In his first visit to Bay City as a U.S. Senator, Gary Peters attended a roundtable meeting on tourism and travel and took a tour of the city's riverfront.
Sen. Peters (D-Mich.) has introduced legislation in Congress to revitalize waterfront communities like Bay City. Called the Waterfront Community Revitalization and Resiliency Act, the legislation aims to help communities put plans into place to allow economic development along waterways like rivers and beach areas in the state.
Peters says the legislation will provide funding to communities to help with those plans.
"It will provide grants to waterfront communities to put together plans: sustainability plans, how they would develop it, how they would bring in marinas, walk spaces... just a rehab of areas that may need to be rehabilitated."
Peters says once grants are awarded to make those plans, they would be considered Resilient Water Communities.
"[It] would give them a leg up on getting the grants necessary from the federal government to actually realize that that dream that they have and the plan that they have."