• Zach Frailey
• Neuse River near New Bern, NC

Yay for clean water! Boo, Mecklenburg County didn't make the cut, though we'll certainly benefit from these efforts — since we're all downstream from somewhere, and since most of Charlotte's drinking water comes the Catawba River, which is a beneficiary of some of these grants.

Here's the deets from the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources Division of Water Quality:

The N.C. Division of Water Quality has awarded more than $200,000 in federal Clean Water Act grants to seven regional government councils for projects aimed at improving water quality.

The competitive grants help councils of government, or COGs, fund their staff for managing and planning projects that address improvements to local watersheds. The COGs are multi-county regional planning districts that promote closer cooperation between federal programs, state and local governments. They have operated in North Carolina since 1972.

The approved projects are summarized below:

$14,459 for Eastern Carolina (Carteret, Craven, Duplin, Greene, Jones, Lenoir, Onslow, Wayne) to map the stormwater infrastructure for the town of River Bend. This will help the town better manage stormwater, flood control, sediment and erosion control to improve water quality in the Trent River (Neuse River basin).

$50,000 High Country (Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Mitchell, Watauga, Wilkes, Yancey) For site-specific plans and guidance for stormwater treatment best management practices and streambank restoration including the development of geo-databases critical to the effort. The plans will be for 19 towns in seven counties and include watersheds in the Catawba, French Broad, New, Watauga and Yadkin river basins.

$21,760 Mid-Carolina (Cumberland, Harnett, Sampson) To develop land use regulations to reduce pollution from stormwater runoff in the Black River watershed (Cape Fear River basin).

$29,050 Piedmont Triad Regional (Alamance, Caswell, Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Guilford, Montgomery, Randolph, Rockingham, Stokes, Surry, Yadkin) To collect environmental, economic and recreational data from North Carolina, Virginia and the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional offices to identify restoration priorities in the Dan River sub-basin of the Roanoke River basin. A report and a website will be created as part of the project.

$15,743 Piedmont Triad Regional To provide support for Davidson County Citizens for Improving Stream Health, or DC FISH. Grant will be for outreach, education, the identification of groups to receive training for StreamWatch monitoring of impaired waterways and conduct stream clean-up events (Yadkin River basin).

$28,659 Triangle (Chatham, Durham, Johnston, Lee, Moore, Orange, Wake; in partnership with Kerr-Tar - Franklin, Granville, Person, Vance and Warren) To develop a long-term water quality monitoring program for the Upper Neuse River sub-basin (Neuse River Basin).

$40,316 Triangle To collect environmental, economic and recreational data on the upper Cape Fear River basin to determine priority watersheds for restoration and conservation. A report and a website will be created as part of the project.

$6,393 Western Piedmont (Alexander, Burke, Caldwell, Catawba) To produce a low-cost internal method for developing watershed action plans including identification of priorities, database resource updates, and the adaptation of an existing watershed plan (Catawba River basin).