ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) - At the close of last year, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) unveiled over $16 million in Climate Smart Communities Grant Awards, benefiting municipalities across the state. The Finger Lakes region was among the recipients of these funds. The Climate Smart Communities grants program was started back in 2016, and the purpose was to help cities and towns implement climate change adaptation and greenhouse gas mitigation projects and also to help them with the planning and assessments that they often need to done before they can implement a project through the Climate Smart Community Certification Program. “We have the Climate Smart Grant program, and we have a Climate Smart Community certification program and those two kind of work hand-in-hand,” said Myra Fedyniak, who is a climate policy analyst 2 at the NYS DEC Office of Climate Change. “All municipalities in the state are eligible to apply for the grants program. They do not have to be certified or registered under the certification program to apply for the grants.” Four grant awards were allocated to the Finger Lakes region, with one of the recipients being the city of Rochester. Plans are expected to get underway soon.  “They’re actually completing a bigger project where they’re redeveloping this whole Bull’s Head area, which has been, you know, underutilized for many years,” Fedyniak said. “The idea here was, since they’re starting from mostly a clean slate, to create these off-road bike lanes, essentially. It’s well-documented that people do not feel safe riding bikes along with cars. So when you separate bike lanes from the travel lanes for vehicular traffic, you get a lot more use.” The other three awards went to the cities of Canandaigua, Penfield, and Gates. Unlike the Rochester project, these locations will require additional planning.   “The planning projects, on the other hand, take a little bit more time. So, this is where the communities are gathering the information they need to make decisions and plans going forward,” said Fedyniak. “Basically, that planning kind of gives them the information that they need to figure out where they want to go.”  Fedyniak says she loves seeing these projects happen and it’s exciting to see communities do these projects and to help them move along, hopefully getting one step closer to help solve the climate problem. Click here to learn more about the grant awards.