By Kiera Morgan

The Lincoln City council Monday night approved a letter of support for the Department of Land Conservation and Development as they are pursuing a grant opportunity through NOAA’s Coastal Resilience Program. The grant would pay for the Department of Geology and Mineral Industries to complete Beat the Wave modeling and mapping for the Lincoln City area that would provide more detailed information for an approach to tsunami evacuation.

According to planning director Richard Townsend the Department of Land Conservation and Development intends to work with the city to incorporate the results into land use tsunami resilience strategies that the City would adopt as part of its comprehensive plan. This information would be useful for refining strategies for emergency evacuation. It also would inform the preparation of the our comprehensive plan and map.

The grant would cover the costs for DOGAMI to complete the evacuation mapping and related data products and for the Department of Land Conservation and Development assistance, but likely would not cover city staff time spent on the project. He  said this has been a beneficial project in other areas of the coast such as Tillamook and Seaside. If the grant application is successful, the project would start around October 2018.