EPA announces funding for New England coastal watershed projects

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Southeast New England Program (SNEP) will support the monitoring and protection of coastal watersheds throughout southeast Rhode Island and Massachusetts with eight grants totalling more than $4.6 million in funding.
 
"We need regional solutions to protect the health and beauty of the Bay, our watershed, and coastal ecosystem,” U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), who helped led efforts to secure funding for the grants, said. “This federal funding will help the federal government and local partners take a strategic, scientific-based approach to protecting and improving the health of the Bay and the waters that feed into it."
 
The projects selected for funding will identify, test and promote regional approaches to solving watershed challenges, and the SNEP is designed to allow for cross-project collaboration. Projects focus on areas like water quality monitoring, watershed planning, management of nutrients and boosting climate change resiliency.
 
"SNEP serves as a unique and exciting framework for acting holistically in a critical but very vulnerable ecosystem," EPA New England Regional Administrator Curt Spalding said. "The stresses challenging the coastal watersheds of Southeast New England are regional and complex. With support from his Congressional colleagues and other partners, Sen. Reed's leadership in creating this program is making a lasting difference in the way we approach environmental protection.