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Cape Fear River Watershed to Receive $933,675 EPA Grant

Release Date: 07/19/2004
Contact Information: Dawn Harris-Young, (404) 562-8421, harris-young.dawn@epa.gov

To support community-driven initiatives that protect habitat, improve water quality, and enhance outdoor recreation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced nearly $15 million in grants to fourteen watersheds nationwide as a part of the Targeted Watersheds Grant Program. The selection includes a $933,675 grant to the Cape Fear River Watershed in North Carolina. "This funding recognizes the successful community-based approaches and techniques that are essential for restoration, protection and preservation of the Cape Fear River watershed," said Jimmy Palmer, EPA Regional Administrator in Atlanta. "For more than 30 years, since the inception of the Clean Water Act, the American public has proven that it can make a difference." The Cape Fear River Basin, the state's largest, represents 23% of the state's land area and supports 27% of the state's population. The Cape Fear River Assembly's proposal focuses on watershed management strategies in an effort to balance the competing goals of growth and the environment. Since the majority of the impaired waters in the Cape Fear River Basin occurs in areas that are heavily urbanized, the basin represents an ideal setting for development of an incentive-based water quality restoration program with a strong urban stormwater and development management component. This project will launch a water quality credit trading pilot in the Jordan Lake watershed of the upper basin, establish and test a technical and regulatory framework there, then share the products, process, and lessons so that similar approaches which include trading can be transported and applied down river to the other two major sub-basins. The grant recipients were selected and reviewed by regional and national experts. Each of the watershed organizations exhibited strong partnerships, showed innovation, and demonstrated compatibility with existing governmental programs. The grants range from $700,000 to $1.3 million. Detailed information about these projects and the Targeted Watersheds Grant Program is available at: https://www.epa.gov/owow/watershed/initiative/ For more on The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, please visit: http://www.oceancommission.gov/documents/prelimreport/welcome.html