WORCESTER – Governor Healey’s office announced $500,000 state grants on Wednesday, April 26, to five coalitions and four individual non-profit watershed organizations across the state, including the Blackstone River Watershed Coalition, to support monitoring water quality.
The grant program is administered by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP).
According to State Senator Michael Moore’s office, the funds awarded to the Blackstone River Coalition will, “purchase equipment and supplies and support staff salaries to monitor for temperature, dissolved oxygen, water depth, aesthetics, nutrients, total suspended solids, conductivity, bacteria, and stream flow.”
The Blackstone River Watershed Coalition received the second smallest of the nine grants, at $23,410.
A watershed is “land over which rain and snowmelt travel via surface runoff or ground water infiltration prior to entering the water body,” according to the Blackstone River Watershed Association.
The Blackstone River Watershed includes land in Worcester, Auburn, Shrewsbury, Grafton, Millbury, Sutton, Douglas, Uxbridge, and Northbridge, and runs as far south as northern Rhode Island. See the full map here.
The other organizations receiving grants are:
- $90,000 – The Neponset River Watershed Association
- $48,605 – The Housatonic Valley Association
- $66,500 – The Connecticut River Watershed Council, Inc.
- $61,360 – The Center for Coastal Studies
- $55,082 – The Ipswich River Watershed Association
- $26,007 – The Deerfield River Watershed Chapter of Trout Unlimited
- $13,378 – The Farmington River Watershed Association.
- $114,789 – The Buzzards Bay Coalition.
Image Credit: Doug Kerr, Blackstone River Gorge – Massachusetts, CC BY-SA 2.0
