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American Farmland Trust receives a $650,000 Grant to Enhance Water Quality in the Chesapeake Bay

AFT received a $650,000 grant to support the Mid-Atlantic Clean Water Initiative which will implement Enhanced BMP challenge programs in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. 

AFT launched the Mid-Atlantic Clean Water Initiative to help farmers enhance their nutrient management and reduce high nutrient levels that impair local and regional water quality. The new project has started with a $650,000 Conservation Innovation Grant from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The grant was part of a $5 million fund specifically for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.  By working with producers in the field and at the policy level, AFT hopes to reduce between 200,000 and 270,000 pounds of nitrogen and set the stage to expand the program in each state over three years.

Chesapeake Bay States Tackle Water Quality Issues

Virginia and the bay states of Pennsylvania and Maryland have undertaken significant efforts to improve their waterways. Though all life needs nutrients to grow, too much of a good thing harms aquatic life in local streams and grand estuaries, the nurseries for most ocean fish.

To clean up our water, we need to reduce nutrients at their sources;

• farmland, fertilizers and manure
• municipal sewage systems that must expand due to growing populations
• and the great American lawn where fertilizers (often applied at rates much higher than needed) run off into storm drains

Here is what Virginia is doing to help:

• The Water Quality Improvement Fund (WQIF) was started by the legislature in 1997 to provide grants to farmers, municipalities and wastewater treatment facilities to reduce nutrients entering the waterways.
• Senate Bill 511 was passed this year with backing from an important coalition of agriculture and environmental groups including AFT. It provides funds to help farmers implement best management practices on land in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and other parts of the Commonwealth as well.