Woonsocket, RI Mayor Christopher Beauchamp and members of the city council broke ground on the Truman Dr. Green Infrastructure Parkway project. Funded with a $2 million Municipal Resilience Program Action Grant, the project will  transform a four-lane, underutilized public road (Truman Dr.) into a two-lane road and linear park that incorporates the existing Blackstone River Bike Path, providing several co-benefits to the city’s residents and businesses.

Construction will remove 1.5 of the road’s travel lanes, and an adjacent city-owned parking lot, and convert the unused paved surfaces into a linear park. These landscape elements will be used to implement nature-based solutions to treat stormwater while providing direct and indirect recreational, economic, and public health benefits to the city and environmental justice communities.

The project is an example of what communities participating in our Municipal Resilience Program (MRP) can accomplish. With support from The Nature Conservancy, 35 of Rhode Island’s 39 municipalities have participated in the MRP workshop process to develop prioritized lists of actionable resilience plans and projects. Municipalities are then eligible to submit applications for MRP Action Grants with a 25% local match requirement.