Excellent news. Thanks to The Puget Soundkeeper Alliance for their work. This funding will allow a lot of smaller organizations to apply to drive forward their projects to make the Sound cleaner.
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Funding Opportunity – Rose Foundation’s “Puget Sound Stewardship & Mitigation Fund”
The Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund is accepting applications for grant proposals related to protecting the water quality of Puget Sound. This is a new fund, and new grant opportunity. Two types of grants are available. The links below take you directly to the application instructions and submittal deadlines.
Puget Sound Watershed Grants Program
Watershed Grants are geared towards larger groups who are prepared to submit a detailed proposal and administer a larger grant than is available through the Grassroots Fund, and is not recommended for very small organizations or first-time grant seekers. It is anticipated that watershed grants will range from $10,000–$60,000. Watershed LOIs are due July 16, 2012.
Puget Sound Grassroots Grants Program
Grassroots Grants are generally intended for smaller groups who may be mostly volunteer driven, and may not have past experience in applying for foundation grants. Applicants whose annual income/expenses are below $100,000 are strongly encouraged to apply to the Grassroots Fund. Grassroots Grants will range from $1,000–$10,000. After receiving a grant, all Grassroots Fund grantees will also become eligible for supplemental organizational capacity-building assistance, including scholarships to attend trainings related to accounting, fundraising, planning, board development, communications, media, database development and similar topics. Grassroots grant applications are due September 14, 2012.
Goals and Purpose of the Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund
The Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund was created by a legal settlement between the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance (Soundkeeper) and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway. The Fund’s goal is to mitigate past pollution runoff into Elliott Bay from the BNSF Balmer Yard facility in Seattle by supporting community-based efforts to protect or improve the water quality of Puget Sound.
The $1.5 million BNSF settlement is one of the largest ever in a citizen enforcement action involving stormwater discharges. According to the Department of Ecology, polluted stormwater runoff is the number-one source of toxic loading in the Sound. Heavy metals, especially copper, are particularly dangerous to the survival of salmon species, which are highly valued culturally and economically by the people of the Puget Sound Region.
Industrial stormwater is a serious threat to Puget Sound and other water bodies because it can contain toxic levels of heavy metals, such as copper, zinc, and lead, as well as oils and suspended solids. Elliott Bay is identified by state and federal agencies as providing critical habitat for threatened Chinook salmon, and is home or a migration route to other species including coho salmon, sixgill shark, octopus, lingcod, marbled murrelet, harbor seals, harbor porpoise and orca whales.
Soundkeeper sued BNSF as part of its Clean Water Act enforcement program, which enforces federal water quality laws against serious violators. In bringing pollution-related lawsuits, Soundkeeper’s goal is to achieve negotiated settlements that bring polluters into compliance with the law and the permitting system. Settlement funds are then donated to local environmental groups to help them repair damage done to the Sound. Soundkeeper receives no money from these settlements; however, the lawyers on the cases receive repayment of attorneys’ fees and expenses, which are paid separately from the mitigation fund. Due to the size of the BNSF settlement, Soundkeeper asked the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment to set up and administer a grant program to award the funds back to the community as grants to protect Elliot Bay and Puget Sound.
The Rose Foundation is a grantmaking public charity that specializes in handling restitution payments and class-action settlement awards. Over the past 15 years, Rose has received approximately 300 settlements, enabling more than $15 million in community grants in California, Washington and other states. To ensure that the Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund is grounded in the values and knowledge of the local community, the fund is guided by a Puget Sound-based funding advisory board.
For more information about the Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund, please visit http://www.rosefdn.org, email us at rose@rosefdn.org, or call 510-658-0702.
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