On September 2, a grant was awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation-PA and matching funds will provide nearly $2 million in investments to plant and maintain 360 acres of new trees and boost efforts in eight Pennsylvania counties toward achieving local plans for cleaner water.

The NFWF grants announced are made through the Chesapeake Bay Stewardship Fund, funded primarily by the Environmental Protection Agency and through the Chesapeake Bay Program.

CBF will administer the three-year NFWF grant of $975,000 and a matching amount of $977,880.

With the Keystone 10 Million Trees Partnership, which CBF coordinates, other grant partners include the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Chesapeake Conservancy, and Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professionals.

“CBF thanks the National Fish and Wildlife Federation for this investment in the important work of adding streamside buffers to reduce pollution entering our local waters,” said Shannon Gority, CBF Executive Director in Pennsylvania.

“It will take planting trees in the right places and with the right partners to reach buffer goals in clean water plans set by key counties,” Gority added. “With this investment by NFWF and so many dedicated partners who share a commitment to clean water, counties will be better prepared to take action to protect and restore local waters. That benefits all Pennsylvanians and everyone else downstream to the Bay.”

NFWF also announced that the Chesapeake Conservancy will receive a grant resulting in full-farm restoration on 25-30 farms in Pennsylvania.

The project has the potential to serve as a national model for coordinating on-the-ground implementation with high-resolution mapping to improve the health of streams so that they can be removed from Pennsylvania’s  impaired streams list. CBF is a partner on the grant to the Conservancy.

“Partnerships are the key to ensuring that we leave a better legacy for water quality, wildlife habitat, recreation, and our way of life for future generations,” said Chesapeake Conservancy President and CEO Joel Dunn. “We look forward to working with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the members of the Precision Conservation Partnership and thank NFWF for the funding to make our work possible. Together we can do hard things.”

DCNR’s Riparian Forest Buffer Advisory Committee will help coordinate the NFWF grant to CBF.

“The benefits and values of trees and forests are more critical than ever as our commonwealth faces increasing financial, social and environmental challenges,” said DCNR Secretary Cindy Adams Dunn. “This project embodies one of DCNR’s core principles of partnerships, putting into practice the need to work together to solve complex problems. We are delighted for this increased funding and proud to work with this group of committed partners.”

CBF’s proposal for its NFWF grant was spurred by the goal of 85,650 acres of streamside buffers by 2025 that is part of Pennsylvania’s Phase 3 Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP).

“We crunched the numbers and realized you would need many technicians on the ground to meet that goal,” says Molly Cheatum, CBF’s Restoration Program Manager in Pennsylvania and grant administrator. “Between state agencies and non-profit organizations only 25-30 technicians currently implement buffers. This grant presents an opportunity to build a collaborative workforce involving the private sector.”

The grant will be used to engage, train, and certify 15-20 private sector landscape professionals in buffer installation and maintenance, doubling and potentially tripling the workforce on the ground.

The nearly $2 million in investments as result of the NFWF grant will provide nine trained technicians to assist priority counties in outreach and education to 2,400 landowners within Adams, Bedford, Centre, Cumberland, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon, and York counties.

The grant is designed to boost countywide action plans toward their buffer goals.

Focused efforts through county conservation districts to add buffers in the priority counties will produce the most return on pollution-reduction dollars and accelerate the Commonwealth toward achieving the statewide WIP goal for buffers.

Investments by the Keystone 10 Million Trees Partnership will be in the form of technical assistance, trees, supplies, and forward contracting of maintenance activities on the 360 acres.

The Keystone 10 Million Trees Partnership is a collaborative effort of 145 groups from national, regional, state, and local agencies, conservation organizations, watershed groups, conservancies, outdoors enthusiasts, businesses, and individuals. Its ambitious goal is to plant 10 million trees in the Commonwealth by the end of 2025.

This grant project will also test a new buffer incentive program with simulated property tax relief for each acre of buffer installed. Participating farmers will be surveyed to determine if permanent property tax relief is a meaningful incentive for them to convert crop/pastureland to streamside forested buffers.

“We believe farmers should be appropriately compensated for installing the streamside forest - a critically important addition to the land providing benefits for water, wildlife, and human health,” said Bill Chain, CBF’s Senior Agriculture Program Manager in Pennsylvania.

Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professionals will create a certification program and a one-day workshop on buffer maintenance for 17-20 contractors. CBF will contract with those who go through the training. Eventually, the one-day buffer program could be offered statewide and in Maryland and Virginia.

Click Here for more information on the new EPA/NFWF grants.

For more on Chesapeake Bay-related issues in Pennsylvania, visit the Chesapeake Bay Foundation-PA webpage.  Click Here to sign up for Pennsylvania updates (bottom of left column).  Click Here to support their work.

Also visit the Keystone 10 Million Trees Partnership to learn how you can help clean water grow on trees.

CBF has over 275,000 members in Bay Watershed.

[For more information on how Pennsylvania plans to meet its Chesapeake Bay cleanup obligations, visit DEP’s PA’s Phase 3 Watershed Implementation Plan webpage.     

[Click Here for a summary of the steps the Plan recommends.

[How Clean Is Your Stream?

[DEP’s Interactive Water Quality Report Viewer allows you to zoom in on your own stream or watershed to find out how clean your stream is or if it has impaired water quality using the latest information in the draft 2020 Water Quality Report.]

Related Articles:

-- EPA, National Fish & Wildlife Foundation Award Record $18 Million For Projects In Chesapeake Bay Watershed;  $7.46 Million In PA

-- EPA/NFWF Grant Awarded To Chesapeake Conservancy For Precision Conservation In PA

-- EPCAMR/Lackawanna River Conservation Assn. Each Receive $50,000 EPA/NFWF Grants To Cleanup Area Waterways

[Posted: Sept. 2, 2020]

9/7/2020