The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is soliciting applications from eligible applicants to manage the Healthy Watersheds Consortium (HWC) Grant Program to continue efforts to accelerate and expand the strategic protection of healthy freshwater, estuarine, and marine ecosystems and their watersheds across the country.
Donor Name: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 05/10/2024
Size of the Grant: More than $1 million
Grant Duration: 1 Year
Details:
This grant program will advance the protection of healthy watersheds by supporting an array of projects to build watershed protection capacity and support actions to protect healthy watersheds.
Through the Healthy Watersheds Program, EPA aims to continue progress towards these goals:
- Mitigating the need for water quality restoration and helping ensure restoration success
- Proactive watershed planning and management can prevent or mitigate the need for water quality restoration, which frequently requires significant resource investments and sustained efforts over years to achieve success. Healthy, functioning watersheds can also provide the building blocks that anchor water quality restoration efforts.
- Maintaining the resilience of aquatic ecosystems to climate change
- Intact natural systems are more resilient because base flows are preserved during periods of drought, impacts of floods are mitigated through storage of surface and ground water in floodplains and wetlands, riparian corridors allow for species migration, and carbon is sequestered in the natural land cover. As a result, resilient, healthy watersheds help reduce environmental and human health impacts of climate change.
- Protecting healthy waters that local communities depend upon, including those disadvantaged, historically marginalized and overburdened
- There is an inextricable connection between the health of waters, their surrounding watersheds, and the communities that live in them. Healthy watersheds support healthy waters, which together provide a wide range of ecosystem services necessary for social and economic well-being, including social and health benefits provided by nature-based recreation and reduced costs associated with water treatment and flooding.
Funding Information
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $2,100,000
- Award Ceiling: $2,100,000
- The successful applicant should provide the EPA with a negotiated, six-year work plan covering six distinct one year periods of performance.
Eligibility Criteria
Eligible applicants under this announcement are nonprofit, non-governmental organizations, interstate agencies, and intertribal consortia. Universities and colleges and institutions of higher education are not eligible under this announcement. Individual states, U.S. Territories, Tribes, local governments, and for-profit organizations are not eligible under this announcement. Nonprofit organizations that are not exempt from taxation under section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code must submit other forms of documentation of nonprofit status, such as certificates of incorporation as nonprofit under state or tribal law. Nonprofit organizations exempt from taxation under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code that lobby are not eligible for EPA funding as provided in the Lobbying Disclosure Act, 2 U.S.C. 1611. The EPA may ask applicants to demonstrate that they are eligible for funding under this announcement including demonstrating that they are capable of undertaking activities that advance the HWC Grant on a national basis.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
