Nearly $12 million in grants were awarded this week to fund stormwater management, habitat restoration and efforts to reduce nitrogen pollution, along with other related projects along Long Island Sound and its watershed in five states.
The funding comes from the Long Island Sound Futures Fund, a partnership between the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other state and federal agencies. Grants from the fund are awarded annually, and come from a mixture of public and private sources.
Long Island Sound is the second largest estuary on the East Coast, stretching over nearly 1,200 square miles between New York and Connecticut. Its watershed, including the Connecticut River, also covers parts of three other states: Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.
Recipients in Connecticut were awarded a dozen grants totaling $3.6 million from the Futures Fund. Combined with matching funds and other grants shared with other states, the total amount of those projects rose to $7 million.
“Joining together to invest in a stronger, healthier Long Island Sound is essential, both for the region’s environmental quality and to enhance quality of life for the millions of people who live, work and play on and near the Sound,” said Emma Cimino, the deputy commissioner for environmental quality at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
The announcement of this year’s awards also comes as the EPA has sought to slash both staff and funding for its efforts across the U.S., while also rolling back regulations designed to reduce air and water pollution.
In June, the EPA closed its Long Island Sound Office in Stamford and moved the remaining employees to the agency’s regional offices in New York City. No staffers were terminated as a result of the move, a spokesperson said at the time, but at least one employee accepted a deferred resignation offer from the Trump administration.
The EPA did not respond to questions Tuesday about how the closure of the Stamford office had impacted the Futures Fund or the agency’s other efforts on the Sound.
Bill Lucey, of the nonprofit group Save the Sound, said the move has given advocates less face to face interaction with officials at the EPA but has not otherwise impacted the work of the agency’s Long Island Sound program.
Overall funding for the EPA program has grown to $40 million in the most recent fiscal year, up from just $1 million a decade ago.
“It was underfunded for several years, but as soon as that funding was increased, a lot more people got involved in future projects, and a lot of great work is being done all up and down the coastline, on the marshes and shorelines and in the rivers,” Lucey said.
Among the recipients of the Futures Fund grants is the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, which was awarded $537,300 to fund an ongoing effort to remove lost and abandoned lobster traps from the floor of the Sound. The total cost of that project, including matching funds, was $809,900.
Three organizations — including the Norwalk River Watershed Association, Save the Sound and American Rivers — were awarded a total of nearly $1.4 million to develop and obtain permits for the restoration of fish passages along the Norwalk, Quinnipiac, Fourmile and Branford rivers. The total cost of those projects was over $2.6 million.
More grants for CT groups
Several other grants were awarded to Connecticut organizations. The total project costs are included in parenthesis.
- $180,000 to the Aspetuck Land Trust to supply coastal buffers in Bridgeport (279,300)
- $513,200 to the Eastern Connecticut Conservation District for to build a composting facility in Woodstock ($770,200)
- $275,400 to Save the Sound to install a green roof and other stormwater projects at Bridgeport’s Beardsley Zoo ($413,100)
- $160,000 to the Pomperaug River Watershed Coalition for riparian buffer restoration at Three Rivers Park in Woodbury ($241,500)
- $273,000 to the New Haven Urban Resources Initiative for stormwater projects and removal of impervious surfaces at New Haven’s Edgewood Park ($413,300)
- $500,000 to the American Farmland Trust to develop nutrient pollution reduction plans at farms in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire ($750,000)
- $164,300 to the Greenwich Land Trust remove invasive plant species from Shell Island ($278,300)
- $152,400 to SoundWaters to restore a 2.2 acre salt marsh in Stamford Harbor ($259,700)
- $360,100 to the Nature Conservancy to design and secure permits to address stormwater flooding in Groton ($545,600)
- $162,600 to Earthplace in Westport to provide watershed science programs for high school and college students ($243,900)
- $144,600 to the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society for beach cleanups and sea turtle rescue programs in New York and Connecticut ($218,500)
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
