(Havre) – The Department of Environmental Quality(DEQ) is offering $1million grants for water quality projects in the state. Mark Ockey (Oaky) a water quality specialist in the DEQ’s Nonpoint Source Pollution Prevention Program talks about the grants.
“Each year the U.S. EPA gives the state about a million dollars to fund on the ground projects to address nonpoint source pollution and nonpoint source pollution is pollution that specifically come from diffuse sources such as grazing timber harvest, and in mine lands, septic systems, and things of that sort. the funding comes through section 319 H of the federal Clean Water Act which is why its often referred to as a 319 grant.”
He continued by talking about the goal of the grant.
“Our goal with this funding is to reduce nonpoint source pollution by restoring and protecting natural processes and conditions. So, in a nutshell what that means is we fund projects on a local level to improve stream functions, to reduce sediment and nitrogen and other pollutants from entering the stream and to restore stream side vegetation as well. And our grant usually ranges from $10,000 to $250,000 each so it varies a lot depending upon what the need is. One of the requirements peculiar to this grant and this program is that the funding has to go to address pollution problems that are identified on the list of impaired waters and folks can find that list on the DEQ web page.”
He went on to talk about what requirements the grant asks for.
“Generally, you know, you fill out the application the application asks a number of questions about the organization just to make sure that it is either government entity or a 501 C3 nonprofit and there’s just question about what project your proposing you know. what’s the problem you’re trying to fix, how do you plan on going about it, who’s going to be involved. We do also require a 40% nonfederal match so for every money that we put out it has to be matched by funding that can either come from another state agency or private individual or anything other than another federal agency.”
He finished by explaining what a DEQ approved Watershed Restoration Plan and an EPA approved Tribal Nonpoint Source Plan are.
“Those plans are basically a local road map for addressing nonpoint source pollution and all the tribes in Montana have one and the Watershed Restoration Plans is the basically the non-tribal equivalent of the Tribal Nonpoint Source Plan. And on our website going to deq.mt.gov and typing in nonpoint source you can get to a map that will show you where those Watershed Restoration Plans exist. most of them are currently in western or central Montana Some in southern. Probably the closest one to the Havre listening area would be the Sun river or the Teton river and then the Tribal Nonpoint Source Plans.”
