concrete manmade structures to preserve the integrity of the landscape or should we looking at what they call a 'living shoreline, which is basically bringing back native flora and fauna?"

Another aim of the analysis is bring other coastal projects in town, such as those at Jamiel Park and Belcher's Cove, together more uniformly. She said it appears too often in the past, efforts of this type were individualized or "siloed," at time likely minimizing the effectiveness of gaining access to more grant funding.

A Request for Proposal (RFP) process will soon be initiated seeking a qualified engineering to perform the analysis, in what Policastro described as a highly specialized area of expertise.