Center for Watershed Protection: A National Clearinghouse for Watershed Information and Commnniration Staff chat in a stream during a sampling event. Collecting a water sample from a pipe discharging from an industrial facility into a stream. The Center for Watershed Protection staff. Targeted Watersheds Capacity Building Grant The Center for Watershed Protection (the Center) is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Ellicott City, MD. Founded in 1992, it works to protect, restore, and enhance our streams, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and bays, by creating viable solutions and partnerships for responsible land and water management, so every community has clean water and healthy natural resources to sustain diverse life. Watershed Capacity Building Efforts The Center's involvement with watershed professionals and groups has revealed a growing demand for technical and organizational sup- port to improve their capacity to do more effective watershed work. To address this need, the Center provides direct assistance and train- ing to watershed practitioners. Mini-Grants to Watershed Organizations The Center will provide direct assistance for up to 10 organizations through a mini-grant program. Organizations will apply for a mini- grant to receive technical capacity building assistance based on their specific needs. Examples of potential technical support include scoping a watershed plan, designing and constructing a bioretention facility, developing budgets for watershed plan implementation and estimating pollutant reductions and costs. The Center will also offer training on specific field and desktop methods, applying stakeholder involvement methods to adopt and implement the plan and basic technical support on land use planning, best management practices and watershed restoration techniques. Watershed Institutes and University-based Curriculum The Center will also expand its Watershed Institutes and university- level watershed curriculum programs. The Watershed Institutes are ------- four-day intensive courses, involving classroom training and field work that culminates in the de- velopment of watershed plans. The Institute teach- es general methods and techniques that can be applied to a wide variety of watershed situations and prepares participants to go home ready to use what they have learned in their own watersheds. To improve the quality of watershed management instruction at the university level, the Center will develop partnerships with several universities and create a teaching network to share watershed- related instructional materials, curriculum and resource information among professors. Through an existing partnership with the University of Maryland University College, extensive internet- based watershed classes are available. The Center will work to expand the current student base, as well as develop new classes and modules on urban watershed protection and restoration. For More Information: www.cwp.org Lisa Fraley-McNeal Center for Watershed Protection, Inc. lfm@cwp.org Locations of past Stormwater Institutes and Watershed Institutes sponsored by the Center for Watershed Protection. PA's Targeted Watersheds Grar program is a competetive gran program designed to encourag collaborative, community-drive approaches to meet clean water goals. For more information about selected watersheds, please vi http://www.epa.gov/twg 840-F-08-001Q ------- |