Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness

In September of 2016 Governor Baker issued Executive Order number 569, directing the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs to coordinate and make consistent new and existing efforts to mitigate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to build resilience and adapt to the impacts of climate change.  As part of their efforts to meet the requirements of this directive the Secretariat was ordered to: within two years of this Order, assess the vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather events for the Coordinator’s Executive Office and for each agency within the Coordinator’s Executive Office and identify adaptation options for the assets of such Executive Office and agencies; and incorporate results from vulnerability assessments into existing policies and plans for the Executive Office and its agencies.  The overarching goals of all of this work is to create more resilient Commonwealth;  A Commonwealth that will be far more resilient in the face of future natural events, make worse by global climate change.

To develop the lowest level of this work the Secretariat initiated the Municipal Vulnerabilities Preparedness Program.  This program makes funding available to cities and towns to do the necessary local assessments, develop mitigation plans and then to address the most serious risks identified.  The overall goals are to reduce greenhouse gas emmissions, statewide, and to make the Commonwealth far more resilient in the face of increasing severe natural hazards.  Because, at it's heart, the MVP process is one of mitigating against future disasters it fits into an overall Hazard Mitigation Plan (HMP).

Royalston applied for and was given $36,727 to begin this program and to update our existing HMP.  Through a series of meetings, workshops and listening sessions, working with Tighe & Bond, we have completed the MVP part of this work.  The results of this effort are spelled out in the  Community Resilience Building Workshops - Summary of Findings.