City of Jacksonville gets $16 million grant to restore watersheds

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) — A new $16 million grant has been accepted by the city of Jacksonville from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The grant will be used to begin to help restore many watersheds in the area. The waterways can lead into another and then into the New River which flows throughout Onslow County and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean.

"The grant itself will help restore entire watersheds, instead of fragmentation of a small grant here or small grant there, NOAA allowed us to go for the larger dollars in order to put a watershed plan together," City of Jacksonville Stormwater Manager Pat Donovan-Brandenburg said.

With the improvements, some flood plains will be manipulated in a way so water can be more dispered and held by the ground. This means it'll take much longer for floodwaters to make it onto our streets.

"What we will be doing in increasing the flood plain so as it rainwater has somewhere to go," Donovan-Brandenburg said. "Increasing the flood plain, what you do is that our streams have gotten narrow, so we are going to widen it back out."

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