Boston officials said this week they’re making headway on efforts to ready the state’s largest city for more intense and more frequent extreme weather linked to climate change, citing projects aimed at flood-prone areas and dangerous heat. But at the same time, they warned that continued progress could face a significant challenge: reduced federal funding under the Trump administration.

“ We’ve been very fortunate in Boston not to have a major climate hazard to the degree that we’ve seen elsewhere in the country. But this is really a when, not an if,” said Brian Swett, the city’s chief climate officer.

Speaking to reporters on Feb. 20, city officials outlined several completed and future projects intended to reduce the risk of flooding and extreme heat.

Swett said his team is committed to making the city resilient to climate change despite the uncertainty of federal support. “This is both a sprint and a marathon,” he said. “We’re going to stay at this and find creative ways of funding and building the infrastructure over time.”

Trump’s executive actions have led to pause on billions of federal dollars promised to groups working on environmental and infrastructure projects. Several Massachusetts nonprofits said their projects are stalled amid pending legal battles and uncertainty.

When it comes to city efforts, “no work that has been underway has needed to be paused, but it’s a fluid situation,” Swett said. Some Boston projects dependent on federal funding include Environmental Protection Agency grants of $35 million to expand the city’s electric school bus fleet and $3 million to create a community advisory council in East Boston.

Mayor Wu said the city is working closely with the state attorney general’s office on lawsuits addressing these awarded and contracted funds.

In the meantime, Wu said, her staff is looking ahead to other solutions. The city has already set aside $75 million for coastal resilience projects. She said the city may turn to other funding sources, such as businesses, state officials and nonprofit organizations, to make up for any potential loss of federal support.

“This is an era of partnerships, and we are looking to maximize everything we can do at the local level, to tap in with cities around the country, and also to work with other sectors here in Boston,” the mayor said.

Julia Carlton MacKay, director of community resilience at the Conservation Law Foundation, told WBUR that the city’s plans to prepare for climate change are ambitious and will require billions of dollars.

“The value of the protection that they offer exceeds that many times over, but it is still a big hurdle because the city alone can’t pay to implement all of these resilient strategies that they’ve identified in the plans,” she said. “And I don’t think that they need to be expected to.”

Funding will need to come from other sources like state government, nonprofit, and private partners, she said.

Projects of this scale take years to plan and implement, often outlasting a presidential term, MacKay said. «There’s a lot of room” for the city to put plans in place while waiting for this administration to end, she said.

City officials highlighted several projects underway or already completed that seek to address Boston’s three major climate hazards — coastal flooding from hurricanes, inland flooding from rainstorms and extreme heat:

• Officials led a city-wide exercise last September where business owners and residents practiced installing temporary flood barriers designed to protect streets and buildings in a major storm;

• In 2022, the city completed a redesign of McConnell Park in Dorchester meant to protect the surrounding neighborhood from coastal flooding. Construction teams broke ground on a similar project at Ryan Park in Dorchester in December;

• The city has worked with local nonprofit groups to plant trees on private and public property in an effort to cool neighborhoods exposed to the hottest temperatures.

However, city officials said there is more work ahead. To address flooding from increasingly frequent, heavy rainstorms, John Sullivan, chief engineer at the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, said his team wants to use natural hills and valleys to their advantage.

The system needs to be ready if “ there’s a rainstorm bigger than the rainstorm that everything’s designed for,” Sullivan said. He added the commission plans to update building codes, explore green infrastructure options, and encourage residents to monitor catch basins in their neighborhoods for overflow.

“We need you to help protect your neighborhoods and, you know, call us in if there’s any maintenance problems,” Sullivan said. “It’s important that all together, we will keep our neighborhoods safe.”

This article was published by WBUR on Feb. 21. The Reporter and WBUR share content through a media partneship.