As part of ongoing efforts to support state, local, tribal, and territorial partners, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson today announced final allocations of $275 million for six fiscal year 2016 DHS competitive preparedness grant programs.

These allocations, in addition to the more than $1.3 billion in non-competitive grant funding announced by Secretary Johnson in February, total more than $1.6 billion in FY 2016 to assist states, urban areas, tribal, and territorial governments, nonprofit agencies, and the private sector with their preparedness efforts.

“In an ever-changing threat environment, our homeland security grants demonstrate the department’s continued commitment to strengthening the nation’s preparedness and ability to respond to a wide variety of emergencies,” said Johnson. “These 2016 homeland security grant allocations will support our partners at all levels of government and the private sector, ensuring we remain vigilant and keep the homeland secure.”

The recipient of well over one-third of the current allocations is the Port Security Grant Program (PSGP). PSGP is a competitive grant that provides $100 million to help protect critical port infrastructure from terrorism, enhance maritime domain awareness, improve port-wide maritime security risk management, and maintain or reestablish maritime security mitigation protocols that support port recovery and resiliency capabilities.

Another major recipient of the grants was Operation Stonegarden, a competitive grant that provides $55 million to enhance cooperation and coordination among local, tribal, territorial, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to jointly enhance security along the United States’ land and water borders where there are ongoing Customs and Border Protection missions.

Together with previous grant funding awarded since 2002, DHS has awarded more than $47 billion to its program partners. “Preparedness grants,” said a DHS statement, “strengthen our nation’s ability to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies in support of the National Preparedness Goal and the National Preparedness System.”