News Highlights

In December 2015, the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, Inc (“the Endowment”) published a Request for Proposals for the Healthy Watersheds Consortium Grant Program, which aims to accelerate the strategic protection of healthy freshwater* across the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provided $3.75 million over six years to support the grant program, and the Endowment is matching EPA’s award dollar-for-dollar to fund projects that:

• Support existing watershed protection or conservation plans, including source water protection plans.
• Build the sustainable organizational infrastructure, social support, and long-term funding commitments necessary to implement large-scale protection of healthy watersheds; and
• Implement innovative or catalytic ideas to advance the field of practice for watershed protection efforts, including source water protection.

View the Request for Proposals including eligibility criteria and other information on the Endowment’s Healthy Watershed Consortium Grant program website. Source water protection is a priority area for the Initiative, which offers funding to safeguard healthy sources of drinking water.

“Protecting healthy watersheds should be a top priority for everyone,” said Peter Stangel, the Endowment’s Senior Vice President. “Healthy watersheds provide clean water for drinking, habitat for fish and wildlife, recreational opportunities for people, and are the basis for many rural economies. This program will provide funding to protect and sustain these resources…[and] to enhance collaboration among the many groups that will benefit from protected watersheds, such as drinking water and storm water, wildlife and fisheries, land conservation, and forestry and working lands.”

* Healthy watersheds are those in which the hydrological, biological, and land-based functions of the ecosystem are largely intact. Protection refers to actions that conserve healthy aquatic ecosystems and the supporting natural and managed landscape and watershed processes, such as hydrology, that support them.  Rather than waiting until a watershed is negatively impacted and attempting to restore it to health, the Healthy Watersheds Consortium Grant Program seeks to protect and sustain healthy watersheds so that they will continue to provide ecological services such as clean water, habitat for fish and wildlife, recreation, and protection from natural hazards.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently announced that it will award up to $2 million in cooperative agreements to support participation in the National Ground-Water Monitoring Network (NGWMN) in 2016. 

Jointly administered by USGS and the Federal Advisory Committee on Water Information’s (ACWI) Subcommittee on Ground Water (SOGW), the NGWMN is designed as a cooperative groundwater data collection, management, and reporting system that will be based on data from selected wells in existing federal, state, tribal, and local groundwater monitoring networks. The network is envisioned as a long-term collaborative partnership among federal and non-federal data providers that will help address present and future groundwater management questions facing the nation.

Cooperative agreements will provide support for both new and existing data providers in the NGWMN. The USGS will fund new data providers to select and classify sites within existing monitoring programs, to set up web services that will link the data to the NGWMN Portal, and to produce a report describing this process. Existing data providers will receive funds to maintain web services and keep site information current. Information about the cooperative agreements is available on the NGWMN Cooperative Agreements page.

Interested agencies may apply online at GRANTS.GOV under funding opportunity number G16AS00008. Applications will be accepted from November 16, 2015 through January 19, 2016. 

Webinars were held on December 1^st and December 8^th to review the application package and answer questions about the funding opportunity. Visit the NGWMN Cooperative Agreement webpage to view presentation slides from the webinars.

A case study of collaboration by Clean Water Action, American Water Works Association (AWWA), Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP), and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA)

In September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a final Clean Water Act (CWA) rule to update technology-based limits on steam electric power plant wastewater discharges to our nation’s water. Coal plants in particular are responsible for discharges of metals, nutrients and other contaminants into waters of the United States. Some coal plants discharge significant quantities of bromide, which if discharged near public water system intakes can lead to disinfection byproduct formation during treatment. Even small quantities of bromide in raw water can have significant health impacts (Regli et al. 2015). This is a textbook case of the potential for a CWA program to impact a Safe Drinking Water Act program.

Click here to read the one-page story: Bromide Discharge Story.

On November 3, 2015 the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) released a Request for Proposal for the Five Star and Urban Waters Restoration Grant Program, a public-private partnership funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Support is also provided by the Southern Company, Alcoa Foundation, and Bank of America.

Approximately $2.1 million in combined total funding is available to support projects that address water quality issues, including source water pollution, through on-the-ground restoration and ecological improvements, community partnerships, and environmental education, outreach, and training. Special consideration will be made for projects that are located within source water protection areas and/or within Urban Waters Federal Partnership Locations. Funding priority will also be given to eligible projects that benefit underserved communities.

Register for the November 18th webinar to learn more about this exciting opportunity to fund local source water protection projects. For more information on the program go to www.nfwf.org/fivestar. Proposals are due by February 3, 2016.

To see if your project falls within a watershed critical to source water protection, visit the “Source Water Protection for Urban Waters” online mapping application.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently requesting proposals for its Urban Waters Small Grants Program. The mission of EPA’s Urban Waters Program is to help local residents and their organizations, particularly those in underserved communities, restore their urban water in ways that also benefit their local communities and promote economic revitalization. For the 2015/2016 grant cycle, the EPA seeks to fund projects that address urban runoff pollution through diverse partnerships that produce multiple community benefits, such as protection of drinking water sources. Source water protection projects eligible under the Small Grants program include:

• Work with city planners and the community to assess sources of pollution and plan actions to protect drinking water
• Create a community program that increases awareness of the sources and impacts of pollution on sources of drinking water
• Evaluate current zoning to develop model zoning ordinances for protection of drinking water supplies

State, federal, and local government, nonprofit institutions, Indian Tribes, public and private universities, and interstate agencies are encouraged to apply, though proposed activities must take place entirely within one of the Eligible Geographic Areas. This year, $1.6 million in funding is available and EPA expects to award $40k-$60k per award.

The Urban Waters Small Grant Program offers an excellent opportunity to fund source water protection projects in urban areas. Register online for the Information Session Webinar on October 22, 2015 at 2:00 PM EDT to learn more about the grant program and various tools you can use to incorporate source water protection to enhance your proposal.

Visit the EPA Urban Waters Small Grant Program website for more information about the program and to view the Request for Proposal.

IUCN Releases “Natural Infrastructure in the Nexus”

The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and the International Water Association (IWA) with contributions from the World Resources Institute released “Natural Infrastructure in the Nexus Dialogue Synthesis”, a summary report of natural infrastructure solutions at the nexus of water, food, and energy sectors. This report is part of a larger initiative by IUCN and IWA called the “Nexus Dialogue.”

The report specifically highlights the value of investing in natural infrastructure—comprised of natural areas such as wetlands, forests, and intact riparian corridors—to substitute or complement “grey” (built) infrastructure. Natural infrastructure offers a cost-effective, flexible means to achieve necessary improvements to aging water infrastructure while securing additional environmental benefits, such as flood attenuation, water purification and storage, and biodiversity protection.

Despite its cost-effectiveness and other benefits, there is currently huge underinvestment in natural infrastructure. A recent blog post by Todd Gartner and Kara Difrancesco attribute underinvestment to the fact that investors lack the information needed to evaluate and compare natural infrastructure options to traditional engineered techniques. Other roadblocks include the complexity of natural infrastructure projects compared to grey”, longer investment return horizons, and the need for multi-stakeholder involvement.

Read the Natural Infrastructure in the Nexus Dialogue Synthesis report to learn more about how natural infrastructure champions around the world are achieving water protections and resilience while laying the groundwork for more widespread investment in natural capital.

The Piscataqua River Estuaries Partnership (PREP), a regional source water collaborative operating in the Piscataqua River Basin in New Hampshire and Maine, recently released the Piscataqua Region Environmental Planning Assessment (PREPA). Building on the successes of the first assessment, completed in 2010, which led to targeted and coordinated implementation of the PREP Conservation Management Plan, the 2015 report provides up-to-date analysis of land use regulations and planning practices as they relate to clean water across the 52 municipalities in the Piscataqua Region.

Through an extensive stakeholder survey process, PREP identified three major threats to the Piscataqua watershed: nitrogen loading, impervious cover, and climate change. Explanation of their findings and recommended actions are available on their website and detailed in the full assessment.

All 52 municipalities in the watershed contributed to development of the PREPA report and continue to play critical roles in the protection of source water and water quality in the area. The PREPA report and the Piscataqua River Estuaries Partnership highlight the value of collaboration in facilitating regional coordination, information sharing, and leveraging of resources and expertise across multiple partners.

Looking for a collaborative near you? Want to learn more about how collaboration can help protect your sources of drinking water? Visit our map of local and regional collaboratives and explore the How to Collaborate Toolkit.