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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Maine received nearly a nearly $400,000 share of $1,345,000 million in grants the Environmental Protection Agency awarded to the six New England states to strenghten their capacity to protect and restore wetlands, the agency announced Dec. 6.
The Wetland Program Development Grants provide interstate agencies, tribes, and nonprofit organizations with funding to develop and refine comprehensive state and local wetlands programs. Supplemental funding for these projects will be awarded in FY18 but the amounts will be budget dependent.
“These grants are a good example of our productive relationship with state partners, achieving meaningful environmental benefits for American communities by working collaboratively,” said Deb Szaro, acting regional administrator for EPA’s New England office. “Protecting wetlands is a cost-effective way to help communities take advantage of the significant benefits provided by healthy wetlands: buffering from storms and flooding, filtering stormwater, protecting habitat and offering recreational enjoyment.”
This year, EPA has awarded funding for 10 projects to protect, manage, and restore wetlands. These grants assist state, tribal, and local government agencies in building programs, which protect, manage, and restore wetlands. Wetlands are valuable resources that are vital to the health of our waterways and communities. Healthy wetlands perform important ecological functions, such as feeding downstream waters, trapping floodwaters, recharging groundwater supplies, removing pollution, and providing habitat for fish and wildlife. Wetlands also help our economy because of their key role in fishing, hunting, agriculture, and recreation.
Maine’s funded grants are:
Maine’s money will go to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection Biological Monitoring Program, which is using wetland biomonitoring results to support agency decision-making. The biological monitoring program proposes to develop and refine the state’s wetland program in accordance with the Maine Wetland Program Plan.
The overall goal of the project is to improve the ability of water quality protection agencies and programs to access and use biological monitoring and assessment results to inform regulatory and management decisions.
Major components of the project include developing and refining numeric aquatic life use criteria, including completion of phytoplankton criteria for emergent wetlands, and upgrading DEP’s water quality and spatial databases to include new automated functionality for data analysis, monitoring reports and biocriteria attainment results.
The Maine Department of Agriculture Conservation and Forestry was awarded $198,573 to: develop a monitoring and assessment strategy consistent with elements of a state water monitoring and assessment program; implement a sustainable monitoring program consistent with the wetlands monitoring strategy; continue to consistently define restoration and protection goals throughout the state; protect wetlands from degradation or destruction.
