The Boating Infrastructure Grant (BIG) Program provides funding for the construction, renovation, and maintenance of boating infrastructure that serves transient recreational vessels at least 26 feet in length.
Donor Name: North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality
State: North Carolina
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 08/28/2026
Size of the Grant: More than $1 million
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
The BIG Program provides funding to the 50 states, as well as the territories and commonwealths of the United States, for the construction, renovation, or maintenance of boating infrastructure for transient recreational vessels at least 26 feet long that are operated, leased, rented, or chartered primarily for pleasure. For the purposes of the BIG Program, transient recreational vessels are defined as vessels using a facility for 15 days or less.
The BIG Program is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) through grants to states under its Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program (WSFR). The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Division of Coastal Management (DCM), is the designated State Administrative Agency for the BIG Program in North Carolina.
Funding Information
- State Competition
- Requests may not exceed $300,000 in federal funding per project.
- National Competition
- Requests may not exceed $1,500,000 in federal funding per project.
Eligible Projects
Boating infrastructure comprises the structures, equipment, accessories, and services necessary or desirable for a facility to accommodate eligible vessels. Some examples of potentially eligible activities include, but are not limited to the following:
- Planning, permitting, engineering, cultural, historic, and environmental studies or assessments necessary to construct boating infrastructure.
- Transient slips. Slips that boaters with eligible recreational vessels occupy for no more than 15 consecutive days.
- Day-docks. Facilities that do not allow overnight use.
- Floating docks, fixed piers, and gangways.
- Dinghy docks. Fixed or floating structures that provide temporary access for boaters using dinghies, tenders, or other small boats to travel between eligible recreational vessels and shorebased facilities.
- Mooring buoys. Permanently anchored floats designed for use by eligible recreational vessels.
- Fuel stations, restrooms, showers, dockside utilities, laundry facilities, and similar amenities.
- Lighting, communications, buoys, beacons, signals, markers, signs, security features.
- Floating or fixed breakwaters, wave attenuators, and other improvements that provide a harbor of safe refuge (facilities protected from waves, wind, tides, current, etc., that provide a temporary safe anchorage point or harbor of refuge during storms).
- Equipment and structures for collecting, disposing of, or recycling liquid or solid waste from eligible vessels or for eligible users.
- Bulkheads, retaining walls, living shorelines, and similar shoreline stabilization measures that support eligible boating infrastructure.
- Debris deflection structures or water hazard removal.
- Maintenance of facilities.
- Informational and educational materials specific to BIG or a BIG-funded project and that credit BIG as a source of funding when appropriate.
- Recording Federal interest in BIG-funded real property.
- Repair or restoration of roads, parking lots, walkways, or other surface areas damaged as a direct result of BIG-funded construction.
Eligibility Criteria
- Eligible applicants include private marina owners/operators, local governments, state agencies, nonprofit organizations, institutions of higher education, and other entities that own or operate eligible facilities.
- Facilities eligible for the BIG Program are limited to publicly and privately-owned marinas that are open to the public and located within North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties. The applicant must own or have legal rights to operate the BIG-funded facility, or the applicant must demonstrate in the proposal that the owner of the facility will use the BIG-funded facility for its authorized purpose for its useful life, the period during which a BIG-funded capital improvement is capable of fulfilling its intended purpose with adequate routine care and maintenance.
- Selected applicants must meet all Federal requirements as detailed and further agree to abide by all of North Carolina State rules, policies, and procedures, as well as all local and Federal rules that may apply.
For more information, visit DEQ.
