The Water Resources Education Network (WREN) Project and the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania Citizen Education Fund (LWVPA-CEF) will accept proposals for water resources education projects through April 1.

Projects must be sponsored by community based partnerships that educate, build awareness, and promote water-sustaining public policies and/or behavior change. WREN will fund projects up to $5,000 and will look for proposals designed to encourage individual or collective action that will protect and improve local water resources.

Applicants can download the 2005 WREN Water Resources Education grant application package from the WREN website.

Projects selected for funding need to be conducted July 1, 2005 through June 30, 2006 and should include activities that enhance cooperation between citizens and municipal officials and private organizations.

WREN will fund projects in two tracks:

· Source Water Protection projects which educate the public about how to protect, improve or restore the drinking water source waters for the community’s public drinking water system. [Source water is the untreated, raw water from streams, rivers, lakes, springs, or underground aquifers that serve as sources of a community’s drinking water.]; and

· Watershed Protection projects which educate the public about how to protect, improve or remediate the watershed from the impacts of nonpoint source (NPS) pollution. [NPS pollution includes drainage or runoff from: abandoned coal mines, oil or gas wells; inadequate erosion control practices during urban development; improper agricultural and timber harvesting practices; and failing on-lot septic systems or other waste disposal sites. NPS also results from hydrologic modifications (changing the way water flows through an area.)]

Funding for source water protection projects is provided by Department of Environmental Protection through the State Revolving Loan Fund for Drinking Water Source Water Protection. Funding for the watershed protection projects is provided by the DEP Nonpoint Source Management Program through Section 319 of the federal Clean Water Act, administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Since 1992, LWVPA CEF has made nine rounds of grant awards, totaling 197 grants, to Pennsylvania partnerships working to improve their water resources.

For more information contact WREN Project Director Sherene Hess, at 724-465-4978 or by email to: wren@pa.lwv.org

1/21/2005