What is the National Boating
Infrastructure Grant Program (BIG)?

News

• Proposals for FY2025 funds are due to SCDNR no later than 5:00 PM on 07/01/24
• 2023 South Carolina Boating Infrastructre Grant Workshop

Congress has recognized that insufficient tie-up facilities exist for transient (staying 15 days or less), nontrailerable (26 feet or more in length) recreational boats to provide for reasonable and convenient access to and from our navigable waters. As a result, these boaters are unable to enjoy many recreational, cultural, historic, scenic, and natural resources of the United States. It has also been determined that there is an insufficient quantity of marinas or commercial tie-up facilities along extended stretches of the United States coastlines and rivers that benefit transient, nontrailerable boats. In many parts of the country, the number of places to tie up, moor, or anchor a cruising boat, especially during a storm, is limited. Basic features, such as tie-ups, fuel, utilities, and restrooms, are often nonexistent.

As a result, Congress passed the Sport Fishing and Boating Safety Act of 1998 (16 U.S.C. 777g). Under the Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducts the Boating Infrastructure Grant (BIG) Program. The BIG Program provides funding to States and Territories to construct, renovate, or maintain tie-up facilities and safe harbors for recreational boats 26 feet or more in length. Objectives include enhancing access to recreational, historic, cultural, natural, and scenic resources; strengthen local ties to the boating community and its economic benefits; promote public/private partnerships and entrepreneurial opportunities; provide continuity of public access to the shore; and promote awareness of transient boating opportunities.

The purpose of South Carolina's BIG Program

The BIG Program provides funding through competitive grants for the development and maintenance of boating infrastructure facilities in South Carolina for transient (15 day visit or less), nontrailerable (26 feet or more in length) recreational (operated primarily for pleasure; or leased, rented, or chartered to another for the latter's pleasure ) vessels. This grant program is only available to assist with the transient portion of a facility, but the facility must allow reasonable access to all recreational vessels.

Eligible infrastructure

Examples of eligible infrastructure that may be funded include (see 50 CFR 86.20 for detailed list):

• Mooring buoys (permanently anchored floats designed to tie up eligible recreational vessels)
• Day-docks (tie-up facilities that do not allow overnight use)
• Navigational aids (e.g., Coast Guard approved channel markers, buoys, and directional information)
• Transient slips (slips that boaters with eligible recreational vessels occupy for no more than 10 consecutive days)
• Safe harbors (facilities protected from waves, wind, tides, ice, currents, etc., that provide a temporary safe anchorage point or harbor of refuge during storms)
• Floating docks and fixed piers
• Floating and fixed breakwaters
• Dinghy docks (floating or fixed platforms that boaters with nontrailerable recreational vessels use for a temporary tie-up of their small boats to reach the shore)
• Restrooms and showers
• Retaining walls
• Bulkheads
• Dockside utilities
• Pumpout stations
• Recycling and trash receptacles
• Dockside electric service
• Dockside water supplies
• Dockside pay telephones
• Debris deflection booms
• Marine fueling stations
• One time dredging (with required permits)

You may apply funds to grant administration, as well as to fund preliminary costs when such preliminary costs include any of the following activities that have been completed prior to signing a grant agreement (these costs will be funded only if the project is approved):

1. Conducting appraisals
2. Administering environmental reviews and permitting
3. Conducting technical feasibility studies
4. Carrying out site surveys and engaging in site planning
5. Preparing cost estimates
6. Preparing working drawings, construction plans, and specifications

Ineligible Infrastructure

Examples of activities ineligible for funding (see 50 CFR 86.21 for detailed list) include projects that:

• Do not provide public benefit
• Involve enforcement activity
• Significantly degrade or destroy valuable natural resources, or alter the cultural or historic nature of the area
• Provide structures not expected to last at least 20 years
• Do maintenance dredging
• Fund operations or routine, custodial and janitorial maintenance of the facility
• Construct, renovate, or maintain boating infrastructure tie-up facilities for non-transient vessels