Evaluating Physical, Chemical, and Biological Impacts from the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project | W81EWF 23 SOI 0006

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81EWF 23 SOI 0006

The grant opportunity focuses on building and strengthening the environmental baseline data needed to evaluate impacts from the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project (SHEP) in the Savannah River Basin and Estuary in Georgia and South Carolina. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) developed a Monitoring and Adaptive Management Plan (MAMP) that lays out how the project will track and respond to environmental changes tied to harbor expansion activities. A central part of that plan is maintaining a baseline databank that captures conditions before and during project implementation, so that future monitoring can be compared against a well-documented reference point. This baseline effort originally began in 2013 and supports a public-facing, web-based geographic information system (GIS) and online portal that organizes data relevant to environmental resources potentially affected by the expansion.

The funded work is aimed at collecting, organizing, and integrating both existing and newly generated environmental information so USACE and partners can evaluate physical, chemical, and biological effects associated with SHEP. The data of interest spans major resource areas such as water quality, fisheries and other aquatic biological resources, groundwater, wetlands, and related indicators. A key expectation is that the recipient will conduct a targeted literature search and data inventory to find prior surveys, studies, and datasets that can contribute to understanding baseline conditions and trends. The scope also includes reviewing sources such as USACE reports and surveys, along with other credible publications and project documentation, to extract or compile usable datasets that help characterize conditions in and around Savannah Harbor and connected estuarine and riverine systems.

A practical outcome of this work is improved ability to judge whether SHEP mitigation features are performing as intended. The Environmental Impact Statement predicted certain levels of environmental effects, and mitigation measures are designed to prevent those effects from exceeding what was anticipated. By assembling a robust baseline and merging it with ongoing SHEP monitoring results, the program supports defensible comparisons over time, clearer detection of change, and better decision-making under the adaptive management framework. In other words, the baseline databank is not just an archive; it is meant to be actively used alongside monitoring data to determine whether mitigation is effective and whether management actions need to be adjusted.

The opportunity is issued by the Department of Defense, Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers, and it is structured as a discretionary cooperative agreement under a science and technology/research and development activity category (CFDA 12.630). The funding opportunity number is W81EWF 23 SOI 0006. The posting date is March 23, 2023, with an original closing date of May 22, 2023. Funding is relatively targeted in scale, with an award ceiling of $151,000 and an expectation of one award. Eligibility is listed broadly as "Others" with additional clarification referenced in the full notice. The deliverables implied by the description center on locating and compiling relevant datasets, ensuring they are suitable for analysis and comparison, and integrating them into the existing online GIS and web portal used to support SHEP monitoring and public accessibility.

• The Department of Defense, Dept. of the Army -- Corps of Engineers in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Evaluating Physical, Chemical, and Biological Impacts from the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.630.
• This funding opportunity was created on Mar 23, 2023.
• Applicants must submit their applications by May 22, 2023. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $151,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for W81EWF 23 SOI 0006

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