Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment awarded eight grants, totaling $247,795, to help universities, local governments and nonprofit organizations monitor the quality of Michigan's waters.
The recipients of these water quality monitoring grants are:
• Charter Township of Delhi: $21,557 to identify and prioritize sources and causes of pollutants in the Sycamore Creek section of the Red Cedar watershed and the Skinner Extension of the Grand River watershed;
• Chippewa County Health Department: $23,000 to conduct E. coli monitoring of the St. Marys River to evaluate water quality conditions and to identify potential sources of contamination;
• Clinton Conservation District: $29,235 to collect additional data and information for a stream bank erosion study in the Maple and Looking Glass rivers, tributaries to the Grand River. The data will be used to determine a more accurate method for estimating and predicting stream bank recession rates and annual sediment loading;
• Forum of Greater Kalamazoo: $47,779 to determine phosphorus dynamics in Morrow Lake, an impoundment of the Kalamazoo River upstream of Lake Allegan;
• Glen Lake Assn.: $14,344 to assess the effects of increased human activity in the Glen Lake watershed by conducting a water quality monitoring program;
• Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services Department: $34,000 to use an innovative technique to identify sources of E. coli in Arcadia and Bear Creeks in Kalamazoo County;
• Macatawa Area Coordinating Council: $50,442 to conduct forensic analyses of sediment samples collected from the Macatawa River watershed. This information will be used to determine the origin of the sediment within the watershed; and
• Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay: $27,438 to develop and implement a sampling study to characterize the water quality in the Boardman River before, during and after the removal of three dams. The data collected has potential applicability to other dam-removal projects throughout the state.
Funding for these grants was made available through the Clean Michigan Initiative-Clean Water Fund.
