# Keep America's Waterfronts Working Act

This bill creates a new federal program to help preserve and protect working waterfronts—the docks, piers, and coastal areas where fishing boats, aquaculture operations, boatbuilding businesses, and other water-dependent industries operate. The goal is to keep these working areas from being converted into condos, resorts, or other uses that would push out the people who make their living from the water.

The bill establishes a task force made up of representatives from various federal agencies, Native American tribes, and coastal experts who will work together to identify what working waterfronts need most. They'll look at economic challenges, environmental threats like sea level rise and extreme weather, and how to help these communities adapt. Within 18 months, this task force will report to Congress on what they find, and within 30 months, federal agencies will start implementing solutions. This means the government is committing to actually address the problems these waterfronts face, not just study them.

The bill also creates a grant program that gives money to coastal states, local governments, and nonprofits to preserve and improve working waterfronts. Communities can use these grants to buy waterfront property before it gets developed for other purposes, repair docks and boat ramps, or make improvements to help these areas survive climate change impacts. To get funding, communities need to develop a plan showing where their working waterfronts are, what threats they face, and how they'll protect them. The grants come with a requirement that projects provide public access to the water whenever possible, so regular people can still enjoy coastal areas even as they're being preserved for commercial use.