CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — 2018 was a bad year for Lowcountry shrimping, a winter freeze wiped out most of the white shrimp in the Charleston harbor.
Six years later, $1 million in grant money for shrimp fishery infrastructure will soon, finally be making its way to those who need it. But not everyone was able to qualify.
“The funds are awarded by NOAA,” said Chris McDonough, the program coordinator for the Shrimp Disaster Relief Program. “When they’re awarded, typically we have to go through a grant approval process for us to get the money. It takes some time.”
READ MORE | “Police search for suspect who stole 500,000 frozen shrimp.”
The program was put in place in 2018, but between the slow wheels of government and the pandemic, the first phase wasn’t paid out until last year.
“The first was a direct economic assistance program that provided direct relief to those in the shrimp fishery, harvesters, dealers that suffered a direct loss during that timeframe,” said McDonough.
Now letters directing those who will receive money from phase two went out earlier this week.
“The shrimp infrastructure improvement program was designed to enhance and provide funding for different projects that would help out with infrastructure, whether it be shore-based improvements, docks, freezers, ice machines, vessel repairs and things that were targeted more towards keeping the fishery operational,” said McDonough.
READ MORE | “Mount Pleasant invests $3M to renovate Shem Creek shrimp docks.”
But not everyone qualified.
“We had just over a million dollars in funds for the infrastructure funding, and we got over $2 million in requests,” McDonough explained. “We really can’t just divide the money up, like we did with the economic assistance because some are gonna require more funding than others. Most of them were not completely funded.”
As for the speed of getting needed federal money out, officials say that’s being worked on.
“NOAA and the National Marine Fisheries are working on implementing procedures and putting in some timeframes within their internal procedures for these types of disaster proposal reviews for these grants so that they can be a little more timely,” McDonough said. “We got in writing notification in March of 2020, right when COVID hit and everything took a little longer after that.”