$1.3M in LI Sound Grants: Exactly Where Does the Money Go?

Written by Leslie Yager

Last week at the event at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk marking $1.3M for 23 grants for Long Island Sound, Patch had a chance to sit down with Amanda Bassow, a director at National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, who had made the trip to Connecticut from DC.

Bassow, who emceed the Oct. 24 event headlined by CT Senator Blumenthal spoke enthusiastically about the grants, as did Daniel Esty, Commissioner of CT Dept. of Energy and Environmental Protection.

"It's some really hard working money," Bassow said emphatically of the grants, which are a combination of funds from the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as some private money.

Bassow went into some detail about how the funds will be used in Connecticut. She said a good chunk would go habitat restoration projects that engage communities to help protect nesting sites and initiatives to build living shorelines, such as the project in Stratford that involves Sacred Heart University.

Bassow said further in from the shore, the grants fund forest restoration and wetland restoration work to provide habitat "for the critters." 

A look at the Long Island Sound Study (LISS) website gets right to the specifics.

For example, with $190,000 in project funding the Groton Open Space Association will restore 31 acres of coastal forest and 15 acres of coastal grassland and shrub/scrub habitat for New England Cottontail, the only rabbit native to Connecticut. In the mid-1930s, the rabbits were still considered abundant. However, as agricultural areas reverted to forest and these forests matured, the number of rabbits declined.  

In the Thimble Islands and Branford area, University of Connecticut's project "Using Seaweed (Kelp) to Bioextract Pollution" with a grant to the tune of $130,000 will measure the capacity of Saccahrina latissima (sugar kelp) to extract nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon from the Sound. Excess nitrogen contributes to a menacing condition called Hypoxia.

"You start moving upland and there are projects to engage municipalities to try to control polluted storm water that comes off the urban landscape," Bassow said. "The projects we're awarding will treat 600,000 gallons of urban stormwater," she added, noting that, "Everything that falls on the street is picked up by storm water and carried into the Sound. Everything that falls on a lawn or is put on a lawn is picked up and carried into the Sound." 

In Waterbury, an "Organic Lawn Care Certificate Program" grant will go toward designing a course for small lawn care technicians, small business owners, sole proprietors and municipal workers who maintain lawns and landscapes, with an eye to reducing fertilizer pollutants into the Sound through alternative, non-chemical lawn care.

In Norwalk, the Maritime Aquarium is the recipient of $70,000 in funding for two interactive exhibits: "Water Quality Station" and "Flotable Debris Station" to reach 125,000 visitors. The exhibits will encourage behavior changes in ways that protect water: reuse and recycle, car washing and lawn care.

For information on LISS, the cooperative effort between the EPA and Connecticut to restore the Sound and its ecosystem, go to LISS website. 

For full descriptions of specific grants, go to the LISS Grants List.