Westport, Ocean Shores coastal resilience pivots to alternate funding

Cancellation of FEMA BRIC grant program, other federal cuts, forces county to seek monies elsewhere to combat erosion

By Jerry Knaak The Daily World • May 14, 2025 1:30 am

Earlier this year, the cities of Westport and Ocean Shows, along with Grays Harbor County, joined forces to combat common erosion problems and develop a coastal resilience plan with the help of Scott Boettcher of SBGH-Partners.

The Grays Harbor County Board of Commissioners voted to extend the SBGH contract with Boettcher from six weeks to a year at their action meeting this past Tuesday.

In Ocean Shores, Oyhut Bay erosion has averaged 60 feet per year from 2017–2023, while in Westport, Pacific Coast erosion has ranged from 2.3 to 11.5 feet per year from 2002–2016, while Half Moon Bay erosion has averaged three feet per year during the same time period.

This erosion threatens public infrastructure, homes, resorts, RV parks and marinas. Damon Point has since been closed by the Washington Department of Natural Resources and the city of Ocean Shores due to dangerous conditions.

Ocean Shores constructed a temporary cobble berm along its south shore in January after the previous berm took a weather beating.

In mid-February, the interested parties applied for a $150,000 Cooperating Technical Partners grant through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to study the region’s shared erosion problems and intended to use what they learned to apply for a Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant to fund long-lasting solutions.

However, the Trump administration and FEMA abruptly canceled the BRIC grant program on April 4 leaving numerous local and regional infrastructure projects in limbo.

District 2 County Commissioner Rick Hole sits on the committee overseeing what would have been a CTP grant and its implementation.

“In our last discussion, we thought that the project, the collaboration needed to get bigger,” Hole said. “When we were talking about the (CTP), we were talking about dredging the harbor, and getting the silt that had washed down from the rivers.”

In light of the cancellation of the BRIC grant program, the consortium working on the erosion issues decided to apply for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s 2025 National Coastal Resilience Fund grant. The application is in effect a pre-proposal and Boettcher believes the full proposal will be due in July.

“This application is a way to repurpose the request and the need that was all around coastal erosion. This application is going to have a little bit more emphasis on fish and wildlife and restoration of those kinds of habitats,” Boettcher said. “In reality, the ecological assets and the community assets, they go hand in hand. Without either, you end up with neither.”

As for Ocean Shores-specific projects, City Administrator Scott Andersen recently told KOSW Radio that the city has applied for a grant through U.S. Rep. Emily Randall’s office to make the cobble berm more permanent and that plans are moving forward to repair the north jetty with construction anticipated to begin in March 2026.