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Projects Win Clean-Water Grants

Posted on: Tuesday, 9 August 2005, 15:00 CDT

Aug. 9--Projects in Mecklenburg and Rowan counties were among groups receiving grants totaling $44.6 million awarded Monday by a state environmental trust-fund board meeting in Huntersville.

The grants by the Clean Water Management Trust Fund board are contingent on state legislators appropriating $100 million a year, as they're expected to do, to the fund. Legislators are close to completing a budget that would include the appropriations.

The fund makes grants to local governments, state agencies and conservation groups for projects that address water pollution.

Board members approved $639,000 for Mecklenburg County, which will use the money to improve contaminated stormwater that drains to Mountain Island Lake, the county's major water source.

The grant will help pay for a $2.1 million project that will install dozens of stormwater-control structures, including artificial wetlands, in Huntersville. Stormwater from that area ultimately flows to McDowell Creek, which carries high volumes of sediment and other pollutants to Mountain Island Lake.

Improving McDowell Creek is a special focus of Mecklenburg's water-quality staff and of Huntersville, which adopted a low-impact development ordinance to minimize stream pollution.

Two other Mecklenburg projects are still being considered by the Clean Water board, which is expected to vote on them in November. An application for $325,000 would help restore Fourmile Creek in southeast Mecklenburg. A $280,000 request would go toward stormwater-control work on Little Sugar Creek in the county's central portion.

Since its inception in 1996, the Clean Water board has granted $16 million to 15 Mecklenburg projects.

The trust-fund board also approved $2.5 million toward state acquisition of about 2,800 acres in western Rowan County.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission would use the land, owned by the city of Kannapolis, as state gameland.

In a final Charlotte-area grant, the Clean Water board awarded $154,000 to the Catawba Lands Conservancy for a tract on Stanley Creek in Gaston County.

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Source: The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)

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