Clean Up Stonington Harbors, Inc. received almost $25,000 in a federal grant Friday to help its efforts to improve the water quality in Stonington Harbor.
Top federal and state environmental officials announced that 39 grants totaling $1.6 million were awarded to state and local government and community groups under the Long Island Sound Futures Fund.
When leveraged by $1.7 million contributed by the recipients themselves, a total of $3.3 million will support on-the-ground conservation in Connecticut and New York.
In Connecticut, 21 grants totaling $886,107 will be awarded and leveraged by $826,697 contributed by recipients towards the projects resulting in $1.7 million for community-based conservation in the state. Grant recipients include Yale University, Audubon Connecticut and the Maritime Aquarium. The Aquarium will receive almost $35,000 for its live animal series “Creature Encounters,” which teaches visitors about the effects of pollution on Long Island Sound.
The grant program pools funds from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) for projects to restore the health and living resources of Long Island Sound.
According to the press release, Clean Up Stonington Harbors will use a total of $44,881 to have its team of volunteers collect water quality information and integrate the information into a water-quality database to identify pollution from multiple sources to identify areas of concern and to implement solutions to the problems. Project partners include: Grasso Technical High School Bio-Environmental Department and University of Connecticut’s Avery Point Campus, Department of Marine Sciences.
The group contributed $19,400 toward the project.
