The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced $7.8 million in grants for Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania to control polluted runoff and improve water quality.
Virginia will receive $1.7 million, West Virginia will receive $1.8 million, Delaware will receive $1.2 million and Pennsylvania will receive almost $5 million. Each of the grants are part of EPA’s Nonpoint Source Implementation Grant Program and were each announced within days of one another.
EPA’s mid-atlantic regional administrator Diana Esher stated that working in partnership with each state can reduce nonpoint source pollution and help ensure that the region’s communities have clean water.
The projects funded with these grants focus on watersheds with water quality impairments caused by polluted runoff from nonpoint sources. Nonpoint source implementation projects include structural and non-structural best management practices, watershed planning, monitoring, technology demonstrations, and a variety of education/outreach programs.
Controlling nonpoint source pollution is especially important since one in three Americans get their drinking water from public systems that rely on seasonal and rain-dependent streams.
