The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has opened a 120-day public comment period on draft revised boundaries for 148 units of the Coastal Barrier Resources System (CBRS), including 112 existing units and 36 proposed new units in Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New Jersey.
Coastal barriers protect local residents from storm surges and provide habitat for wildlife. In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) initiated a project to modernize the maps of approximately 370 CBRS units in nine states along the North Atlantic coast.
The modernization effort will correct mapping errors affecting property owners; add new qualifying areas to the CBRS; and provide more accurate and accessible CBRS data for planning coastal infrastructure projects, habitat conservation efforts, and flood risk mitigation measures.
The proposed revisions are based on objective mapping criteria and are designed to fix technical mapping errors and add qualifying areas to the CBRS. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the comment period will close on July 10, 2018.