Posted on December 17, 2024
Dams and culverts along the shoreline will be mapped and restored after a coalition of local groups focused on the health of the Long Island Sound received millions in federal grant funding this month.
The latest round of Long Island Sound Futures Fund grants issued $12.5 million to 31 projects with $12.2 million in matching funds from grantees. the grants are managed by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in collaboration with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Long Island Sound Study.
Included among the grantees, which are primarily located in Connecticut and New York, are Save the Sound and The Nature Conservancy. Although each is contributing matching funds to their respective grant awards, officials said the work will be collaborative.
Anthony Allen, Save The Sound’s director of strategy, said the grant awards are part of the action plan for the River Restoration Network’s third year.
“The River Restoration Network started in 2022, although conversations started at the end of 2020, and it came about based on a realization that one of the most impactful things we can do for the restoration of our ecosystems and aquatic ecosystems and resilience of our communities is to assess and remove chokepoints and stream barriers, by which we mean dams and misaligned culverts,” he said.
The network of eight organizations will work collaboratively to implement some of the grant-funded projects, including a $384,200 grant to create a digital inventory of Connecticut’s coastal crossings and a $500,000 grant to support the River Restoration Network’s efforts to address the environmental impacts of aging and outdated dam and culvert infrastructure.
Emily Hadzopulos, The Nature Conservancy in Connecticut’s freshwater restoration project manager, said there are between 20,000 to 25,000 culverts in Connecticut but there are “gaps” in how those culverts are catalogued.
“Their average age is about 62 years, and many of them are not currently mapped or available on a digital platform,” she said.
Hadzopulos said the project, for which TNC in Connecticut is contributing $192,500 in matching funds and partnering with organizations including UConn Center for Land Use Education and Research, will be a prelude for assessment work on Connecticut’s aging Long Island Sound infrastructure. She said some culverts can have negative impacts on aquatic migration, can separate some mammals like otters from their habitats and can exacerbate flooding during extreme storm events.
“Knowledge and information is a really good way for towns and municipalities to better prioritize funding,” Hadzopulos said.
Allen said the grant funding for The River Restoration Network, which includes $250,000 in matching funds from Save The Sound, will support the overall goal of restoring stream and habitat connectivity. A significant goal of the grant expenditures will be increasing local knowledge of the network’s functions, he said.
“We decided we needed to come together and figure out how we could accelerate the pace and scale of stream barrier removal in our region,” he said. “A lot of dams and some culverts too are privately owned, and a lot are municipally owned, and we want to position the network as a resource for folks who own dams or culverts and don’t quite know what their options are but they know the volume of water falling in our state and the number of intense storms is increasing.”
Allen said the removal of barriers that bisect waterways, which no longer serve their initially intended industrial purposes when milldams were more common and predate the increased severity of extreme weather events, is an “engineered and highly designed process.” However, administrative delays like permitting means an average of two dams are removed per year in Connecticut. Allen believes the network can work collaboratively on alleviating those burdens.
“Where the work is going and needs to go is more coalition- and collaboration-based,” he said.
Save The Sound also received $155,400 in grant funding for a water-quality monitoring program called QuickDrops. David Seigerman, a spokesman for Save The Sound in New York, said QuickDrops is a “centralized digital water quality data management and visualization tool.”
“The software enables water quality data collectors throughout the coastal and upper Long Island Sound watershed to upload information to a standardized shared database and display data in a graphic, accessible format,” he said. “We anticipate a formal launch in the first quarter of 2025.”
Other grant awards will benefit nesting birds, such as a $677,700 grant to the National Audubon Society for Connecticut Audubon to monitor 70 coastal and island sites. This will be used to help reduce and manage threats to “focal coastal bird species,” at nesting sites along the New York and Connecticut coast during the 2025 and 2026 breeding season. These species include the piping plover, American oystercatcher and least tern, according to a Long Island Sound Futures Fund press document.
Katie Dykes, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said in a statement that the Futures Fund is “a vitally important resource for the residents of Connecticut and the region.”
“The $8.4 million in grants coming to 14 recipients in Connecticut also leverages over $7.3 million in local funding,” she said. “These important and forward-thinking projects will benefit thousands of K-12 students in Connecticut, create a new coastal public access site while improving an existing one, assist with the planning of several habitat restoration projects, and protect Long Island Sound’s water quality through innovative nutrient reduction programs all over the state.”
In a statement, EPA New England Regional Administrator David W. Cash said the grants will “help lift up local communities and enable critical work to prevent pollution and improve water quality.”
“These projects will provide lasting benefits to the local communities and natural resources across the Sound by improving water quality, building stewardship, as well as restoring critical coastal habitat for fish and wildlife,” said Jeff Trandahl, executive director and CEO of NFWF, in a statement.
The LISS initiated the Long Island Sound Futures Fund in 2005 and has since invested $68 million in 673 projects, according to the LISS.
