Western Pennsylvania Watershed Protection Program
RR1
Box 152
Alexandria, PA 16611

Contact:
R. John Dawes
(814) 669-4847
rjdawes@aol.com

Environmental Results:

187,000 feet of riparian buffer zone restored.

Funded 278.5 miles of AMD-impacted stream restoration.

Partnerships
Western Pennsylvania
Watershed Protection Program

Providing Watershed Funding and Guidance
to Western Pennsylvania

The Western Pennsylvania Watershed Protection Program provides much needed matching funds for state and federal grants and provides guidance to local watershed organizations. Over the past five years, the program has awarded more than 90 grants, contributed more than $1.7 million to watershed restoration and preservation efforts in Western Pennsylvania and leveraged an additional $16.7 million dollars from state, federal and other sources.

The Western Pennsylvania Watershed Protection Program's goal is to protect and restore Pennsylvania's unique water resources on an ecosystem basis and to foster the development of technologies to preserve and reclaim watersheds. To achieve its mission, the organization focuses its efforts in several key areas - preservation, restoration, partnerships and advocacy.

With the cost of reclaiming Pennsylvania's abandoned mine lands estimated around $15 billion, the Western Pennsylvania Watershed Protection Program funds unique techniques to improve current technologies or invent new ones to treat acid mine drainage. By funding passive treatment systems, the group hopes to eventually reduce the costs of treating abandoned mine drainage.

While most of the group's funding projects are site-specific, the program entered into a partnership with DCNR to fund matching planning grants to local watershed associations or Trout Unlimited chapters working to protect cold water fisheries.

The program also believes in strong advocacy for watersheds and funded a special needs grant to the Pennsylvania Organization for Watersheds and Rivers (POWR) to aid in the development of a statewide advocacy group. Because of its close association to watershed groups throughout Western Pennsylvania, DEP called upon POWR and the Western Pennsylvania Watershed Protection Program to introduce the Growing Greener initiative to watershed associations, municipalities, schools and other potential grantees.

"For those of us in the environmental field, we are taught to think globally and act locally. Access to clean water is a defining commodity as to quality of life in this century. As such, it has been my privilege to guide small communities in locating funding to restore their watersheds…The result has been nothing less than the return of life to many miles of streams."
R. John Dawes
Administrator Western Pennsylvania Watershed Protection Program

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