Meet Current And Past Grantees
From grassroots community organizers to groups with nation-wide reach, meet the changemakers supported by Rose grants.
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| Grantee | Fund | Year | Amount | Region | Project Name | Issues | County | State | Website | Description | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 603 Legal Aid | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $100,000.00 | New Hampshire | Debt, Financial Resiliency, and Economic Empowerment (Debt-FREE) Project @ 603 Legal Aid | Advocacy;Education | New Hampshire | https://www.603legalaid.org/ | 603 Legal Aid (603LA) provides comprehensive legal assistance and advocacy to empower low-income individuals and families across New Hampshire through legal representation, advocacy, referrals, and education. The Debt-FREE Project is a new initiative for 603LA, but it is based on a successful project in Massachusetts and will provide vulnerable, low- income consumers with free legal assistance, information, and resources that address challenges stemming from consumer debt. As the only program of its kind in the state, the goal is to reach individuals at critical junctures in the life of a debt by ensuring that consumers have access to an advocate or adequate knowledge to assert their rights on their own. Simultaneously, the Project will empower those same consumers and their families by connecting them to information and resources outside of the legal process that can prevent a future economic crisis from becoming a legal one. 603LA will educate individuals to know their rights and assist them in navigating the legal system, including negotiating with debt collectors, representing consumers appearing for small claims hearings, and connecting clients to area resources and expert financial literacy materials. This intervention will keep their lights on at home, provide a more stable roof overhead, and empower families to develop skills and strategies to break through cycles of generational poverty toward a more stable financial future. | More details | |
| A Community Voice | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,577.00 | Louisiana | Supplemental Grant | Louisiana | http://www.acommunityvoice.org/ | General support | More details | ||
| Algalita Marine Research and Education | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $25,000.00 | Los Angeles River and Dominguez Channel watersheds | River's End Watershed Cleanup and Education Program | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Education | Los Angeles County;Orange County; Los Angeles County;Orange County;San Bernardino County | California | www.algalita.org | Algalita is known as the organization that started the movement to end plastic pollution over two decades ago. Last year, they opened the first-of-its-kind environmental research and learning center in Long Beach, CA. The facility is located at the end of the San Gabriel River, a 58-mile-long waterway that originates in the San Gabriel Mountains and flows westward through the Los Angeles Basin before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. For this program, they plan to improve the water quality in this region by removing approximately 18 tons of harmful anthropogenic debris from the Los Cerritos Wetlands, the San Gabriel River bank, and the coast of Seal Beach. Cleanups will be planned as part of education programming with high school students from Title 1 high schools throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties, with additional cleanup events for community members throughout the year. Additionally, samples collected from classroom field experiences and community cleanups will be used to populate an ever-growing River's End Watershed Program water quality database, in collaboration with the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research. This database is part of their Waterborne Plastics Assessment and Collection Technologies project, which seeks to advance technologies that remediate the damage plastic debris cause to individuals, communities, and ecosystems, and to reclaim the lost financial, energy, and greenhouse gas investment within those plastics debris for a circular economy. | More details |
| Amigos De Bolsa Chica | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $40,000.00 | Santa Ana River watershed including Orange County and the Inland Empire | Full Tidal Basin Trash Removal | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Orange County | California | https://www.amigosdebolsachica.org | Amigos de Bolsa Chica (ABC) has been advocating for and stewarding the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Orange County since 1976. One section of the reserve, the Full Tidal Basin, has a direct connection to the ocean through a tidal inlet, which allows for near-constant flushing of seawater. As a result, trash has accumulated on the rocks that surround parts of the basin, which are difficult to access and dangerous to walk on. The complexity of navigating this area means that little to no clean-up has been done in this area for a decade. The trash also accumulates on adjacent mudflats, which are critical foraging spaces for many endangered and threatened species of birds, fish, invertebrates, reptiles etc. Eventually, what isn’t deposited onto the rocks gets flushed out into the ocean and accumulates on local beaches. This project will be a dual-level preliminary clean-up to establish a baseline/clean slate for future monitoring and cleanup efforts. One level involves hiring a crew of experienced restoration technicians from the Los Cerritos Wetlands Stewards (LCWS). LCWS manages the cleanups along the Los Angeles River in similar conditions to this project area. A second level involves bringing in volunteers to remove trash from areas that do not put the volunteers at risk, such as the vegetated areas adjacent to the rocks. This group of volunteers will be able to witness and learn from this restoration/cleanup project while also playing an important role in it. A comprehensive cleanup of the Bolsa Chica’s Full Tidal Basin will immediately impact the water quality in the reserve, with the effects trickling down to the other nearby beaches and coastal marsh environments. | More details |
| Ascend Wilderness Experience | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $10,000.00 | North Coast | Wilderness Stewardship Expansion – Kids, Teens & Adults | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Humboldt County;Shasta County;Siskiyou County;Trinity County | California | http://ascendwilderness.org/ | To support teen and adult backpacking and backcountry trail restoration projects in the Trinity Alps, achieving the twin goals of restoring impacted rural trails and building the conservation community in Trinity County. | More details |
| Asian Americans United | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $60,000.00 | Pennsylvania | Increasing Financial Literacy of Asian and Asian American Immigrant Communities in Philadelphia | Advocacy;Education | Pennsylvania | www.aaunited.org | For more than three decades, Asian Americans United (AAU) has worked in Philadelphia’s Asian American communities and in broader multiracial coalitions around quality education, youth leadership, anti-Asian violence, immigrant rights, neighborhood development, and folk arts and cultural preservation. AAU has long taught Asian and Asian American youth ages 14-18 on financial literacy and how to be a safe consumer through youth engagement programs, but this grant will allow them to increase and deepen trainings for youth as well as expand and offer workshops for adults and elders on a more regular basis. Asian immigrant adults are an especially unbanked and vulnerable population due to language barriers, fears of harm due to immigrant status, and xenophobic stereotypes that discriminate against AAPIs seeking financial services. AAU will host public workshops on financial literacy adapted for each stage of life: high school, college, adulthood, and retirement. The group will also translate financial education materials into high-need Asian languages to address language barriers and conduct outreach to elders in the Asian community through locations such as senior centers and adult daycares. | More details | |
| Audubon Canyon Ranch | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $30,000.00 | Watersheds tributary to Tomales Bay | Walker Creek Watershed - An Estuary Stewardship Project | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Marin County | California | www.egret.org | Audubon Canyon Ranch (ACR) stewards a system of nature preserves totaling 5,000+ acres across 26 properties in Marin and Sonoma counties. The Walker Creek Watershed Estuary Stewardship Project is a collaborative clean-up effort of 260 acres of wetlands surrounding Walker Creek Estuary at its transition into Tomales Bay, including floodplains, highway roadsides, and tidally influenced shorelines. This effort entails planning and outreach with local landowners, schools, and public stakeholders, and it will result in the collection of human-made debris, preventing long-term residual pollution from entering the bay and watershed. The weeklong estuary clean-up will take place in late fall/ early winter and will be supported by a Conservation Corps North Bay crew and the Tomales Bay Working Group. This work will help ACR to identify common sources, materials, and key locations needing attention. A narrative report on the cleanup will be distributed to partners with additional follow-up surveying to take place following the subsequent storm season. | More details |
| Beavers Northwest | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2024 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound; ; Beavers Northwest supports beaver coexistence work in several municipalities around the Puget Sound region. Our water quality monitoring program would be focused at three sites within municipalities in which we already work. These may include the City of Lake Stevens (WRIA 7, Snohomish Watershed), City of Bellevue and City of Kirkland (WRIA 8, Lake Washington watershed), and City of Tumwater (WRIA 13, Deschutes River and Budd Inlet watershed). Additional beaver site assessments may occur in WRIA 5, Stillaguamish River watershed; WRIA 9, Green-Duwamish Watershed; or WRIA 10, Puyallup/White watershed. Beavers impacts occur in all Puget Sound watersheds. To ensure transferability of lessons learned and encourage better understanding of local beaver impacts, this project will occur throughout at least three of the watersheds listed. If the water quality pilot program is successful, it will be expanded to other watersheds in future years. | Community Science: Urban Beavers and Water Quality Pilot | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Education;Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | King County;Pierce County;Snohomish County;Thurston County | Washington | www.beaversnw.org | Beavers Northwest proposes to implement an urban beaver water quality pilot program. This program will engage volunteers to take water quality measurements at the inflow and outflow of urban beaver complexes. This data will be used to better understand beaver impacts to water quality on a regional level focusing on the correlation between the presence of beavers and greater reductions in nitrogen, phosphorus, sediment, and some heavy metals. With local data to support this idea, Beavers Northwest will encourage improved beaver management for local municipalities. Community engagement through volunteer recruitment and training as well as improvement of outreach materials will contribute to a greater connection between individual volunteers and program participants and the watersheds in which they live, work, and play. They will embrace beavers as vital neighbors in our urban communities and as agents of water quality improvement. If successful, this water quality data collection pilot program will continue at additional locations with more volunteers. | More details |
| Bridgeport Neighborhood Trust | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $62,000.00 | Connecticut | Consumer Financial Empowerment Capacity Building Program | Advocacy;Education;Other (explain below); In addition to hosting classes and workshops, BNT provides one-on-one counseling services. | Connecticut | www.bntweb.org | Building Neighborhood Trust (BNT), founded in 1986, combats financial and housing insecurity, income inequality, and homelessness in Connecticut, focusing on Fairfield County. Over 85% of their clients make less than the average median household income, with 66% identifying as BIPOC, 27% as Hispanic, and 70% as female. Their Consumer Financial Empowerment Capacity Building Program is a 2-year initiative in Bridgeport, CT, targeting enhanced financial literacy and combating predatory banking practices. It includes Financial Coaching, which offers up to 8 one-on-one sessions per client. The program will expand BNT's counseling services with a new HUD certified housing counselor trained in financial coaching and will integrate additional content into existing classes and workshop curriculum. The new suite of materials will cover money management, goal planning, avoiding predatory banking practices, first time home ownership, and more, benefiting primarily low to moderate-income minorities in the Greater Bridgeport area. | More details | |
| Bunny Friend Neighborhood Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,577.00 | Louisiana | Supplemental Grant | Louisiana | https://www.bunnyfriend.org/ | General support | More details | ||
| California Communities Against Toxics | California Hazardous Waste Protection Fund | 2024 | $25,000.00 | Environmental Justice in Impacted Communities in Los Angeles County | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Pollution Prevention;Pollution Awareness;Pollution Assessment or Monitoring | Los Angeles County | California | The Maywood-Vernon-Bell-East Commerce area is a highly industrialized, urban community in Los Angeles County within the South Coast Air District that spans 13 square miles. This community has some of the worst pollution burdens within the State, as the maximum CalEnviroScreen (CES) score is at the 99th-percentile. Residents are exposed to various sources of pollution in the community, including facilities emitting air toxics, lead acid battery manufacturing, scrap yards, traffic, lead from housing, EnviroStor cleanup sites, and hazardous waste storage and treatment facilities. Residents here also suffer from higher rates of asthma, low birth weight, and cardiovascular diseases than most of the State. The California Air Resources Board is establishing a specific monitoring program for the region; this grant will help fund the first year of California Communities Against Toxics participation in this program. The first year they will be mapping and monitoring both the air, soil, and stormwater from facilities that store and treat hazardous waste, and chrome plating facilities. They intend to focus on sources of hexavalent chromium initially as both the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the California Air Resources Board have recently passed rules around this toxic contaminant. | More details | ||
| California Desert Coalition | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $6,580.00 | Southern Deserts | Defend-the-Desert Series | Environmental Education | Riverside County;San Bernardino County | California | https://www.cadesertcoalition.org/ | To mentor young environmental activists and organize advocacy workshops that encourage community participation in land-use decisions to protect the Mojave Desert. | More details |
| CCCS of Savannah | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $30,000.00 | South Carolina | Financial Wellness for Families | Education | South Carolina | www.cccssavannah.org | Consumer Credit Counseling Service of the Savannah Area, Inc. (CCCS) is the only consumer education organization with an active HUD license in the South Carolina Low Country. CCCS serves low-wealth, primarily BIPOC individuals struggling with financial literacy, banking, budgeting, saving, credit, debt, and finding resources for housing. The Financial Wellness for Families program consists of both financial education workshops and one on one financial coaching. Financial education workshops range from one to three hours and aim to increase participants’ financial knowledge and improve their money management habits. CCCS provides group workshops on an array of financial topics at local workplaces, schools, libraries, and community organizations. Financial Coaching sessions pair clients with a nationally certified counselor to tackle pressing topics that may include budget creation, credit review, FICO score analysis, evaluation of assets/liabilities, establishing financial goals, examining debt repayment options, a housing evaluation, and/or development of an action plan. With this grant, CCCS will expand both in person and virtual options for sessions with their clients. | More details | |
| Center for Biological Diversity | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $25,000.00 | Santa Ana River watershed including Orange County and the Inland Empire | Promoting Ecologic and Community Resilience in the Santa Ana River Watershed | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Climate Change and Energy;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Orange County;Riverside County;San Bernardino County | California | https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/ | This grant will fund a suite of work in the Santa Ana River watershed that will safeguard this riparian habitat and improve water quality by analyzing the flow regime needed to support the River’s ecosystem. More specifically, the Center will use available scientific studies and analysis to investigate and showcase the benefits of floodplain restoration for water quality, habitat value and increasing populations of sensitive species on floodplain restoration to improve water quality, habitat value and increase populations of sensitive species through dam-related water management. The Center will develop a report focused on methods and success rates of different water-release strategies, analyze the impacts of floodplain restoration on wildlife and water quality. The report will also assess how rising temperatures and altered precipitation regimes with climate change may affect floodplain restoration efforts and best practices for dam management strategies focused on floodplain restoration. These research findings will be compiled and synthesized into a comprehensive white paper that is accessible, clear, and informative for a wide audience, including community organizations, regulatory agencies, and the public. The white paper will be distributed to relevant stakeholders to support informed decision-making on protecting and restoring the Santa Ana River watershed. | More details |
| Central Valley Partnership | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2024 | $15,000.00 | Central Valley | Fighting Sprawl / Saving Nature - Fresno County General Plan Advocacy | Environmental Justice;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Climate Change and Energy | Fresno County | California | https://centralvalleypartnership.org | To support legal and communications costs in a lawsuit against Fresno County’s updated general plan and educate the public around the importance of land use planning, smart growth policies and environmental stewardship. In February 2024, Fresno County approved a new sprawl-friendly general plan that sets the stage for significant development along the Kings and San Joaquin Rivers and could have potentially devastating consequences for air quality, groundwater, and climate emissions. Central Valley Partnership, together with the League of Women Voters Fresno and the local Sierra Club chapter, have brought legal action against the plan, highlighting CEQA violations and its failure to comply with state mandates around air quality and climate. | More details |
| Centreville Citizens for Change | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,577.00 | Illinois | Supplemental Grant | Illinois | https://floodedandforgotten.com/ | General support | More details | ||
| Centreville Citizens for Change | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,000.00 | Illinois | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Illinois | https://floodedandforgotten.com/ | To purchase office supplies and equipment. | More details | ||
| Chhaya Community Development Corporation | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $100,000.00 | New York | Financial Security Program | Education | New York | www.chhayacdc.org | Chhaya CDC’s mission is to build the power, housing stability, and economic well-being of South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities in Queens, New York. Chhaya provides wrap-around services to this constituency that include tenant organizing, first-time homebuyer education, and immigration services. The Financial Security Program will provide multilingual consumer financial education, with a focus on teaching basic banking, access to reputable financial services, how to set up bank accounts, and highlighting the potential risks and hidden fees that may be present in some banking products. Through community education workshops and one-on-one coaching, Chhaya’s project will target recent immigrants, particularly those with very low incomes and limited English proficiency, as research and experience have demonstrated this population is less likely to be banked and/or are likely to utilize informal networks, such as payday lenders and other predatory financial practices. The project will specifically target Tibetan, Nepali, and Bangladeshi immigrants, who tend to be very recent arrivals in the US and work in cash-based jobs. In addition to addressing very basic level banking, Chhaya will tailor some workshops to educate about the micro-level financial and banking challenges often presented by their housing and homeownership clients, with the aim of helping them advance toward their own financial goals. This grant will also allow Chhaya to advance towards the longer-term goal of embedding financial security services across all program areas. | More details | |
| Citizens' Committee for Flood Relief | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,577.00 | Missouri | Supplemental Grant | Missouri | https://www.facebook.com/groups/609613372545223/ | General support | More details | ||
| Clarifi | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $100,000.00 | Delaware;New Jersey;Pennsylvania; Delaware;New Jersey;Pennsylvania | Financial Empowerment Counseling in Greater Philadelphia | Education | Pennsylvania | clarifi.org | Founded in 1966, Clarifi serves low-to-moderate income individuals and families in the Greater Philadelphia area through financial empowerment counseling. Clarifi employs a case management model that promotes frequent check ins and intensive documentation of outcomes data. Counselors work one-to-one with clients, building relationships and working together to establish a step-by-step action plan with goals set by the client. These goals may include establishing emergency savings, building and sticking to a budget, increasing credit capability, paying down debt, establishing a bank account, and accessing safe financial products, among others. Clarifi’s services are available at no cost and there is no limit on the amount of counseling sessions or follow-up – counselors work with clients until they feel that they can continue on their financial journey on their own, although they can return to receive additional services at any time. This grant will enable Clarifi to work with 200 individuals per year for two years. | More details | |
| Climate Resolve | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $30,000.00 | Los Angeles River and Dominguez Channel watersheds | Merced Avenue Greenway Water Quality Project | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | Los Angeles County | California | www.climateresolve.org | The Merced Avenue Greenway is located in the disadvantaged community of South El Monte within the Los Angeles River watershed. The greenway incorporates pedestrian and biking improvements alongside bio-filtration planters which collect and treat stormwater runoff before it enters the storm drain system that empties into the impaired receiving waters of Legg Lake at the Whittier Narrows Recreational Area. The water then discharges to the Rio Hondo, with publicly accessible soft bottom reaches before flowing down to the Lower Los Angeles River and ultimately the Pacific Ocean. Climate Resolve (CR) has been working closely with government agencies and community partners to make this $12 million project a reality. This grant will focus on water quality monitoring as well as stormwater capture and community engagement for a subsection of the project. First, CR will work to convert a local lawn adjacent to the greenway into a demonstration garden showcasing native plants for promoting a healthy ecosystem, stormwater collection, and water quality improvement. Next, CR will collaborate with a UCLA Master Gardner on a workshop series to educate the community about the importance of native plants and stormwater capture. The workshops will include access to tools and other resources to enable other residents to implement similar native water capturing gardens on additional properties in the neighborhood. This grant also provides funding for water quality monitoring equipment that will be installed downstream of the project site. | More details |
| Coalition Advocating for Pesticide Safety Ventura (CAPS-805) | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $6,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | Ventura County | California | To educate and support low-income farm working families about the health harms of pesticides, building local power and confidence, and ensuring that those most impacted by pesticide use are at the table when decisions are made that affect their lives. | More details | |
| Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $7,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Climate Change & Energy;Environmental Justice | Del Norte County;Humboldt County | California | https://transportationpriorities.org/ | To advocate for policies and infrastructure that support climate-friendly, safe, equitable, and healthy transportation on California's North Coast. | More details |
| Coalition for Wetlands and Forests | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,577.00 | New York | Supplemental Grant | New York | http://www.sicwf.org/ | General support | More details | ||
| Comite Progreso de Lamont | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $7,500.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Climate Change & Energy;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | Kern County | California | https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community-Organization/Comite-Progreso-de-Lamont-1441249392556175/ | To advocate for environmental health protections, promote community investments in Kern County's budget, ensure proper flood mitigation, improve Lamont Park, and push for better pesticide regulations in Kern County. | More details |
| Community Action Project | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2024 | $20,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Plan Litigation and Implementation | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Climate Change and Energy | Calaveras County | California | http://calaverascap.com | For 20 years, Community Action Project (CAP) has engaged local citizens in Calaveras County land use planning and advocacy to promote sustainable development and protect the natural environment. This grant will add much needed staff capacity to this grassroots coalition of regional organizations, community groups, and environmental activists, allowing them to advance litigation against the 2019 Calaveras County General Plan and engage in critical advocacy around 4 open county planning initiatives -a Greenhouse Gas Reduction plan; an Oak Woodland Conservation Ordinance; a smart-growth Community Plan for Copperopolis; and a 40-year Zoning Ordinance Update. The litigation and planning initiatives offer a critical opportunity to influence the long-term planning and development patterns in Calaveras Co. and pursue a comprehensive plan for open space conservation of hundreds of thousands of acres of Sierra foothill habitat. | More details |
| Community Empowerment Fund (CEF) | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $75,000.00 | North Carolina | Financial Education and Empowerment for Financially Vulnerable and Under/Unbanked | Education | North Carolina | http://www.communityempowermentfund.org | Each year the Community Empowerment Fund (CEF) provides direct, person-centered support to 850 financially vulnerable individuals in the Durham and Chapel Hill regions of North Carolina. Supported individuals are 100% low income, 15% unbanked, and 82% BIPOC. Each Member has access to a full suite of financial tools, including an interactive financial coaching platform covering 70 topics such as budgeting, banking, and building credit, goal-oriented Safe Savings Accounts offering a 15% match once a savings goal is reached, and access to low- or no-cost external bank accounts. Members also receive individualized support from trained volunteers, who help them identify and pursue goals related to financial and housing stability by utilizing CEF’s resources and those from 80+ partner organizations. Due to popular demand, CEF relaunched their community classes last year after a multi-year pause due to the pandemic. These workshops are led by expert volunteers from the community and allow clients to connect with each other around the financial topics they are navigating. In addition to supporting the abovementioned activities, this grant will allow CEF to expand the relevance and accessibility of their financial tools. These updates include disability adaptations for the hearing- or vision-impaired, content refreshes of all modules, and ongoing engagement with current and former clients to identify gaps in curriculum. | More details | |
| Consumer Action | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $33,971.34 | California | Consumer Action Financial Education Project | Education | California | http://www.consumer-action.org/ | In the financial services sector, fees associated with financial products are ubiquitous. In many cases, these fees serve as profit centers for industry while burdening consumers with unnecessary debt and expenses. Many consumers remain unaware of the fees associated with financial services products including credit cards, debit cards, pre-paid cards as well as the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services which have seen significant growth in recent years. BNPL services offer conveniences such as the ability to make purchases without paying the full amount upfront allowing consumers to spread payments out over time. Financially fragile consumers with limited access to credit are much more likely as financially stable consumers to use BNPL, and this creates the potential for overspending leading to increased debt, late fees and penalties, and hidden fees, such as transaction fees or early repayment fees. More often, BNPL payments are not reported to credit bureaus leaving lenders, and sometimes even the borrower, without a clear picture of the debt they have amassed since there is no limit to the number of BNPL accounts that can be opened nor the amount of debt that can be incurred. Consumer Action will address the glaring need for multilingual consumer education on these issues by creating multi-lingual fact sheets on how consumers can avoid money/wallet drains such as junk fees and Buy Now Pay Later services. The group will also facilitate in person workshops in English, Spanish and Chinese for consumers at 10-15 California-based community organizations that serve low-income, immigrant, underbanked, seniors and other vulnerable populations. | More details | |
| Deschutes Estuary Restoration Team | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2024 | $40,000.00 | South Puget Sound; WRIA 13 Best.pdf ; Our broader vision is set on the South Salish Sea, also known as the South Sound. Once replete with resource-abundant estuaries, major reductions in vital habitat have occurred due to urbanization and industry growth. Estuaries are among the most productive habitats globally and in the Pacific Northwest. They support a web of life that ranges from the open ocean to arid eastern reaches of our state, and beyond. A huge diversity of beings have been affected by the reduction in estuarine habitat, including the ESA-listed Southern Resident Orcas and several evolutionarily significant units (ESU’s) of ESA-listed anadromous fish, waterfowl, and forage fish. In turn, this has impeded First Peoples’ deep cultural relationship with the ecosystem. At a smaller scale, DERT serves all beings in the Deschutes River Watershed (WRIA 13), with emphasis on the Deschutes Estuary and Budd Inlet. After over a decade, we have successfully advocated for the removal of the 5th Avenue Dam, which begot a State-led estuary restoration project. In this proposal, you will find that our largest proposed program, DERT’s Community Visioning Committee, focuses on the future Deschutes estuary design and implementation, while our educational forums and our outreach to potential members of a Deschutes Watershed Council emphasize broader connections throughout the watershed. Our proposed microplastics sampling and training events and participation in International Coastal Cleanup are one-off events that bring further opportunities for meaningful participation and education to our community, are likely to focus more in the marine setting of the southern Puget Sound and associated inlets, the terminus of the South Salish Sea. The map provided is general, as our projects incorporate Budd Inlet, the Deschutes estuary, and the greater WRIA 13 watershed. Notice that the map shows the Thurston County boarder as well as WRIA 13, with the Estuary directly below the Olympia Label and Budd Inlet above. | Deschutes Restoration and Community Engagement | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Thurston County | Washington | http://www.deschutesestuary.org | The Deschutes Estuary Restoration Team (DERT) will engage community members in stewarding culturally important ecosystems, protecting clean and abundant water, and contributing meaningfully and equitably to Deschutes restoration projects, especially the landmark Deschutes estuary restoration led by the Washington Department of Enterprise Services. DERT will lead a community process to restore the Deschutes estuary to include community forums related to the restoration plan as well as organizing community science through microplastic sampling events and participation in the International Coastal Cleanup. Developing the most well-rounded and scientifically up-to-date Deschutes Estuary restoration plan valued for generations to come in Olympia requires a representative committee of cultural and environmental experts who engage in an equitable design process instead of a usual top-down approach. This will be provided by the CVC who will provide final design recommendations to the Department of Enterprise Services for restoration and design targets. | More details |
| Dirt Corps LLC | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2024 | $30,000.00 | Central Puget Sound; Dirt Corps Duwamish Valley GSI.pdf ; Lower Duwamish: Pt. Rediscovery, 8th Ave S/ Gateway Park, Duwamish Valley Green Streets Other sites: Throughout mainstem Duwamish Privately owned properties participating in King County’s Rainscapes and Rainwise program | Duwamish Valley Green Stormwater Infrastructure Job Training | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Climate Change & Energy;Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | King County | Washington | https://www.thedirtcorps.com/ | Dirt Corps will conduct a paid Green Job Training Programs while providing maintenance to multiple Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) projects throughout the Seattle-King County area. Dirt Corps will train up to forty participants in the fields of urban forestry and green stormwater infrastructure through a combination of classroom and hands-on field training with an emphasis on increasing green career pathways for underserved communities in the region. Dirt Corps will provide 14 weeks of training, additional field training opportunities for trainees, development of current staff to become crew leaders/instructors, and curriculum development. Dirt Corps currently maintains multiple green stormwater infrastructure facilities in the Duwamish River and ecological restoration projects on tributaries and main-stem sites along the Lower Green-Duwamish River. These projects act as teaching sites and provide paid opportunities for advanced skill building for cohorts through site maintenance. Dirt Corps seeks to promote environmental stewardship, workforce development, community resilience, economic equity, and social connections while also serving to increase water quality, support community-based projects, and provide direct maintenance of stormwater facilities. | More details |
| Dragonspunk | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | San Francisco County | California | https://www.dragonspunk.org/ | To attend a grant writing workshop, Proposal Writing 1 Day, from Academy for Pros. | More details | |
| Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2024 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound; Drain Monitoring Points - DVSA.pdf ; Our project will monitor 12 stormwater discharge points along the Lower Duwamish Waterway in Duwamish-Green Watershed located in a two mile segment of the LDW, roughly between the First Avenue South Bridge and the South Park Bridge (see attachment) The technological portion of the program running from May to November will take place in the Duwamish River Community Hub. | Adolescentes Animados | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | King County | Washington | https://www.seattleparksfoundation.org/project/juntos-si-podemos-cuidar-nuestro-rio-duwamish/ | The Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association (DVSA) will engage young people in community-led water monitoring by collecting water quality data weekly from stormwater and industrial discharge points on the LDW. DVSA will also engage community members in a design studio approach to gather ideas for promoting infrastructure that will move the community towards the goal of a clean and healthy river. The design studio approach will entail community and stakeholder engagement within the Duwamish Valley, community-based water monitoring, solution development and design, pilot projects and prototypes, and scaling up promising practices for widespread water quality impacts. Further, DVSA youth and staff will work towards the creation of a water quality database that is widely and easily accessible to the community on a hyper local level. | More details |
| Earth Equity | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $575.00 | San Francisco Bay Area; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Alameda County;Humboldt County;Marin County;San Francisco County | California | https://www.earthequity.eco/ | To hire facilitators from the Sustainable Economies Law Center to help us develop our identity as a worker self directed non profit and assist us in building a fundraising plan for the years ahead. | More details | |
| Earth Equity | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education;Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security;Environmental Justice | Alameda County;Humboldt County;Marin County;San Francisco County | California | https://www.earthequity.eco/ | To collaboratively address recidivism with incarcerated individuals at San Quentin State Prison, through programs which educate incarcerated people on environmental justice, provide skills training in sustainable aquaculture to formerly incarcerated people, and strengthen system-impacted communities. | More details |
| Enumclaw Plateau Community Association | PNW Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $9,999.00 | Pacific Northwest; Washington | General Support | Washington | EPCA will remove invasive species and plant native plants for the benefit of Boise Creek. EPCA will additionally remove other impairments to regular creek flow such as waste, fallen structures, etc. The project will impact a one mile long and 100 foot wide stretch of Boise Creek that is city land on one side with farmland on the other. The project area will become a demonstration site for local farmers, city employees, Enumclaw School District Science Classes, the Enumclaw Garden Club, Friends of Buckley and many others to learn Best Management Practices for ditch and culvert management. EPCA will additionally work with the Muckleshoot Tribe to identify plants important to tribal culture. Finally, EPCA will coordinate a a monthly community meeting to give progress updates related to the Creek, provide an additional venue to share Best Management Practices, and share other information related to water quality in Boise Creek across interested parties. | More details | |||
| Environmental Action Committee of West Marin | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $17,000.00 | Watersheds tributary to Tomales Bay | Protecting and Enhancing the Tomales Bay Watershed through Education and Monitoring | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Marin County | California | eacmarin.org | Environmental Action Committee of West Marin (EAC) works to protect and sustain the unique lands, waters, and biodiversity of West Marin. This grant will support various activities in the Tomales Bay watershed, including water quality testing at two sites in the Point Reyes National Seashore. The testing program helps raise awareness of where stronger best management practices may be needed and improves recreational water quality for public access. The program includes weekly water quality sampling in the spring, summer, and fall in coordination with Marin County’s Ocean Bay water quality testing program. It also includes monthly winter sampling including at least one wet weather sample coordinated with the National Park Service. EAC will also serve as advisor for the Tomales Bay Foundation’s water quality testing program. EAC’s other program activities include ongoing management of the Cleaner California Coast project, an awareness campaign focused on promoting proper pet waste disposal and proper litter disposal around Tomales Bay recreation areas. The group will also partner with other conservation organizations working on the planning needed advance beaver reintroduction in the Tomales Bay watershed including Lagunitas Creek, a candidate for beaver reintroduction. | More details |
| Family Promise of Philadelphia | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $7,200.00 | Pennsylvania | Keys to Promise - Financial Education for Housing Insecure Families | Education;Other (explain below); Consumer financial literacy - a key to family homelessness prevention. The Financial Education component is embedded within our Keys to Promise (KTP) program supporting self-sufficiency. | Pennsylvania | Www.familypromisephl.org | Family Promise of Philadelphia (FPP) assists hundreds of families with financial assistance, in-kind and supportive service per year. From this pool, a small set of families are referred to “Keys to Promise” (KTP). Piloted in 2022 with 12 family applicants, KTP is an intensive five session financial education course. Sessions cover topics such as financial literacy, housing stability and more, and are facilitated by FPP staff with pro bono support from local bank partners. The course includes follow-up case management with families for at least 6 months after they complete the 5 weeks. The families in the KTP program have had very little prior exposure to these topics in Consumer Financial Education, and often have very little experience with other financial services beyond basic checking and savings accounts, which leaves them vulnerable to high-interest schemes and loans. This grant will help complete the budget for the summer 2024 cohort of families. | More details | |
| Foothill Conservancy | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $6,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | Foothill Conservancy Land Use Advocacy | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Amador County;Calaveras County | California | http://www.foothillconservancy.org | To encourage denser, more sustainable development in Amador County through engagement in local land use decisions including the general plan, zoning regulations, and the review of new development projects. | More details |
| Friends of Fife Creek | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Solano County | California | https://www.communitycleanwater.org/ | To re-organize/re-structure the documentation of our project in a shared cloud storage system. | More details | |
| Fulfill Within Foundation | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $7,500.00 | North Carolina | Building Futures | Education | North Carolina | www.fulfillwithinfoundation.org | Fulfill Within Foundation is a new organization operating in Wilson County, North Carolina that works to provide housing, educational support, and life skills training for youth aging out of foster care. Research shows that foster youth who age out of the system often face challenges, such as homelessness, unemployment, low educational attainment, and mental health issues, among others. This program seeks to prevent those outcomes by providing resources and support as these individuals transition into adulthood. Much of their work is focused on offering stable housing opportunities but they seek to offer comprehensive support services, including life skills training, employment assistance, educational support, and mental health services. This grant will fund the costs of education and training services on basic financial topics such as managing personal finances, budgeting, credit counseling, saving for the future, and establishing an emergency fund to manage unexpected expenses. | More details | |
| Garden of the Salish Sea Curriculum | PNW Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $500.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea; Washington | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Skagit County;Snohomish County;Whatcom County | Washington | https://www.gardensalishsea.org/ | With the Grow Your Roots mini-grant, we will increase our capacity for longevity by hiring a consultant service to translate our ocean literacy curriculum into Spanish. With Spanish increasingly becoming the primary language for many students in the United States, we feel that it is necessary to provide materials for these students in their native language to truly understand the material. In particular, we are serving a middle school from Everson, Washington that has a high population of Latinx students. Many of them do not have any prior concept of shellfish, marine creatures, or ocean literacy. To have them grasp the concepts and engage with the content, it is vital that we have materials tailored to their needs. Beyond that, we want to get ahead of any future language barriers for students by preemptively having all curriculum from grades 1-12 translated so they can be used in future classrooms. | More details | |
| Greater Neighborhood Alliance of Jersey City, NJ | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,577.00 | New Jersey | Supplemental Grant | New Jersey | https://gnanj.org/ | General support | More details | ||
| Greater Treme Consortium, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,577.00 | Louisiana | Supplemental Grant | Louisiana | https://greatertreme.org/ | General support | More details | ||
| Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $22,000.00 | San Francisco Bay (limited funds available, please contact us before applying) | Bayview Hunters Point/San Francisco Bay Toxic & Radioactive Contamination Project | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Climate Change and Energy | San Francisco County; Alameda County;Contra Costa County;Marin County;San Francisco County;San Mateo County | California | http://www.greenaction.org | Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice is a grassroots, multiracial organization founded and led by environmental justice leaders from frontline urban, rural, and Indigenous communities across the west. They have been working in Bayview Hunters Point (BVHP) in San Francisco for nearly 30 years, where the adjacent community faces toxic and radioactive contamination from decades of industrial and military activities. Currently, climate change-induced rising sea levels and rising groundwater threaten to inundate, flood, and further spread the contamination into neighborhoods and San Francisco Bay. This project focuses on educating and engaging residents on the contamination cleanup plans at and near the shoreline of the Superfund Site given projected sea-level rise. Grant funds will support two BVHP lead organizers and a community outreach team to educate residents and encourage participation at state agencies decision-making meetings where public input is sought. | More details |
| Greenbelt Alliance | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2024 | $35,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Stop California Forever: Protect Solano County’s Open Space and Farmland | Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Solano County | California | https://www.greenbelt.org/ | Over 55,000 acres of agricultural land in Solano County are at risk of being developed into a remote, isolated new city with far-reaching negative impacts on habitat, endangered species, and water security. The proposed development was hastily launched last fall after the media uncovered a multiyear stealth effort by wealthy Silicon Valley investors to acquire farmland and open space in remote Southeastern Solano County. Since then, its proponents have launched a campaign called California Forever to rezoning this land for urban development in opposition to Solano County’s community-developed and voter approved growth plan. Greenbelt Alliance will lead a coalition of local allies, community members, farmers, and environmental activists to raise awareness and educate Solano County residents about the economic and ecological values of this land and the negative impacts of the proposed development. | More details |
| Hollygrove Neighbors Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,577.00 | Louisiana | Supplemental Grant | Louisiana | https://www.facebook.com/hollygroveNOLA/ | General support | More details | ||
| Humboldt Waterkeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $24,750.00 | North Coast | Humboldt Bay Water Quality | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice | Humboldt County | California | http://www.humboldtwaterkeeper.org | Humboldt Waterkeeper (HWK) was formed in 2004 to safeguard coastal resources for the health, enjoyment, and economic strength of the Humboldt Bay community through education, scientific research, and enforcement of laws to fight pollution. This project involves tracking distinct pollutants that threaten the water quality in Humboldt Bay. First, HWK will continue their long-term work identifying the primary sources of bacteria pollution in Arcata Bay (North Humboldt Bay). After major rainstorms, bacteria pollution impacts the designated beneficial uses such as water-based recreation and shellfish harvesting. Last year, Humboldt Bay oyster farms were off-limits for harvesting for five months due to high bacteria levels. Using genetic analysis, gut bacteria from human, dog, cattle, and bird hosts will be quantified at 18 sample sites during two sampling events. After data analysis, HWK will develop recommendations to improve the water quality in Arcata Bay and address the source point of the bacteria. Additionally, HWK will work with the Wiyot Tribe to sample 6PPD-quinone. Recent research has identified the tire additive 6PPD-quinone (6PPD-q) as extremely toxic to Coho Salmon. In January, the U.S. EPA announced the publication of a draft testing method that will help identify where and when 6PPD-quinone is present in stormwater and surface waters. Using that methodology, HWK will develop a sampling plan focused on instream samples downstream and adjacent to drop inlets or concrete gutters on paved roads near bridges of Coho- bearing streams in the Humboldt Bay watershed. As with the bacteria sampling project, HWK will develop recommendations to address the reduction of this pollutant in the watershed after data analysis is complete. | More details |
| Integral Ecology Research Center | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $30,000.00 | Central Coast: Santa Maria River watershed | Improving Central CA headwater stream quality by reducing the threat of pesticide contamination | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Santa Barbara County | California | http://www.iercecology.org/ | Cannabis which is illegally cultivated on public lands (typically within National Forests) often leaves a legacy of toxic pesticides behind, including chemicals banned for use or possession in the United States. Integral Ecology Research Center (IERC) is a leader in research and remediation of these sites and their environmental impact. | More details |
| Kennett Area Community Service | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $70,000.00 | Pennsylvania | Getting Ahead and Staying Ahead | Education | Pennsylvania | www.kacsimpact.org | Kennett Area Community Service (KACS) seeks to prevent poverty and homelessness in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania and offer a path to financial wellbeing that will benefit future generations. The population served is predominantly Hispanic (about 85%), and many are recent immigrants to the U.S. with educations at the elementary school level. The Getting Ahead program, part of the evidence-based Bridges Out of Poverty model, is an intensive 16-week program that offers education, goal setting, and peer support as participants build plans for their futures and pathways to achieve them. Those who enroll into Getting Ahead are not currently in crisis, but most have low-paying, dead-end jobs which will not help their families rise out of poverty. Last year, KACS added a financial literacy component to the educational program, using the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's "Your Money, Your Goals" toolkit, which covers how to save, budget, and invest money for their future. Participants who can save $1,000 over two years are eligible to receive a match of $1,000 from KACS to add to their savings (funded separately). All participants who graduate from Getting Ahead may continue with the Staying Ahead program, an ongoing monthly group gathering that enables participants to receive continuing support from one another and from KACS’ team. This grant will provide for staffing and materials supporting four new cohorts of the Getting Ahead program in both Spanish and English. | More details | |
| La Asociacion de Gente Unida por el Agua | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $6,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | Fresno County;Kern County;Kings County;Madera County;Merced County;Monterey County;Tulare County | California | https://www.aguacoalition.org/ | To secure safe, clean and affordable drinking water in California's San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast through water justice movement building and community-led campaigns for safe and affordable drinking water, groundwater protection; and PFAS and Chrome 6 regulation. | More details |
| Latino Community Development | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $50,000.00 | South Carolina | Advance Your Finances/Avanca Tus Finanzas | Education | South Carolina | latinocdc.org | Latino Community Development (LCD) works with vulnerable and underbanked populations in South Carolina, including low-income communities of color and Spanish-speaking communities. Their financial literacy program, Avanca Tus Finanzas, provides culturally competent financial literacy classes in English and Spanish, with over 400 participants in the past two years and an average of completion rate of 95% and verified participant improvements in savings, debt reductions, and credit score increases. Each session of the program runs six weeks and covers topics such as basic banking, credit and debit cards with high-interest rates, homeownership, when to opt-in to overdraft protection, budgeting, the dangers of payday loans, predatory lending, retail banking, point-of-sale loans, building and maintaining good credit, and more. The program will run consecutively once a quarter for the year. LCD also collaborates with other community-based organizations and financial institutions to connect the communities they serve with professionals, tools, and tangible resources. | More details | |
| Little Growers, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,577.00 | Florida | Supplemental Grant | Florida | https://www.littlegrowersinc.org/ | General support | More details | ||
| Local Environmental Action Demanded Agency, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,577.00 | Oklahoma | Supplemental Grant | Oklahoma | https://www.leadagency.org/ | General support | More details | ||
| Local Environmental Action Demanded Agency, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,000.00 | Oklahoma | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Oklahoma | https://www.leadagency.org/ | To attend the Waterkeeper Alliance's Climate and Water Global Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | More details | ||
| Long Live the Kings | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2024 | $35,000.00 | South Puget Sound; Project_Site_Map.png ; This project seeks to protect the marine waters adjacent to the Nisqually Watershed which are part of the Tribe’s usual and accustomed fishing areas. Specifically, sampling will take place in the Nisqually Reach (please see attached map). | Assessing Contaminant Loads in Nisqually Reach Herring and Zooplankton | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Pierce County;Thurston County | Washington | https://lltk.org/ | Long Live the Kings (LLTK), in collaboration with the Nisqually Indian Tribe (NIT), will work to better understand population dynamics and test recovery strategies for Pacific herring populations currently struggling within the Nisqually Reach of South Puget Sound. As Pacific herring in the Nisqually Reach have not been previously evaluated for toxic contaminants as part of regular state-led monitoring programs, LLTK and the NIT completed an initial analysis in 2023 to address the information gap. Initial sampling identified alarmingly high levels of PCBs in juvenile herring that are among the highest levels ever measured for herring in Puget Sound. LLTK will build on this study and expand collaborative efforts with the NIT to collect additional juvenile herring samples to firmly establish the presence of toxic contaminants (PCBs, PBDEs, and PAHs) within the Nisqually Reach. LLTK will work alongside the NIT to collect and analyze samples over several months, interpret this data and offer guidance for next steps in a detailed report, and widely share this information with Tribal leadership and water quality regulators. By confirming the presence of toxic contaminants within the Nisqually Reach, this project will be a key component to LLTK’s & NIT’s engagement strategy with relevant water quality and public health authorities at the state and tribal levels. | More details |
| Los Angeles Waterkeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $32,500.00 | Los Angeles River and Dominguez Channel watersheds | Los Angeles PFAS and Viral Pathogen Water Sampling | Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.lawaterkeeper.org/ | Los Angeles Waterkeeper (LAW) will use this grant to fund two components of sampling work focused on safeguarding the LA River. Widely used in manufacturing and consumer products since at least the 1950s, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are biopersistent, meaning they remain in organisms indefinitely without breaking down, and are bioaccumulative, which results in ever increasing amounts in people, wildlife, aquatic life, and the environment over time. Los Angeles Waterkeeper will use this grant to support regulators who are working to understand the prevalence of PFAS within the LA River watershed, which will ultimately help inform the Regional Water Board’s (RB) investigations and LA Sanitation’s efforts to address the pervasive problem. Over a 12-month period, LA Waterkeeper will sample 10 sites in the LA River in both wet and dry conditions and share the results with the RB to support their ongoing investigation into PFAS pollution. LAW They will also conduct viral pathogen water sampling work, which involves testing for bacterial gene-markers to assess human fecal contamination levels in the Dominguez Channel and LA Harbor. Over a 12-month period, LA Waterkeeper will take 15-20 samples in both dry and wet weather. Wet weather sampling will vary based on qualified storm events, extending across multiple seasons. Samples will be collected at selected sites and analyzed for human feces bacterial marker HF183 and, as appropriate, CrAssPhage, using digital PCR teasing out viruses present in samples collected. LAW is partnering with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project as part of their larger Regional Monitoring program which shares data with the scientific community and regulating agencies. | More details |
| Maine Community Integration | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $100,000.00 | Maine | New Mainer Consumer Financial Education Project | Education | Maine | mcimaine.org | Maine Community Integration’s mission is to integrate New Mainers into their communities in a way that empowers them to have control over their physical, emotional, social, and financial health. The New Mainer Consumer Financial Education Project will support this mission by providing 24 linguistically and culturally appropriate financial education workshops for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in the greater Lewiston-Auburn area of Maine. Their partner, Community Credit Union, will lead these workshops, educating constituents on issues related to just and equitable banking, basic banking, financial literacy, access to financial services, retail banking accounts for underbanked and vulnerable populations. These workshops will be conducted in Somali, Portuguese, French, Swahili, Dari, Pashtu, and Arabic for adult English language learners, and in English for first-generation BIPOC youth. In total, 288 New Mainers will be served by these direct education workshops. MCI will also provide referrals to any participant who has a question about their finances for a financial professional to come and provide help, with a translator and cultural broker available on site. MCI will create flyers translated into the workshop languages and distribute them to partner organizations monthly, advertising both the workshops and the referrals, allowing more recent immigrants to get support with their finances. | More details | |
| Monterey Waterkeeper | California Hazardous Waste Protection Fund | 2024 | $25,000.00 | Zero Waste Waters | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Pollution Prevention;Pollution Awareness;Pollution Assessment or Monitoring | Monterey County;Santa Cruz County | California | www.montereywaterkeeper.org | This project aims to increase community awareness about the dangers of household hazardous waste on the aquatic environment in the northern Central Coast region. The proposed project area includes the disadvantaged communities of Watsonville, Pajaro, Elkhorn Slough, and the Salinas Valley. Over the next two years, Monterey Waterkeeper will engage youth and the general public on the impacts of household hazardous waste on aquatic ecosystems, and how they can properly dispose of this waste in nearby facilities. They will do so through: 1) organizing outdoor education trips for students in these areas to Elkhorn Slough and the Salinas River; 2) facilitating walking and/or kayaking trips to Harkins Slough near Watsonville, where students and community members will participate in water quality sampling for hazardous substances such as lead, aluminum, cadmium, and/or mercury; and 3) reaching out to the general public at key community events and on social media. | More details | |
| Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2024 | $28,000.00 | Central Puget Sound; MTSGreenwayTrust_YESS_Draft Project Site Map.pdf ; Our anticipated projects sites are listed below and shown on the attached map. The students' two main project sites are in the Duwamish River (WRIA 9) and Snoqualmie River (WRIA 7) watersheds. Those are: * Meadowbrook Slough, along the Snoqualmie River. * Salmon Creek Ravine, including Salmon Creek and the forest just upstream from the Puget Sound estuary. Students will also likely spend time at these sites: * Lake Sammamish State Park (Issaquah Creek). * Belmondo Reach Natural Area in Renton (Cedar River) * Confluence Park in Issaquah (Issaquah Creek) * Tolt MacDonald Park in Carnation (Snoqualmie River) * Seahurst Park in Burien (Salmon Creek, which empties into the Puget Sound) * and more! | Youth Engaged in Sustainable Systems (YESS) Student Internship | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | King County | Washington | http://www.mtsgreenway.org | The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust’s Education Program will engage 6 high school students from Highline Public Schools and Riverview School District in a paid summer internship called Youth Engaged in Sustainable Systems (YESS). YESS student interns earn 1.0 graduation credit and a stipend while being trained to assess water quality of salmon streams, perform riparian restoration, and design and present a Restoration Project Proposal. Each student intern will complete 180 hours of programming centered on environmental education, watershed protection, habitat preservation, and environmental health and justice. Students will be trained in how to perform stream surveys to assess salmon stream health and measure the turbidity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, and phosphate. They will also collect and share data on benthic macroinvertebrates. Additionally, students will be assigned a riparian restoration site for which they will design and present a four-season Restoration Project Proposal to include a site map, an inventory of current plant species, recommended restoration methods and outcomes, and a project budget. Students will then perform riparian restoration that benefits Pacific salmon and remove noxious weeds in the summer so that native trees and shrubs can be planted there in the wetter months. | More details |
| Moving South Berkeley Forward | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $3,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education;Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security;Environmental Justice | Alameda County | California | https://movingsouthberkeleyforward.weebly.com/ | To work with South Berkeley High School students of color in the creation of a youth-led community garden site along the defunct Santa Fe railway, which will simultaneously improve air quality and provide local healthy food and a lush community greenspace for all. | More details |
| Nevada County Climate Action Now (NC-CAN) Education Committee | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $2,800.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Environmental Education;Climate Change & Energy;Sustainable Forestry | Nevada County | California | https://www.ncclimateactionnow.org/ | To encourage scientific inquiry and environmental stewardship among Nevada County youth through hands-on observation, monitoring and restoration of forest ecosystems impacted by wildfire. | More details |
| Northeast Action Collective | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,000.00 | Texas | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Texas | https://www.weststreetrecovery.org/northeast-action-collective/ | To purchase new computers teach senior residents key technological literacy skills. | More details | ||
| Northern Mendocino Ecosystem Recovery Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $6,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Environmental Education;Sustainable Forestry;Other | Mendocino County | California | http://nm-era.org/ | To foster fire resilience and responsible land stewardship in Northern Mendocino by hosting community outreach events and developing a local workforce to perform regenerative forest health and fire prevention work. | More details |
| ONABEN | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $100,000.00 | North Carolina;South Carolina; North Carolina;South Carolina | RealChange Financial Empowerment | Education | South Carolina | www.onaben.org | ONABEN's team has offered asset development services to Native Americans and rural communities of color since 1991. This grant will allow them to expand on the services they offer to members of the Catawba Nation in South Carolina and the Eastern Band of Cherokee's in North Carolina. ONABEN will offer quarterly in-person training events in these underserved, underbanked, Native communities on topics relevant to the financial health of program participants. Banking partners will join these events to build trust and connect community members with appropriate financial services. Supplemental online training opportunities will be provided monthly to expand the reach of this project to support Native Americans who may not have the ability to attend in person events. In addition, ONABEN will run three-day camps once per year to introduce youth to healthy financial practices. Finally, ONABEN will dedicate 100 hours of one-on-one technical assistance to program participants in need of credit coaching and/or credit mitigation services, provided by one of the three certified credit coaches on staff. | More details | |
| Orange County Environmental Justice Education Fund | California Hazardous Waste Protection Fund | 2024 | $25,000.00 | Healing the Soil, Healing the Sacred | Environmental Health & Justice;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Pollution Prevention;Pollution Awareness | Los Angeles County;Orange County | California | https://www.ocej.org/ | Healing the Soil, Healing the Sacred is a collaboration between Orange County Environmental Justice Education Fund (OCEJEF), the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation-Belardes (JBMI-ANB), and Friends of Puvungna (FoP) to host a 12-week, 72 hour permaculture certification course at the Indigenous sacred site of Puvungna in Long Beach, California. We will train 20 members of the tribes of the region, the Acjachemen and Tongva Nations, and residents of local census tracts designated by the CalEnviroScreen as Disadvantaged Communities (DACs), in permaculture techniques for remediating toxic soils and restoring native ecosystems. This training will also certify the participants as instructors, so that they can teach and lead teams of volunteers to clean up an illegal toxic dump on the sacred site, in addition to training worker cooperatives to remediate soil-lead contamination in the aforementioned DACs in the cities of Santa Ana, Anaheim, Fullerton, and Long Beach. Puvungna is a 10,000-year-old sacred site located on the California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) campus, and a crucial place of gathering and ceremony for the Tongva and Acjachemen Nations today. Neither tribe has a reservation or any allotted land, meaning the wellbeing, cultural preservation, and survival of these communities depends on sites like this. Puvungna means “the Gathering Place," and it is uniquely significant and sacred to the Tongva and Acjachemen people of Southern California, as well as the surrounding Native tribes. It is the “place of emergence”, where the deity Wiyot came and populated the earth, and where Chinigchnich, their prophet, came and taught the people how to survive and thrive. Puvungna has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974 in addition to being listed on the Native American Heritage Commission’s sacred lands file, and is an active ceremonial site. Preserving Puvungna means preserving a future for local Native tribes. | More details | |
| Orange County Environmental Justice Education Fund | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $30,600.00 | Santa Ana River watershed including Orange County and the Inland Empire | Building Community Water Custodianship | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice | Orange County; Los Angeles County;Orange County | California | https://www.ocej.org/ | Orange County Environmental Justice Education Fund (OCEJEF) has been working for the past five years on both monitoring and advocating for water quality in Orange County surface waters. With this grant, they will expand on this work by recruiting additional residents for water monitoring teams and training them to collect water samples and document water-pollution concerns in Santa Ana, Anaheim, Orange, Garden Grove, Fullerton, and Buena Park. They will also convene a group of 10-15 residents to discuss the results of the water sampling and create an addendum for a water quality policy report to address PFAS/PFOA and other pollutants identified through testing. The group will share their data with water board members to provide additional information on current conditions and thereby increase trust between disadvantaged communities and water managers. Additionally, OCEJEF previously created an Indigenous Water Custodianship Proposal with Acjachemen and Tongva leaders and will work with the 8 Tongva and Acjachemen tribal governments in the region. Tribal feedback will help OCEJEF select four pilot river restoration projects addressing topics in Indigenous water custodianship deemed most crucial by the tribes to present as potential collaborations with local water boards. OCEJEF will also hold a community forum to present the results of their water testing with the goal of enabling communication across stakeholder groups (including residents, local and regional water managers and political representatives) about how to address water challenges in disadvantaged communities in OC. | More details |
| Parachute Credit Counseling, Inc. | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $100,000.00 | New York | Western New York Financial Empowerment Project | Education;Other (explain below); Direct services--financial counseling | New York | https://parachutecreditcounseling.org/ | Parachute Credit Counseling Service has been assisting Western New Yorkers with financial issues for over 60 years and today serves an 8 county region comprised of 2.8 million people. This grant will allow Parachute to provide free, specialized one on one financial counseling services and community workshops to vulnerable and/or underbanked populations including low-income, communities of color, individuals, families, veterans and non-native English speakers. The target areas for this project are the City of Buffalo’s East Side and Niagara County, where there has been chronic disinvestment and financial difficulty. Parachute serves about 1,300 individuals per year, providing one on one financial counseling, free tax preparation, and community workshops that include assistance with banking and opening fee free bank accounts, credit repair, help creating budgets, and support/guidance for the many steps involved in homeownership. This growth in their reach will be made possible in part by the addition of a new project outreach coordinator position funded in part by this grant. | More details | |
| Qualitas of Life Foundation | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $100,000.00 | New Jersey;New York;Pennsylvania;Rhode Island; New Jersey;New York;Pennsylvania;Rhode Island | Financial Education for Hispanic Families & Individuals | Education | New York | qualitasoflife.org | Qualitas of Life was founded in 2007 in response to the lackluster economic indicators projected for the new generation of Hispanics in the Northeast. Concerned with the limited access to basic financial services experienced by Spanish-speaking members of the community, Qualitas engaged the help of financial education experts to develop a culturally relevant curriculum and began facilitating basic bilingual financial education workshops throughout New York City. Over 15 years later, they have educated over 30,000 families in how to better manage their finances, but with an increasing number of Spanish-speaking migrants arriving in New York, the need in the community continues to grow. The curriculum funded by this grant covers family finances, budgeting, savings, banking, avoiding financial fraud, credit, taxes, and migration and money. The program has four formats: a comprehensive 8-session course, specific topic workshops designed to address the community's needs, short interventions designed to make financial education easily accessible, and 1:1 sessions to help individuals set SMART financial goals. These programs are offered in-person or virtually depending on the community and their needs. With this funding, Qualitas will prioritize the measurement and evaluation of these programs to better assess their long-term impact and identify outstanding community needs. The results will inform decisions regarding curriculum adaptations and additions, responding to the overall needs of the participants, and identifying community-level issues and opportunities that they can present to financial institutions, policy makers, and other stakeholders. | More details | |
| Rappahannock United Way | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $100,000.00 | Virginia | Prosper Financial Services | Education | Virginia | http://www.rappahannockunitedway.org/ | This grant will provide funding for Prosper, Rappahannock United Way’s (RUW) full suite of financial stability initiatives and resources, with the goal of empowering and educating individuals and families in the greater Fredricksburg region of Virginia. These services are offered free of charge and include financial education group workshops for youth and adults, a financial mentoring program for women in the workplace, and financial one-on-one coaching to help households reach their individual financial goals. Prosper services are provided year-round 6 days a week, with both daytime and evening hours to accommodate clients with busy schedules. During tax session, RUW focuses on free tax prep and financial coaching while sharing information with clients about other financial offerings during the rest of the year. RUW utilities the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Your Money Your Goals curriculum offering financial tools, resources and encouragement focused on creating budgets, reducing bad debt, establishing good credit, and building savings for the future. Clients are welcome to bring their children with them for workshops and coaching sessions, if childcare is a barrier. Prosper services are also hosted at various locations throughout the community to reach target populations within their own communities, in spaces where they already feel comfortable and safe – including library branches, neighborhood centers, schools and group homes. | More details | |
| Regenerating Paradise | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $3,000.00 | North Central & East | General Support | Environmental Education;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Other | Butte County | California | http://regeneratingparadise.org | To support climate resilience coordinating riparian restoration, native landscaping, and fire mitigation at an affordable housing development in Paradise, benefiting low-income residents returning after the Camp Fire. | More details |
| Resource Renewal Institute | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $7,500.00 | Watersheds tributary to Tomales Bay | A Watershed Moment for Tomales Bay | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Marin County;Sonoma County | California | https://www.rri.org/ | Resource Renewal Institute (RRI) will use this grant to assist the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board’s in developing a new Grazing Program Improvement Plan for the Tomales Bay Watershed by developing coordinated communications, public education and stakeholder input timelines. In order for SF Regional Board to develop its Grazing Program, they must bring technical information to the public attention and invite input from area stakeholders. The issues are complex and require explanations that are clear and straightforward, and the outreach materials produced by RRI will be designed to clarify the complex regulatory process and provide a clear pathway for all constituents to contribute their comments. Activities will include forwarding materials and other information provided by Regional Board on the plan development to stakeholders within the Tomales Bay area and then organizing comments and consolidating questions for Regional Board staff when the public meetings occur. After public initial public input, the Regional Board will draft Grazing Waiver Renewal Program documents for public review and comment, including new provisions that protect riparian habitat and expand the program’s geographic scope. RRI will likewise share information about the draft plan and disseminate public notices about comment periods and procedures as well as background information including SFWQB findings and independent scientific reports. After the Regional Board’s adoption hearing on the plan, RRI will educate the community on the final adopted plan and evaluate the effectiveness of their campaign to engage the public. The Regional Board has indicated it welcomes stakeholder involvement to draft a Grazing Plan that meets State Water Board’s 2004 Nonpoint Source Enforcement Policy requirements, and RRI’s actions to engage and inform the community will help the Regional Board in meeting that goal. | More details |
| RhodeWay Financial | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $10,000.00 | Rhode Island | Financial Literacy Workshops | Education | Rhode Island | rhodeway.org | RhodeWay Financial provides pro bono financial planning and financial literacy services to the underserved population in Rhode Island. Their clients are RI residents who are low-to moderate-income individuals and families as well as active military and veterans, with 80% BIPOC clients. This grant will help fund eight financial literacy workshops scheduled in the second half of 2024 through Providence Housing. Workshops are scheduled based on requests from individuals or sponsoring organizations, with dozens requested for the remainder of 2024. All workshops are developed and led by a CFP professional and will cover topics such as Introduction to Financial Planning, First Time Home Buyer, Introduction to Estate Planning, Introduction to Investments, Introduction to Retirement Plan Investing, and Introduction to Budgeting and Banking Services. Funds will also be used to support key financial planning software utilized by RhodeWay, as well as translation services and supplies for their financial literacy workshops. | More details | |
| River Otter Ecology Project | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Marin County | California | http://www.riverotterecology.org | To hire a fundraising consultant to support donor list segmentation and end of year fundraising strategy. | More details | |
| River Otter Ecology Project | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $8,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Supporting Watershed Conservation, Otter by Otter | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Statewide | California | http://www.riverotterecology.org | To promote the restoration and management of Bay Area watersheds through citizen-science monitoring, research, and educational programming about local river otter populations. | More details |
| Sama Sama Cooperative | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $3,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education;Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security;Environmental Justice | Alameda County;Contra Costa County;Lake County;San Francisco County;Yolo County | California | http://samasamacooperative.org/ | To support a 4-week cultural and environmental summer camp for Bay Area Filipinx youth with an emphasis on Filipino language, traditional arts, and community organizing through an environmental justice lens. | More details |
| San Francisco Baykeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $22,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Improving Water Quality in San Francisco Bay | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Alameda County;Contra Costa County;Marin County;Napa County;San Francisco County;San Mateo County;Santa Clara County;Solano County;Sonoma County | California | https://baykeeper.org/ | For 35 years, Baykeeper has defended San Francisco Bay and protected its water quality, wildlife, and communities. Their mission is to defend the Bay from major threats that include industrial stormwater, urban trash, and harmful algal blooms by monitoring pollution by boat, foot, kayak, plane, and drone. Baykeeper also operates a Pollution Hotline where concerned residents can report potential pollution threats to the Bay’s water quality. Since Baykeeper covers a large geographic area, they cannot physically monitor the entire watershed but residents around the Bay report concerns to the group which enables them monitor pollution in the region. For example, community members recently reported a sewage spill in the water in Berkeley – and with their tip, Baykeeper was able to investigate and notify regulators of the problem. The Regional Board contacted the local business which then stopped the pollution at its source. With the Rose Foundation’s grant, Baykeeper will respond to community members about specific water quality concerns in their communities. Specifically, this grant will enable Baykeeper to investigate approximately 60 Pollution Hotline reports from members of the public regarding potential water quality issues and ensure important pollution information is passed along to the appropriate local agencies so they may follow up to resolve the problems, as needed. Baykeeper will also use the grant to recruit and train community volunteers in science-based methods to document and remove debris on Bay Area shorelines. Baykeeper will use the data collected by volunteers to identify trash hot spots and educate the public on the threat of trash pollution and proactive measures to protect the Bay. | More details |
| San Mateo Resource Conservation District | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $27,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Half Moon Bay Basin First Flush Project | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | San Mateo County | California | https://www.sanmateorcd.org/ | This grant will support the implementation of the First Flush program, an annual community-based volunteer science program that monitors pollutants entering the greater Half Moon Bay watershed. First Flush provides a valuable snapshot of a once-a-year worst-case scenario for water quality when contaminants that have built up on land during the dry season are washed into waterways. Volunteers collect water samples from stormwater outfalls and creek mouths during the first significant rain of the season which typically carries the highest concentration of pollutants from sources such as brake dust, car emissions, animal waste, detergents, pesticides, fertilizers, and chemicals found around homes and businesses. As the host of coastal San Mateo County’s First Flush program, the San Mateo Resource Conservation District performs program oversight and administration, volunteer recruitment, coordination, and trainings, weather tracking and logistics planning, water quality monitoring and sampling, data management, analysis and presentation of results, and education/outreach. Data collected as part of the annual First Flush has a dual purpose of informing stakeholders about pollutants that may impact human health or ecosystems and informing priority actions to reduce those risks by improving or protecting water quality. These solutions are realized through actions such as replacing sewer lines, creating infiltration galleries, and working with local animal facilities to reduce fecal bacteria entering waterways. | More details |
| Santa Barbara County Action Network | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $10,350.00 | Central Coast: Santa Maria River watershed | Santa Maria River Encampments Restoration | Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Santa Barbara County | California | sbcan.org | This year, Santa Barbara County plans to place 28 individuals in housing who occupy more than 28 encampments on the Santa Maria Riverbed near the City of Santa Maria. The County will have crews come in and clean up the encampments, but it does not have funding for restoration and has expressed a desire for Santa Barbara County Action Network (SBCAN) and their partners to do undertake that activity. SBCAN will use this grant to contract Channel Islands Restoration to lead the riparian restoration work while recruiting and training additional volunteers to work on restoring the sites. The restoration plan will include restoring erosion control and native plants that have been degraded from encampments, with SBCAN providing equipment and plantings. This restoration work will improve water quality in the Santa Maria River by filtering out pollutants and sediment. Part of this workplan includes working with concerned community members and local groups to establish a new Riverkeepers group that will maintain the plantings until they can become established, perform monthly clean ups, and advocate for and work to improve and protect the Santa Maria River ecosystem over the long term. | More details |
| Save Del Puerto Canyon | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Environmental Justice | Stanislaus County | California | https://www.savedelpuertocanyon.org/ | To protect and preserve Del Puerto Canyon by mobilizing the community of Patterson to oppose the proposed Del Puerto Canyon Reservoir which threatens the quality of life of the City of Patterson and surrounding residents. | More details |
| Save Napa Valley Foundation | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $30,000.00 | Napa River watershed (limited funding) | The Suscol Creek Remediation Project | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Napa County | California | savenapavalleyfoundation.org | Save Napa Valley Foundation (SNVF) strives to protect the long-term economic and environmental viability of the Napa Valley through the preservation and the restoration of the natural environment and resources upon which the health of our vineyards, wineries and entire community relies. SNVF is comprised of community members with deep roots in the Napa Valley who joined forces in 2016 to push back against pro-development interests and advocate for the protection of ever-depleting natural resources. This grant will support a critical need to install real time monitoring for flow, temperature, and other metrics in Suscol Creek, an important tributary of the Napa River. Suscol Creek was ranked as high priority for restoration due to its density of steelhead, amount of habitat available, presence of high priority barriers, riparian disfunction, and presence of exotics. The proposed monitoring is an essential component of the Suscol Creek Remediation Project, which seeks to remove stream obstructions and repair habitat to improve connectivity to tidewater of over 8 miles of this important tributary to the Napa River. Collected data will be published on the web, to be used by researchers to plan future remediation efforts. Long term outcomes for this project include restoring hydrologic function, expanding the riparian forest extent, and controlling some invasive weeds, all of which should improve water quality in Suscol Creek and the Napa River. | More details |
| Solita's House, Inc. | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $62,352.94 | Florida | Eviction Prevention Rental Assistance (EPRA) | Education | Florida | http://www.solitashouse.com | Solita’s House is a HUD-approved Housing Counseling Agency working to help low- and moderate-income persons safely establish long term affordable and sustainable housing in the Tampa Bay area. The funding for their Eviction Prevention Rental Assistance (EPRA) program will cover both salaries and program expenses related to a suite of educational, counseling, and other non-monetary resources meant to keep renters housed. Solita’s will use this grant to host a range of workshops based on FDIC's MoneySmart and Consumer Action's MoneyWise curriculum around financial capability, rental education, and homebuyer education, as well as one on one counseling around rental housing, housing purchases, and foreclosure and eviction interventions. Part of this curriculum and counseling engages landlords as well, so that interventions can result in a mutual agreement that keeps clients housed. With this grant, Solita’s will be able to fund a HUD certified housing counselor and case manager, who will provide these education and counseling services and work to build out their suite of online resources for renters navigating housing searches, potential evictions, and more. | More details | |
| South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center | Consumer Financial Education Fund | 2024 | $100,000.00 | South Carolina | SC Appleseed Community Financial Empowerment Project | Advocacy;Education | South Carolina | www.scjustice.org | South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center’s (SCALJC) project focuses on empowering unbanked and underbanked populations and communities of color through outreach, education, and technical assistance. For this initiative, SCALJC will offer twelve financial education workshops and clinics across different South Carolina counties. These workshops will be staffed with trained financial counselors and attorneys to provide on-site clinics for individual counseling and assistance. These counselors and other community partners can provide referrals to partner attorneys to assist with disposing of bad loans. SCALJC will also develop and provide in-person and virtual “Train the Trainer” offerings for community partners, consumer service organizations, law students, and partner attorneys to increase the number of trained counselors and attorneys who will be able to assist consumers. Trainings will also equip community members and partners with the tools they need to approach local financial institutions, credit unions, and regulators to advocate for the development and availability of affordable banking services and lending alternatives and enhanced consumer protections, helping to build a more just financial system in South Carolina. | More details | |
| South River Watershed Alliance | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2024 | $1,577.00 | Georgia | Supplemental Grant | Georgia | https://www.southriverga.org/ | General support | More details | ||
| Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $5,000.00 | North Coast | Education and Outreach Program | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Other | Humboldt County | California | https://sohumfiresafe.org/ | To increase public education and outreach around fire prevention and preparedness and build cooperation between government agencies, residents, volunteer fire organizations, and environmental groups in Southern Humboldt. | More details |
| Sustainable Seattle | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2024 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound; ; We are working with a number of community members who either garden at home, in community p-patches or urban farms within the Seattle region. We hope to also work extend our work with groups in Pierce County. Some areas we work in are Beacon Hill, South Park and Rainier Valley where there are a number of BIPOC gardens, community p-patches and groups dedicated to organic hyperlocal food systems. Thus we view our project being located in in the Central District/Rainier Beach/Duwamish Valley areas which drains into Lake WA, Puget Sound, and Duwamish. Attached is the local watershed map for reference indicating the local composting facilities of Cedar Grove (a manufacturer with high petroleum contamination) and the community gardens we have been working with to do soil sampling with the University of Washington. A long-term goal is to also create community touchpoints that are also accessible to Pierce County, the location of the Tacoma Smelter Plume, an historical source of heavy metal contamination in the region. | The Sustainable Seattle Soil Health and Justice Initiative | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Other | King County;Pierce County | Washington | http://www.sustainableseattle.org | Sustainable Seattle will lead the Soil Justice Health Initiative (SHJI) to better understand and control harmful toxins, metals, chemicals, and other contaminants from entering waterways throughout the greater Seattle area with an emphasis on South Seattle. The SHJI will build community understanding of contaminated soil, its waterway effects, and empower community action. The SHJI aims to work with community members to advocate for environmental justice policies to include mandatory testing of landscaping products from vendors contracted by regional government agencies and address the ongoing contamination of regional community gardens in a way that is accessible to all communities. By addressing soil distribution as a serious source of polluted groundwater, wetland die off, and decreased fish reproduction, the SJHI will decrease non-point source pollution in some of the most vulnerable communities throughout King County. | More details |
| Tomales Bay Foundation | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $23,500.00 | Watersheds tributary to Tomales Bay | Tomales Bay Foundation’s Water Quality Testing | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Climate Change and Energy;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Marin County | California | www.tomalesbayfoundation.org | From 2004 to 2022, The Tomales Bay Foundation (TBF) collected monthly water samples at 14 sites within the Tomales Bay watershed. In addition, each year two 5-week sample sets have been obtained so that summer and winter geometric means could be calculated to assess compliance with regulatory goals. The resulting data has been used to monitor water quality trends throughout the watershed. This program was previously run in conjunction with the SF Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board (Regional Board), National Park Service, and Inverness Public Utility District, however, the monthly samples were terminated in 2023 due to the Regional Board’s funding limitations. With lab analyses funded by the Regional Board, the 5-week geometric mean samples (10 grab samples per site each year) continue to be regularly collected in the summer and winter, but the monthly samples have not been collected for the past year. This grant will allow TBF volunteers to resume the monthly fecal coliform water quality sampling at the 14 fresh and saltwater sites in the Tomales Bay watershed. In addition, 4 rover samples will also be obtained at likely hotspots not captured by the 14-site regular sampling routine. This process will supplement the winter and summer 5-week geometric mean sampling periods, and the result will complete the monthly sample data collected at TBF watershed sites. TBF will distribute the information to the public via its website in user-friendly web-based geographic and graphic displays. This testing is foundational work in the pursuit of better water quality in the region and is relied upon by the public, community groups, and decision makers to identify fecal coliform “hot spots” which deserve further investigation to determine the source of bacteria levels that exceed established norms. | More details |
| TreePeople | Los Angeles Community Water Justice Grants Program | 2024 | $360,130.00 | Lower Los Angeles River Tree Planting Project in SELA | Water Quality Monitoring;Watershed Assessment;Pollution Awareness;Pollution Prevention;Other | Los Angeles; Los Angeles County | California | www.treepeople.org | Historical redlining and discriminatory development practices have long impacted disadvantaged communities in the Los Angeles region, allowing decades of unchecked industrial development and under-regulated land use practices. A primary example of this history can be seen firsthand in the Lower Los Angeles River region, where the river and its nearby residents have been subject to significant industrial pollution. As an accessible, efficient, urban conservation strategy, TreePeople seeks to address these environmental justice impacts through tree canopy equity, which serves as a direct intervention to capture groundwater, reduce runoff, improve water quality, sequester carbon, mitigate extreme urban heat, and improve community green space. TreePeople will implement an urban greening project impacting cities most affected by industrial pollution effects, including Huntington Park, Lynwood, Commerce, Cudahy, South Gate, Bell Gardens, Bell, Maywood, Vernon, and/or Paramount. This project will improve communities along the LA River watershed, by planting 300 shade trees in public spaces, along with the distribution of an additional 500 no-cost take-home trees for residents to plant on private parcels. All public trees planted will be within 3 miles of the Los Angeles River, promoting direct benefit to the watershed. | More details | |
| Turtle Island Restoration Network | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2024 | $25,000.00 | Watersheds tributary to Tomales Bay | SPAWN: Lagunitas Watershed Restoration Project (LAWRP) | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Climate Change and Energy;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Marin County | California | http://www.seaturtles.org | The Lagunitas Creek sub-watershed is the largest drainage into Tomales Bay. Marin County’s Lagunitas Watershed has been identified as one of the most important spawning and rearing habitats left in California for recovering endangered coho salmon on the central coast. Over half of the watershed is in public ownership and, over time, development has destabilized some of the banks' slopes. This leads to slumps and landslides, and sediment that alters the lower watershed. By working with local, state and federal agencies, students, private landowners, partner organization, indigenous tribes, and community volunteers, Turtle Island Restoration Network’s (TIRN) restoration projects enhance in-stream and riparian habitat, promote clean water, and inspire the community to restore critically endangered coho salmon. This project will install ~150 large woody debris structures across one mile of Devil’s Gulch creek. These large woody debris structures will be built using existing logs, trees, and downed wood within the riparian area. Structures are designed to be dynamic and adapt to changes in sediment supply, stream power, and riparian vegetation and ultimately will help improve sediment load in the watershed. This low-tech process-based restoration concept will use power equipment and hand tools, but no heavy machinery will be involved. This method has proven to be a cost-effective way to greatly improve the condition of in-stream and floodplain habitat. This project will be led and performed in part by TIRN interns and volunteers. TIRN predominantly engages under-represented and underserved BIPOC communities in the North and East Bay for these roles and interns receive free housing and monthly living expense stipends. | More details |
| Vashon Nature Center LLC | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2024 | $36,000.00 | Central Puget Sound; ; Vashon Nature Center is located on Vashon-Maury Islands in south central Puget Sound. Our core work in Community Waters encompasses the marine waters of Central and South Puget Sound including the waters and nearshore areas protected in Maury Island State Aquatic Reserve, Quartermaster Harbor, Colvos Passage, Dalco and Point Vashon. We also help our local community steward the health of the island's two largest salmon-bearing watersheds-- Judd Creek and Shinglemill Creek as well as several smaller perennial creeks that flow directly into the marine system including: Tahlequah Creek, McCormick Creek, Fisher creek, Christensen Creek, Dilworth Creek, Gorsuch creek, Ellis Creek, Ellisport Creek, Mileta Creek, Raab's lagoon all of which have salmon and/or cutthroat trout populations. In addition our work extends to protecting and stewarding the connecting estuary habitats at the mouths of these creeks including-- Judd Creek estuary, Fern Cove, Tahlequah cove, and Christensen Cove. Lastly, our work is tied to larger regional efforts to protect and steward the vital waters of Puget Sound through participating in regional kelp, shoreline, and marine working groups through Puget Sound Partnershop's Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring project (PSEMP) and through partnerships with several university, agency, tribal and non-profit joint efforts to monitor and steward the marine and freshwater resources of the Salish Sea region. | Community Waters | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Climate Change & Energy | King County;Kitsap County;Pierce County | Washington | https://vashonnaturecenter.org/ | Vashon Nature Center (VNC) will conduct its Community Waters program, an integrated community science and outreach project to benefit water quality on Vashon-Maury Island and in the surrounding waters of Central Puget Sound. VNA will work with local residents and students throughout the Central Puget Sound region and involve them in research on stormwater, stream biotic integrity, salmon spawning counts, bulkhead removal and shoreline restoration, and kelp extent and ecology. Community Waters will maintain and expand existing community science and education programs by adding testing for 6PPD-quinone and PFAS chemicals to ongoing stormwater monitoring programs and increase access to the outdoor classroom education programs by BIPOC and urban youth in their summer internship program. The group will also conduct several other stewardship activities including monitor coastal cutthroat trout populations, maintain shoreline and kelp surveys, and summarize results on forage fish surveys, kelp surveys, and salmon counts in interactive Arc GIS story maps for public and school engagement. | More details |
| Wakulima USA | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2024 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound; ; Our proposed project will take place at the Wakulima site, in Mary Gay Park (1616 S 223rd Street, in Des Moines). This will benefit 3 neighboring waterways draining into Puget Sound: Des Moines, Barnes, and Massey Creeks - all urban salmon bearing streams. | Integrated Stormwater Mitigation, Utilization, and Skillshare for Wakulima | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation;Climate Change & Energy;Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | King County | Washington | https://www.wakulimausa.org/ | Wakulima USA will engage with the East African immigrant and refugee communities of the Puget Sound region in water stewardship. Wakulima offers farming opportunities and trainings to community members for sustainably grown, culturally relevant crops. As a part of Wakulima’s regular programming, Wakulima will work with members to create a water catchment, cistern, and irrigation system at Mary Gay Park which will lower the storm water burden in the surrounding area and allow water to be repurposed and slowly released back into the ground over farm and community garden lands. This system will be able to manage and divert over 7,500 gallons of stormwater from flowing onto impervious surfaces headed to Puget Sound where, instead of picking up toxic contaminants along the way, captured rainwater will be stored and filtered before use. Wakulima will additionally hold 4 workshops for about 15 farmer-members on water quality and water stewardship and its relation to farming and crop growth in the region. | More details |
| Washington Conservation Action Education Fund | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2024 | $40,000.00 | South Puget Sound; ; Waterbodies include Puget Sound, Commencement Bay, Elliott Bay, Whidbey Basin, Bellingham Bay, plus the large rivers and small streams impacted by urban stormwater. The main municipalities and dischargers that our team will directly engage through our sewage treatment and stormwater work are King County and the City of Tacoma, though the sewage impacts/benefits are in South Puget Sound. Because of the direction treated sewage flows following release into Puget Sound, the ultimate benefits of modernizing sewage treatment technologies at plants like West Point would be on people living in the South Sound region. For those local communities, it could improve water quality and ecosystem health, create healthier recreation areas, and reduce exposure to pollution. On the other hand, the stormwater focused work will target Central Puget Sound geographies, and the benefits would be to Commencement Bay and Elliott Bay, closer to the points of stormwater discharge. | Reducing Pollution to Improve Puget Sound Water Quality | Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | Clallam County;Island County;Jefferson County;King County;Kitsap County;Mason County;Pierce County;San Juan County;Skagit County;Snohomish County;Thurston County;Whatcom County | Washington | https://wcactionef.org/ | Washington Conservation Action Education Fund will improve water quality in Puget Sound by providing technical assistance and expertise related to effective strategies for reducing pollution from stormwater and sewage through a partnerships with municipal water and sewage managers. WCAEF will also inform the Department of Ecology on its coming five-year municipal stormwater permit process, by providing science-based technical assistance related to effective stormwater permitting. WCAEF will focus on 1) best strategies for increasing the pace of retrofits and green stormwater infrastructure and will meet with public works staff to understand challenges associated with green stormwater infrastructure to develop technical assistance and guidance that helps them address challenges and 2) creating information-based tools for building public awareness of sewage spills and public health and safety responses. WCAEF will work with Ecology to develop a public-facing website for sharing information on sewage spills to keep the public more aware of potential health and safety impacts. | More details |
| Wildlands Network | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2024 | $35,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Connected Communities: Organizing an Ecological Response | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Butte County;Lassen County;Nevada County;Plumas County;Sierra County;Yuba County | California | https://www.wildlandsnetwork.org/ | To conduct a habitat connectivity analysis and coordinate a strategic response to the Connected Communities Project (CCP), a proposal to develop approximately 600 miles of new, multi-use OHV trails on public lands in the Northern Sierra Region. Spanning six counties in California, from Lassen National Park to the Tahoe Basin, the CCP trail network clearly carries landscape-scale implications for wildlife and could be a significant threat to the recovery of wildlife populations in the region. Wildlands Network will provide a coordinated ecological response to the CCP, conduct key analysis on the possible impacts to wildlife, and inform alternative routes that avoid the worst ecological impacts. They will build a coalition of local partners to coordinate public outreach and community engagement to respond to the CCP and minimize, avoid, and mitigate anticipated impacts from the project. | More details |
| Wolf Creek Community Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $5,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Toxics & Environmental Health | Nevada County | California | http://www.wolfcreekalliance.org/ | To protect, preserve, and restore the Wolf Creek Watershed by increasing knowledge, appreciation, stewardship, and public access to the creek, through ongoing restoration, water quality monitoring and testing, and education. | More details |
| Wolf Creek Community Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $500.00 | Sierra Nevada; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Nevada County | California | http://www.wolfcreekalliance.org/ | To provide much-needed software support for our donor management and email communictions plateforms. | More details | |
| Xa Kako Dile | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $3,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security | Mendocino County | California | xakakodile.org | To revitalize and teach traditional ecological knowledge through an indigenous-led learning farm that emphasizes food and seed sovereignty through the cultivation of edible, medicinal and spiritually important plants. | More details |
| Youth Climate Strike Action L.A | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2024 | $7,500.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Climate Change & Energy;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County | California | ycsla.org | To mobilize LA's youth to tackle the climate crisis through political action by spreading climate and political education, empowering youth to enact change, and holding elected officials accountable. | More details |
| 350 Tacoma | PNW Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Pacific Northwest; Central Puget Sound | General Support | Climate Change and Energy;Environmental Justice;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Pierce County | Washington | 350tacoma.org | 350 Tacoma supports climate resilience and environmental justice by advocating for the phasing from fossil fuels; the preservation of forests, greenspaces, and wetlands; the strengthening of zoning policies, ordinances and laws that support and enhance future sustainability, healthy communities, and climate justice. 350 Tacoma organizes local support of a wide array of environmental and social justice issues. With this funding, the groups will focus on area water quality issues including advocacy to protect drinking water sources by advocating against a “mega” warehouse atop Tacoma’s primary water aquifer. In addition, the group will continue working on the restoration and conservation of a saltwater marsh for which 350 Tacoma has a stewardship agreement with the City of Tacoma. | More details |
| A Community Voice | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2023 | $1,000.00 | Louisiana | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | http://www.acommunityvoice.org/ | To hire a consultant to help upgrade our website ACommunityVoice.org (now 3 years old), resolve issues with google accounts we use where we can no longer receive email and another where it is bouncing back, and help with obtaining a system of Robodialing. | More details | ||
| Activist San Diego | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | San Diego Area | General Support | Climate Change & Energy;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | San Diego County | California | https://www.activistsandiego.org/ | To build community and advance social justice in San Diego, through grassroots and grasstops organizing, coalition building, monthly community education and discussion meetings featuring pressing topics, and running KNSJ 89.1FM community-powered radio. | More details |
| Activist San Diego | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | San Diego Area; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | San Diego County | California | https://www.activistsandiego.org/ | To support the cost of our EveryAction subscription, which has risen to $1,688.40 this coming year. Your support helping us with part of that expense would be an incredible gift. Our database and email newsletters are an essential tools in our organizing toolbox. | More details | |
| Adopt a Stream Foundation | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $25,000.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | W. Fork Quilceda Cr. Water Quality Partnership | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Snohomish County | Washington | www.streamkeeper.org | The Adopt A Stream Foundation (AASF) in partnership with the Tulalip Tribes will restore riparian forest along the West Fork of Quilceda Creek on a 56 acre property in the Tulalip Reservation. This 56-acre property was part of the original Tulalip Reservation, but it was sold off during the Allotment and Assimilation period in 1934 and was recently re-acquired by the Tulalip Tribe. Unfortunately, this property has a long history of livestock grazing and very little riparian buffer remains. This project will improve water quality in the West Fork of Quilceda Creek by creating 100-foot-wide native riparian buffers along 1,739 linear feet of stream, restoring over 8.0 acres of native riparian vegetation. In total, 11,400 native plants will be installed with the help of volunteers at multiple volunteer planting events hosted by AASF. The native riparian buffers resulting from this project will improve water quality by filtering and absorbing runoff thereby creating a forested canopy which cools stream temperatures and reduces fecal coliform bacterial levels. Quilceda Creek is listed by the state's Department of Ecology as an impaired water for exceeding standards for fecal coliform bacteria levels and is included in the Snohomish River Tributaries Fecal Coliform TMDL. This TMDL specifically identifies the loss of riparian habitat as a contributing factor to high bacteria levels within the watershed. | More details |
| Alliance for Felix Cove | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Climate Change & Energy;Environmental Justice;Other | Marin County | California | https://www.alliance4felixcove.org/ | To protect, restore, and re-matriate the sacred lands and waters of Felix Cove at Point Reyes National Seashore, and to advocate for Indigenous access and stewardship of ancestral homelands on public lands. The Alliance is an Indigenous women-founded and led organization. | More details |
| American River Watershed Institute | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Nevada County;Placer County;Sutter County;Yuba County | California | http://www.arwi.us/ | To establish BearPARC, a new citizen advocacy group dedicated to the restoration and preservation of the Bear River from its Bear Valley headwaters to its confluence with the Feather River. | More details |
| American River Watershed Institute | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | Sierra Nevada; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Napa County;Placer County;Sutter County;Yuba County | California | http://www.arwi.us/ | To purchase an LCD projector for use in our outreach program. We are expanding this outreach, and in addition to the funded four public events we will be inviting our community to host coffee klatches at their homes, or at convenient small venues like coffee house meeting rooms. And for for specialized training in WordPress for our new BearPARC website which will launch early 2024. As we are moving from Weebly to the Greengeeks WordPress toolkit, and need some specialized assistance to help our very capable inhouse team on template modifications that meet our predominantly graphic/map/photo needs. | More details | |
| American River Watershed Institute | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $6,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | BearPARC: Bear River Preservation And Restoration Collaborative | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Nevada County;Placer County;Sutter County;Yuba County | California | http://www.arwi.us/ | To launch BearPARC, a new citizen advocacy group fighting for permanent preservation of the full reach of the Bear River watershed. | More details |
| American Rivers | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $50,000.00 | Clean Water and Environmental Justice in the mid-Columbia River | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Justice;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Climate Change & Energy | Washington | https://www.americanrivers.org/ | American Rivers works in the Columbia River basin to improve dam operations, reconnect the river to its floodplain, restore aquatic habitat, and protect clean water. In all aspects of this work, they seek to achieve environmental justice by prioritizing projects that directly benefit Indigenous communities. AR will use this grant to stand in solidarity with the Yakama Nation in its opposition to the harmful Goldendale Pumped Storage Project (Goldendale Project) which threatens to permanently destroy numerous sacred cultural resources. Additionally, American Rivers will use the funding to work with the Yakama Nation on the full removal of the illegally built Bateman Island Causeway – a key component of salmon recovery efforts throughout the Yakima Basin. The group will develop and implement a communication and outreach plan for the Goldendale Project, with the intention of raising awareness and gathering public support to oppose the Project. AR will also work to convince the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to secure the removal of the Bateman Island Causeway as a priority under the USACE 1135 NEPA process, as well as contribute restoration expertise and public-facing communications to build public support for removal. | More details | ||
| American Rivers | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Roxhill Bog and Longfellow Creek Network | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Climate Change & Energy;Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | King County | Washington | https://www.americanrivers.org/ | This grant will support ongoing work aimed at restoring Roxhill Bog. The organization already has a design plan to restore the hydrological functionality and has established partnerships with community groups to scale restoration and natural infrastructure throughout the watershed. The funding will allow the group to work with the community and local partners to further advance this from pilot project to construction readiness. American Rivers will communicate the project's success as a precedent for natural infrastructure/nature-based solutions and provide support for local partners leading meaningful public engagement with the community surrounding the Roxhill Bog. In addition, this grant will provide direct funding to Delridge Neighborhood Development Association (DNDA) to support the Longfellow Creek Network and ensure they have the resources and tools needed to meet long-term water quality and community goals in Longfellow Creek. | More details |
| Amigos de los Rios | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $25,200.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Emerald Necklace San Gabriel River Watershed Multi-objective Greenway Enhancement Project | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Climate Change and Energy;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Los Angeles County | California | http://www.amigosdelosrios.org | With this funding, Amigos de los Rios will implement their Emerald Necklace greenway vision by engaging local students and community members in transforming a segment of the San Gabriel River through the removal of invasive plant species, trash, and rocks, and through urban forestry planting and stewardship care including the planting of 30 trees and 800 shrubs, all drawn from a native habitat plant palette. This project will protect water resources, restore ecosystem services, and provide co-benefits including improved air quality, urban heat island mitigation, and enhanced recreation and active trail spaces, promoting health and wellness in park-deficient communities and training environmental stewards. The group will work to connect Title 1 school communities along the San Gabriel River to the greenway network. This will include efforts to create campus native landscape areas and connect schools to the river. The project will also involve systematic removal of redundant rusted chain fences and replacement of chain link gates with artisan-made, nature-themed decorative gates to make the greenway more appealing and inviting. Emerald Necklace Fellows (from the California Climate Action Corps program) will lead project events, guiding volunteer activities and teaching the process and importance of urban forestry and sustainable infrastructure development. Fellows will also lead native habitat planting events and assist with 9 months of establishment care including hand watering, weeding, and removing and replacing plants that fail to thrive. L.A. County Public Works will take ongoing care of the site upon successful establishment. | More details |
| Ascend Wilderness Experience | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | North Coast | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Trinity County | California | http://ascendwilderness.org/ | To hire an equity coach to work with our board of directors and staff. We will work through goals and desired incomes to tailor strategic plans and policies in creating an equity framework to guide our work moving forward. After that initial work the consultant can continue to coach, support or train us. | More details | |
| Ascend Wilderness Experience | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | North Coast | Adult Stewardship & Multigenerational Trip Expansion 2023 | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Trinity County | California | http://ascendwilderness.org/ | To lead an adult backpacking and backcountry trail restoration projects in the Trinity Alps during summer 2023, achieving the twin goals of restoring impacted habitat and building the conservation community in Trinity County. | More details |
| Backcountry Horsemen of California | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $6,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | BCHC Intern | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Sustainable Forestry | El Dorado County;Inyo County;Mono County;Shasta County;Statewide | California | http://bchcalifornia.org/ | To sponsor a 3-month internship to teach youth the skills of backcountry packing and stock management, support trail work in the Eastern Sierra, and inspire the next generation of skilled packers and wilderness managers. | More details |
| Battle Creek Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $6,000.00 | North Central & East | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Climate Change & Energy | Shasta County;Tehama County | California | http://www.thebattlecreekalliance.org | To collect long-term, year-round data regarding the diminished water quality downstream from clearcut and salvage-logged land in the Sierra and Cascade Mountain ranges and pursue litigation to promote resource conservation and protect the water supply from further degradation. | More details |
| Battle Creek Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | North Central & East | Battle Creek Watershed Protection | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Climate Change & Energy | Shasta County;Tehama County | California | http://www.thebattlecreekalliance.org | To collect long-term, year-round data regarding the diminished water quality downstream from clearcut and salvage-logged land in the Sierra and Cascade Mountain ranges and support a formal report on the GHG emissions associated with industrial logging in the region. | More details |
| Bayview Community Concerned Citizens | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | San Francisco County | California | To combat pollution, influence policy and promote health, environmental quality, and economic vitality in the Bayview Hunter’s Point neighborhood of San Francisco. | More details | |
| Bigfoot Trail Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,000.00 | North Coast | Siskiyou Wilderness Collaborative | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Del Norte County | California | http://bigfoottrail.org/ | To support a collaborative team that will maintain ten miles of the Bigfoot Trail in the Siskiyou Wilderness, keeping it accessible to hikers and building the conservation community in Del Norte County | More details |
| Breast Cancer Prevention Partners | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | California Non-Toxic Black Beauty Project: Community Leaders Training, Growth, & Recertification | Advocacy;Technology/Product/Service;Education | Alameda County;Los Angeles County;Orange County;Santa Clara County | California | http://www.bcpp.org | With this grant, BCPP will partner with Black Women for Wellness and Clearya to improve Black women’s health by expanding the reach & impact of our Non-Toxic Black Beauty Project. Building off their work completed with the 2021 Consumer Products Fund grant, they will continue to grow the list of safer Black beauty products as well as conduct train-the-trainer workshops for California Black sororities and National Coalition of 100 Black Women members to equip these civic and college leaders with tools to activate their constituencies. The project will also involve training California Black doulas to share this important info with new moms to prevent unsafe prenatal exposures. The project will raise awareness about toxic chemicals in beauty and personal care products marketed to Black women and advocate for systemic changes to address the racialized beauty standards and lack of regulation that perpetuate these unsafe exposures. | More details |
| Bunny Friend Neighborhood Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2023 | $1,000.00 | Louisiana | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | https://www.bunnyfriend.org/ | Mini-grant will be spend to purchase the a Microsoft Office License and Adobe License for Chrome computers that were purchased a couple of months ago. | More details | ||
| California Coastkeeper Alliance | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $50,000.00 | Santa Barbara Area (incl. Oxnard and Ventura) | Water Quality and Public Trust Protections for the Santa Ynez River | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Santa Barbara County | California | http://www.cacoastkeeper.org | California Coastkeeper Alliance (CCKA) will use this grant to investigate and develop a report to the County of Santa Barbara on how the County should regulate groundwater pumping to protect the Santa Ynez River’s water quality and public trust resources. California was one of the last states in the nation to legally recognize the connectivity between groundwater and surface water. When groundwater pumping is not managed appropriately, it results in the depletion of surface water from the nearby river, thus harming water quality and public trust resources such as the endangered steelhead trout. Recent legal victories on the Scott and Russian Rivers have established a strong precedent that it is illegal to allow groundwater pumping to adversely impact public trust resources. Therefore, CCKA will investigate the full extent of the impact of groundwater pumping on surface water flows, steelhead, and other public trust resources of in the Santa Ynez River watershed. Should CCKA determine that groundwater pumping is hydrologically impacting the Santa Ynez, they will hire an expert hydrologist to provide technical recommendations to the County on how they need to balance groundwater pumping in order to protect the water quality and public trust resources of the Santa Ynez. CCKA will rely on their experience in the Russian River watershed, where they were able to obtain a moratorium on new groundwater well permits in Sonoma County until a groundwater well ordinance was developed that ensured the County met its duties under the Public Trust. | More details |
| California Environmental Voters Education Fund | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2023 | $35,000.00 | Statewide | Building Public Awareness and Engagement for Environmental Protection and Biodiversity | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Statewide | California | https://envirovotersedfund.org/ | To increase public awareness of the importance of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and empower local communities – especially marginalized communities and communities of color – in land use decisions. To use digital education strategy, incorporating social media and advertisements, and engaged the media to pitch news topics to shift the public narrative around CEQA so that it is clear that it must remain a strong climate mitigation policy to ensure that communities build a resilient future for the next generation. They will also engage with coalition partners to develop a coordinated strategy to educate policymakers and build support for maintaining a strong CEQA. | More details |
| California Field School | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Alameda County | California | https://www.californiafieldschool.org/ | We are looking to update our digital work communication equipment and would use this grant towards a refurbished laptop. At CFS, laptops has offered us freedom and flexibility to plan our youth bike tours anywhere and anytime. No matter if we are local, planning future tours, or we are on bike tours - laptops have made communications, route mapping, meetings and, trip planning, etc. an essential and effective tool for our work. | More details | |
| California Greenworks | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $25,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Urban Forestry, South Los Angeles — Ballona Creek and Dominguez Channel | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Climate Change and Energy | Los Angeles County | California | http://www.californiagreenworks.org/ | California Greenworks (CGW) has been planting trees and implementing/creating environmental educational opportunities for residents of south LA county for over 20 years. To date, CGW has planted over 150 trees, created numerous Butterfly/Pollinator gardens in schools, educated 5000+ students, and helped bring green job training to stakeholders. This grant will fund three tree planting events in the summer, fall, and winter of 2024 in underserved communities in south LA. The locations of the tree plantings will be selected to ensure that the trees directly affect runoff and water quality of the Ballona Creek, Dominquez Channel, or other important watersheds in southern California, as well as addressing urban blight. CGW will use a US Forest Service developed toolkit called iTree to calculate key metrics such as stormwater filtered by inputting data on the tree species, size, bioregion, etc. After the trees are planted, CGW contracts with California Conservation Corps to maintain them for three years at which time the host cities take ownership of the trees. CGW also plans to launch a new outreach initiative at Cal State University Dominguez Hills to recruit students to be educated on healthy urban watersheds and trained to perform relevant data collection. | More details |
| California Greenworks | Los Angeles Community Water Justice Grants Program | 2023 | $27,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Urban Forestry, South Los Angeles— Ballona Creek and Dominguez Channel | Pollution Prevention;Other | Los Angeles | California | http://www.californiagreenworks.org/ | Project description, scope of work, deliverables as described in November 2022 Project update form which will be attached to contract. | More details |
| California Public Interest Research Group Education Fund | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | CALPIRG Education Fund’s Consumer Watchdog Program | Advocacy;Education | Statewide | California | https://pirg.org/california/edfund/ | In the digital age, new products, services, and technologies are being introduced into the marketplace every day, without enough oversight or consumer protection from regulators, or thought for the long-term impact on our communities. Online shopping provides a lucrative market for those selling counterfeit products on legitimate websites, and the rise of artificial intelligence further helps scammers, who can now create an image of a product like a car that doesn’t exist or send robocalls or texts that appear to be coming from a legitimate business or your bank. With this grant, the CALPIRG Education Fund will continue its work in several program areas to inform consumers about the problems ranging from counterfeit products, recall effectiveness, and planned obsolescence. CALPIRG Education Fund will first update their counterfeit product tip guides which will also include information on how to avoid AI-aided fraud and avoid scam robocalls and robotexts. They will keep helping consumers report counterfeit products to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), and the grant will further support the organization’s 38th annual Trouble of Toyland report which provides info on toys that are potentially dangerous or pose privacy concerns for children as well as spotlights companies are doing better at protecting children’s privacy. Other work under this grant will include continuing to inform consumers about dangerous product recalls, and the development of a report that explains the current recall process and provides recommendations for the CPSC and companies to improve their outreach. Finally, his project will educate consumers on the growing problem of planned obsolesce, provide Californians with tip guides on how to identify more durable and repairable items, and help the public inform companies about their preference for products that facilitate repair, repurposing, and durability. | More details |
| California Sportfishing Protection Alliance | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $22,800.00 | Central Valley | 2023 Bay-Delta Watershed Flow and Water Quality Protection and Enhancement | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice | Alameda County;Butte County;Colusa County;Contra Costa County;Fresno County;Glenn County;Madera County;Merced County;Sacramento County;San Joaquin County;Shasta County;Solano County;Stanislaus County;Sutter County;Tehama County;Yolo County;Yuba County | California | https://calsport.org/ | California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) has decades of experience providing advocacy and technical comments to the State Water Board and the Central Valley Regional Water Board. With this funding, CSPA will review, research, analyze, and comment extensively on the Staff Report for the update of the relevant portions of the Bay-Delta Plan, as well as disseminating information to the public on this administrative process through blogs and other communications. CPSA’s goal is to advocate for the State Water Board's adoption of regulatory standards that contain flows protective of the rivers and the Delta, as well as reservoir operational requirements that protect water temperatures downstream of major Sacramento Valley dams thereby protecting fish populations. As part of its Bay-Delta Plan advocacy, CSPA will seek the rejection of any “Voluntary Agreements” that allow for weaker flow limits. Additionally, CSPA will negotiate permit conditions with Sites Reservoir proponents and participate in the water rights hearing for Sites. The Sites Reservoir, if constructed, would divert up to 4200 cubic feet per second (cfs) of water from the Sacramento River to a new off stream reservoir west of Colusa. This project would harm fish and degrade water quality in the Sacramento River and the Delta, an outcome that could be avoided by advocating for rigorous permit conditions. Finally, CSPA has ongoing work advocating against past Temporary Urgency Change Petitions (TUCPs) and Temperature Management Plans (TMPs) that weakened water quality and temperature requirements on the Sacramento River. They will continue to build administrative cases against these previous TUCPs and inadequate TMPs and, if necessary, oppose any 2024 TUCPs and/or an inadequate 2024 TMP. | More details |
| California Urban Streams Alliance - The Stream Team | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $575.00 | Sierra Nevada | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Butte County;Glenn County;Mendocino County;Tehama County | California | http://www.thestreamteam.org/ | To attend the Waterkeeper Alliance Pacific Regional Summit. | More details | |
| California Urban Streams Alliance - The Stream Team | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Environmental Education;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Climate Change & Energy | Butte County;Glenn County;Mendocino County;Sonoma County | California | http://www.thestreamteam.org/ | To protect, enhance, manage, and restore the biological integrity of crucial California river systems while simultaneously providing educational opportunities about these ecosystems through community engagement in environmental stewardship. | More details |
| California Urban Streams Alliance - The Stream Team | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | North Coast | Is 6PPD-quinone Present in Stormwater Runoff Carried To The Gualala River Estuary? | Environmental Education;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Toxics & Environmental Health | Mendocino County | California | http://www.thestreamteam.org/ | To confirm the presence of 6PPD-quinone in stormwater runoff carried from Highway 1 to the Gualala River Estuary and advocate for green infrastructure enhancements that will clean the runoff before it reaches the river. | More details |
| Californians for Western Wilderness | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $1,500.00 | Statewide | Travel within California for Work with Various Coalitions | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Statewide | California | http://www.caluwild.org/ | To support travel to participate in land protection campaigns across the state, including the Molok Luyuk national monument campaign and work in the Eastern Sierra in the Bodie Hills and Conglomerate Mesa. | More details |
| Campesinas Unidas Del Valle De San Joaquin | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $4,500.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Environmental Education;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Kern County;Kings County;Tulare County | California | https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Nonprofit-Organization/Campesinas-unidas-Del-Valle-de-san-joaquin-101148844963934/ | To educate and support low-income farm working families on the environmental hazards affecting them on a daily basis and advocate for safe drinking water and a safe work environment without pesticides and other hazards. | More details |
| Cascade Forest Conservancy | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Mount St. Helens: No Place For a Mine | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health and Toxics;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Washington | www.cascadeforest.org | The Mount St. Helens: No Place For a Mine campaign works to protect the Green River, an upstream tributary to the Columbia River. Cascade Forest Conservancy has been able to prevent the construction of a mine in the Green River and its surrounding valley for over a decade through legal opposition. However, this legal strategy is not a long-term solution, and with this grant, they will refocus advocacy efforts on providing long-term and permanent protections for the river and its valley. An open-pit mine with toxic holding ponds in this seismically active area would pose a tremendous risk to water quality, wildlife, human health, recreation, and the economy - impacts that would certainly reverberate downstream. Protecting this valley is crucial and building a mine here would set a terrible precedent for millions of acres around the country that were purchased under the Land and Water Conservation Act. The Cascade Forest Conservancy will take a multi-pronged approach to protect this area, primarily focusing on a legislative mineral withdrawal. A secondary approach will be pursued with an administrative mineral withdrawal, supporting Tribal partners in the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and/or Yakama Nation should they pursue tribal resolution in advocating for an administrative withdrawal. Additionally, they will work with a local coalition to secure portions of the Green River and its tributaries an Outstanding Resource Water (ORW) designation under the Clean Water Act (CWA). | More details | ||
| Center for Environmental Health | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | California Consumer Right-to-Know Campaign | Education | Statewide | California | http://www.ceh.org | CEH’s mission is to uncover the truth about illegally undisclosed toxic chemicals and educate consumers about the threats these undisclosed substances pose to their health. Despite the proliferation of Prop 65 warnings on products, most California consumers do not know which chemicals are covered under the law, what warnings mean, what the health effects of exposures to these chemicals are, or what their rights are under this law. With this grant, CEH will assess illegally undisclosed chemical exposures from a variety of everyday products and then create education campaigns to inform consumers. The group will continue their investigation of Bisphenol A (BPA) in apparel and investigate additional products that may have BPA and other toxic chemicals subject to Prop 65 disclosures, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances known as PFAS that can persist in the environment and in our bodies. CEH will collaborate with community-based partners to bring this education to environmental justice communities, including low-income communities and communities of color that are already disproportionately impacted by toxic exposures and marketing of illegally undisclosed toxics in consumer products. By arming consumers, especially those in historically marginalized and underserved communities, with the tools to spot false claims and/or better understand warnings on products, CEH will advance consumer rights and education in California. | More details |
| Center for Food Safety | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Protecting the Columbia River by Ending Factory Farming in OR | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Justice;Environmental Health and Toxics | Oregon | www.centerforfoodsafety.org | Air quality and water quality often interact in unexpected ways. One of the major issues with factory farms in Oregon is the expulsion of particulate matter and gaseous pollutants that not only hurt air quality, but also deposit hazardous materials into surface waters. So-called aerial deposition is considered a discharge under the federal Clean Water Act, and the Center for Food Safety is currently addressing this novel issue in Oregon state court. This grant will be used to support that litigation which is expected to be appealed after the lower court rules. In addition, CFS will use the grant to build a campaign that leads up to the 2025 legislative session, titled the Year of Air and will advocate for regulation on the air pollutants (like ammonia and methane) from large CAFOs which impacts surface waters through direct deposition. CFS, along with its allies in Stand Up to Factory Farms and the Oregon Conservation Network, will seek to get a program off the ground and funded to address the air pollution and its direct deposition to waters through the legislature, building on the success of the SB 85 fight. | More details | ||
| Center for Whale Research | Orca Fund | 2023 | $75,000.00 | Oregon Coast; North Sound/Salish Sea | Linking Acoustics to Behavior to Inform SRKW Passive Acoustic Monitoring | Clallam County;Island County;Jefferson County;King County;Kitsap County;San Juan County;Skagit County;Snohomish County;Whatcom County | Washington | whaleresearch.com | Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) provides crucial information about the habitat use and distribution of wide-ranging marine mammal species, including southern resident killer whales. The southern residents are spending an increasing portion of time outside of their core summer habitat of the central Salish Sea, where most studies of their behavior and habitat use have been conducted, making remote monitoring methods like PAM more important than ever. However, a weakness of these systems compared to direct observation is a lack of detail regarding the way animals are using these areas. This is a crucial gap, as establishing priority areas for conservation action requires that managers not only know where southern residents spend time, but also which specific areas are important for key behaviors such as foraging, socializing, and mating. Towards that end, the Center for Whale Research (CWR) will pair fine-scale behavioral data with localized acoustic recordings. Using a towed acoustic array with newly developed techniques for call detection paired with tracking and behavioral observation of focal groups, CWR will collect detailed data related to southern resident vocal behavior. With this data, CWR will create statistical models that aim to classify behaviors from acoustic information. These models will be shared with agencies currently operating remote PAM arrays, particularly NOAA and DFO, to inform analyses of behavior-specific habitat usage throughout the southern residents’ range. | More details | |
| Clean Label Project | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in California's Women Infants and Children (WIC) Approved Products | Advocacy;Education | Statewide | California | https://www.cleanlabelproject.org/ | This project will evaluate California WIC-approved products (purchased with food vouchers) for endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). EDCs can interfere with the normal functioning of the endocrine system, leading to various adverse health effects, particularly in women, infants, and children. In women, exposure to EDCs has been linked to reproductive issues, such as menstrual irregularities, infertility, and early onset of menopause. It may also increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancers. In infants and children, exposure to EDCs can lead to developmental problems, such as early onset of puberty, altered brain development, and behavioral issues. The goal of the project is to: 1) investigate the presence of EDCs in WIC approved products, 2) publish and promote the findings in forums and languages that affected populations can access and understand, 3) raise awareness of harmful chemicals/substances present in foods disproportionately being purchased by disadvantaged communities in California, and 4) improve the health and well-being of women, infants, and children by reducing exposure to harmful chemicals in food and increasing access to safe, nutritious, and affordable food options. Clean Label Project will then work with community partners that are well positioned to share the findings and guide consumers to safter WIC products. | More details |
| Clover Valley Foundation | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Clover Valley | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Placer County | California | https://clovervalleyfoundation.org/ | To engage technical consultants and legal counsel to review and challenge a proposed development threatening Clover Valley in Rocklin, CA. | More details |
| Coalition for Wetlands and Forests | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2023 | $1,000.00 | New York | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | New York | http://www.sicwf.org/ | To purchase a new printer to replace the one we use now which is about 15 years old. We will also purchase an external hard drive that updates automatically. | More details | ||
| Columbia River Environmental | PNW Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | Pacific Northwest; Columbia River | General Support | Environmental Education | Oregon | https://columbiariverenvironmental.org/ | Columbia River Environmental is a relatively new organization devoted to marine debris removal and prevention, with a specific focus on Styrofoam and Styrene pollutants. CRE will provide educational events, outreach to the public regarding appropriate marine debris disposal and prevention, host cleanup events in and around the Astoria, OR, and promote recycling initiatives that will help prevent waste streams into the Columbia River. Projects will be conducted along the mouth of the Columbia River, encompassing small watersheds in both Washington and Oregon. CRE intends to measure the effectiveness of its debris removal and prevention strategies through data collection and analysis in critical areas and adapt as needed. | More details | |
| Columbia Riverkeeper | Orca Fund | 2023 | $55,000.00 | Columbia River | Linkages between Columbia River restoration and Southern Resident Orca recovery. | Asotin County;Benton County;Clallam County;Clark County;Columbia County;Cowlitz County;Franklin County;Garfield County;Grays Harbor County;Island County;Jefferson County;King County;Kitsap County;Klickitat County;Lincoln County;Mason County;Pacific County;Pierce County;San Juan County;Skagit County;Skamania County;Snohomish County;Thurston County;Wahkiakum County;Walla Walla County;Whatcom County;Whitman County; Clatsop County;Columbia County;Coos County;Curry County;Douglas County;Gilliam County;Harney County;Hood River County;Lake County;Lane County;Lincoln County;Morrow County;Multnomah County;Sherman County;Tillamook County;Umatilla County;Union County;Wallowa County;Wasco County | Oregon | http://www.columbiariverkeeper.org | Columbia Riverkeeper will leverage existing salmon and orca population health models to quantify the impact of Lower Snake River dam removal on Southern Resident Orca recovery. Specifically, Columbia Riverkeeper will retain the experts necessary to develop a scientifically defensible estimate of how increased Spring Chinook abundance would affect SRO recovery and survival if the Lower Snake River Dam were removed. Riverkeeper will disseminate this report, and the findings it contains, through earned media, social media, direct communications with its members, and direct communications to regional decision-makers including fish and wildlife managers and elected leaders. Riverkeeper will use this report—along with two other reports to be produced simultaneously on the evaporation losses and methane emissions from Lower Snake River reservoirs—to strengthen the political case for Lower Snake dam removal. Ultimately, Riverkeeper seeks to increase regional and national awareness of the need for Lower Snake River dam removal to recover salmon and Southern Resident Orca populations. | More details | |
| Columbia Slough Watershed Council | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | CSWC Young Environmental Leaders | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Education;Environmental Justice;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Oregon | https://www.columbiaslough.org/ | Columbia Slough Watershed Council (CSWC) will use this grant for workforce development programs that engage youth in planting trees, removing garbage, and learning about restoration in the Slough. CSWC will host or provide training and expertise for a series of youth-focused green job and skill development opportunities. This grant will include the following activities to improve water quality in Columbia Slough: (1) hosting the Portland Opportunities and Industrialization Center for 3 summer litter cleanups via canoe; (2) support of Multnomah Youth Cooperative planting events focused on applied job skill building where students will learn about and work on planting and care of native plants, mulching practices, and building rain and pollinator gardens; (3) participation in the Annual Vanport Planting in partnership with the Blueprint Foundation to assist in ongoing efforts to provide resources and mentoring to Black youth in Portland to diversify the environmental sector; (4) hosting of field days at restoration sites in the watershed in partnership with Youth for Parkrose, where students will be paid to provide neighborhood enhancements, gain job skills, and learn about local natural areas; (5) working with Northwest Youth Corps to provide at least 2 weeks of summertime green workforce development by engaging with students in East County and work on non-indigenous plant removal, mulching, garbage clean-up, and other stewardship activities of restoration sites. | More details | ||
| Comite Progreso de Lamont | Anthony Grassroots Prize | 2023 | $1,000.00 | Central Valley | Comite Progreso de Lamont | Kings County | California | https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community-Organization/Comite-Progreso-de-Lamont-1441249392556175/ | In recognition of their work improving the quality of life for Lamont residents by building a collective community voice to advocate for change. | More details | |
| Comite Progreso de Lamont | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Environmental Education;Climate Change & Energy;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | Kern County | California | https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community-Organization/Comite-Progreso-de-Lamont-1441249392556175/ | To advocate for environmental health protections and community investments in the Kern County budget process, ensure proper implementation of the county’s planned flood mitigation efforts and participate in the Arvin/Lamont AB617 process to improve local air quality. | More details |
| Comite Progreso de Lamont | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $525.00 | Central Valley | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Kern County | California | https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community-Organization/Comite-Progreso-de-Lamont-1441249392556175/ | For a full day in person training including the topics of issue resolution, communications, and organizing/recruiting skills | More details | |
| Committee for a Better Arvin | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $575.00 | Central Valley | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Kern County | California | https://www.facebook.com/betterarvin/ | To provide an all-day training to the Committee for a Better Arvin alongside its sister committees in Shafter and Lamont. Using the grant, expenses for food, travel, and supplies would be covered. The training would be also coincide with capacity-building activities in order to strengthen the relationship between the three committees who do environmental justice work in Kern County. Specifically, the training would also be used to develop the skills of the staff and strengthen the camaraderie between the three Kern County committees. | More details | |
| Committee for a Better Arvin | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Climate Change & Energy;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | Kern County | California | https://www.facebook.com/betterarvin/ | To advocate for environmental justice for disadvantaged communities in the San Joaquin Valley by participating in the AB- 617 implementation process for the city of Arvin, advocating for a state pesticide application notification system, and providing community input on the Kern County budget. | More details |
| Committee for a Better Shafter | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Climate Change & Energy;Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | Kern County | California | To advocate for environmental health and environmental justice by participating in the Shafter AB-617 steering committee, defend oil and gas setback regulations, and watchdog industrial development plans to reduce health impacts and maximize community benefits. | More details | |
| Committee for a Better Shafter | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $575.00 | Central Valley | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Kern County | California | For a full day in-person capacity development training provided by CRPE on conflict resolution, organizing/recruiting skills. and how to identify other people communication characteristics and how to better communicate with them and identify better ways to engage them in our committee activities. | More details | ||
| Communities for a Healthy Bay | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Joining Forces: Strengthening Local Social Justice Efforts for Clean Water in Commencement Bay | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Climate Change & Energy;Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Pierce County | Washington | http://healthybay.org | Communities for a Healthy Bay (CHB) leverages local policy processes and campaigns to educate decision-makers to make lasting change in Tacoma’s Tideflats. CHB will take a three-pronged approach to reducing industrial pollution in Tacoma’s waterways. First, CHB will continue to advance and uphold environmental protections in and near the Tideflats by commenting on industrial permits and other decisions by the government and advancing land use policy changes in Tacoma through the Tideflats Subarea Plan. The Tideflats Subarea Plan provides a venue for proactive visioning for the Tacoma Tideflats. Second, CHB will leverage current economic development planning and activities to focus on developing a sustainable, clean industry. CHB is a member of the City’s committee to implement the Green Economy Strategy and, as such, CHB will work to build a clean and sustainable business community. Finally, CHB will partner with La Resistencia and UW-Tacoma to highlight the public health risks for detainees at the Northwest Detention Center. CHB will investigate pollution in the Tideflats tied to detainees’ health problems, and work with La Resistencia and UW-Tacoma to raise awareness about these issues with the goal of improving the transparency of pollution data, improve environmental protections, and detainee health. | More details |
| Community Action Project | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $4,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Climate Change & Energy | Calaveras County | California | http://calaverascap.com | To protect and improve the natural environments in Calaveras County by empowering the community to participate in local government planning and land use decisions. CAP will proceed with litigation against the 2019 County General Plan, engage in the GHG reduction plan and support the Copperopolis community plan. | More details |
| Community Action Project | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Climate Change & Energy | Calaveras County | California | http://calaverascap.com | To protect open space and promote sustainable development through citizen engagement in planning and land use decisions and litigation of the Calaveras County General Plan. | More details |
| Community Environmental Advocates Foundation | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Environmental Education;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Climate Change & Energy | Nevada County | California | http://www.cea-nc.org/ | To oppose the reopening of the Idaho-Maryland gold mine though citizen advocacy, public outreach and participation in the county's environmental review process. | More details |
| Community Environmental Advocates Foundation | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | Stop the Idaho-Maryland Mine | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Nevada County | California | http://www.cea-nc.org/ | To oppose the reopening of the Idaho-Maryland gold mine though citizen advocacy, technical analysis of environmental impacts, public outreach, and education. | More details |
| Community Governance Partnership | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2023 | $35,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Placer County Area Polling Project | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Other | Nevada County;Placer County;Sacramento County | California | https://www.cgovpartnership.org/ | To conduct polling and public opinion research of 2000 independent and decline-to-state voters in Placer, Nevada and Northern Sacramento County to provide key data on messaging and issue focus. The goal of the project is to discover what aspects of messaging around conservation, community, and regional social and environmental issues gain public traction and resonate with a centrist and independent audience. The data and related analysis will have broad geographical applications and will be shared with funders and organizations seeking to develop forward-looking conservation policies in the Placer County area and in other regions of the state. | More details |
| Community Soil Foundation | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $4,000.00 | Russian River | General Support | Environmental Education;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security | Sonoma County | California | https://www.communitysoil.org/ | To offer land-based education in regenerative agriculture, habitat restoration, and volunteer-driven fieldwork at the Larkfield Community Garden & Learning Center. | More details |
| Comunidades Aliadas Tomando Accion | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $2,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Climate Change & Energy;Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security;Environmental Justice | Fresno County;Kern County;Tulare County | California | https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100081988801733 | To engage residents of Arvin around the environmental issues that affect their health, from contaminated air, water and toxic pesticides to climate change; and empower community leaders to advocate for change. | More details |
| Consumer Action | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | Consumer Action - 2023 Consumer Products Fund | Advocacy;Technology/Product/Service;Education;Other (explain below); Consumer opinion poll and telecom website research survey | Statewide | California | http://www.consumer-action.org/ | With this funding, Consumer Action will conduct an opinion poll to see how satisfied Californians and others are with warranties of computer or telephone companies in California. The group will also conduct a survey of the websites of companies selling computers or telephones in California to check accessibility, placement of warranty information, understandability, and ease to submit claims. Driven by the poll’s findings, the group will conduct stakeholder education including media interviews, update and translate warranty fact sheets, and develop five videos. They will also conduct numerous trainings for community-based organizations. The group will publish a report and host an online briefing for industry professionals on best practices for sharing warranty information and processing claims. The project’s strategy is to use live and print education (webinars, publications, media interviews, etc.) to increase Californians’ awareness of telecom rights so that consumers know how to file a service or product claim and where to complain if the issues are unresolved. Consumer Action will focus on communities of color, servicemembers, as well as seniors in their outreach and education on warranties. | More details |
| Consumer Watchdog | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | Truth In Privacy And AI | Advocacy;Education | Statewide | California | https://www.consumerwatchdog.org | Corporations make promises and warranties in their marketing and labeling about respecting consumers' privacy choices. Although implementation of recently promulgated regulations under the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) have been delayed by a legal challenge, the California Privacy Protection Agency will continue its rulemaking and determine the degree to which companies comply with the new law and live up to their promises of protecting consumers’ privacy. Last year, Consumer Watchdog completed the Truth In Privacy Project which charted the development of the new rules in conjunction with a high-profile public education campaign to explain standards different companies and industries are espousing and the standards required by the CPRA. With this grant, CW will continue its public information campaign with an emphasis on tracking the privacy threats associated with AI as the California Privacy Protection Agency continues to promulgate rules in this area. The Truth In Privacy and AI Project will also directly educate consumers about their rights under new privacy laws and to make the public aware of the need for such regulation. CW will write several reports detailing the dangers of AI, including apps like Chat GPT, and create four videos breaking down the findings of the reports for the general public. Consumer Watchdog will promote the results of its research through another high-profile media campaign with the goal of helping the public understand the threats associated with the emerging technology and stay informed about the evolution of regulations that will affect technology products in California. | More details |
| Coyotl + Macehualli | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.instagram.com/coyotl.macehualli/ | To advocate for conservation, remediation and decolonization of our relationship with natural resources and plant and animal relatives within our community. | More details |
| Cudahy Alliance For Justice | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County | California | To provide opportunities for students and community to develop social skills, communication, teamwork, responsibility and environmental education through an alliance with Cudahy schools to establish a community garden and green the campus with drought resistant plants. | More details | |
| Del Amo Action Committee | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $25,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Dominguez Channel Phase 1 Revitalization Plan | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Los Angeles County | California | https://delamoactioncommittee.org/ | West Carson is an environmental justice community that continues to be overburdened by the addition of warehouses, increasing truck traffic, road deterioration, and air pollution. The Dominguez Channel, a critical watershed in Southeast Los Angeles, runs through the community in several locations and is heavily impacted by local industries and runoff as well as pollution from unrestrained littering in the area. The measures that have been taken to ensure that trash cannot enter the channel are few, far between, and wholly inefficient. This project will allow the Del Amo Action Committee (DAAC) to take the lead in working with various stakeholders, including L.A. County Public Works, L.A. County Sanitation District, and the L.A. County Transportation Authority, to make improvements to a filth ridden Dominguez Channel intersection at the corner Torrance Blvd. and Vermont Ave. This area acts as an entrance to the Dominguez Channel watershed on both side of this major highway and DAAC has observed the daily flow of trash into the channel from this intersection. The primary goal of this project is to restore the area and construct fencing or another barrier to keep trash out of the channel. DAAC will reach out to stakeholders and develop community focus groups to generate project plans including design, implementation, and maintenance. As the project comes together, DAAC also hopes to leverage the restored site as an educational tool where, through signage and workshops, they can continue to generate community understandings around the impacts on human and ecosystem health of polluted waterways. Ideally, this project will serve as phase 1 of a broader effort as DAAC evaluates other sections of Dominguez Channel in the area and identifies other zones that need similar revitalization. | More details |
| Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Longfellow Creek Basin Restoration and Community Engagement | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation;Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | King County | Washington | https://dnda.org/ | The Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association (DNDA) organizes local volunteers to implement community and environmental restoration projects. DNDA will complete its final phase of construction on the Delridge Wetland Park, located in the Longfellow Creek watershed. This park will act as a functioning outdoor classroom with opportunities for students to learn about watersheds and complete a watershed systems-based project to foster a stronger connection to urban wetlands and creeks. DNDA will also expand urban forest restoration in and adjacent to wetlands and streams by bringing additional neighborhood youth into Delridge urban greenspaces to learn the impacts of environmental awareness and complete habitat restoration projects. Finally, DNDA will lead an Environmental Justice Summer Youth Program, which will provide a paid opportunity for high school-aged youth from Delridge’s High Point community to connect with local environmental issues, explore the history of the land, complete environmental restoration projects in the Delridge wetland zone, and meet other organizations and community groups who are engaging in similar activities. | More details |
| Duwamish Alive! Coalition | PNW Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $10,000.00 | Pacific Northwest; Central Puget Sound | General Support | Environmental Education;Environmental Health and Toxics;Environmental Justice;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | King County | Washington | www.duwamishalive.org | Duwamish Alive! Coalition provides community engagement and volunteer opportunities for the care and stewardship of the Duwamish River and surrounding communities. The Coalition will conduct restoration activities at 15 sites along the Green-Duwamish Watershed as well as Longfellow Creek. The Coalition will engage volunteers and homeowners in maintenance of creek and riverbanks, planting of native species, removal of invasive species, water quality monitoring, and outdoor education for local schools, including water quality and soil testing. Further, the Coalition will host community education and cultural events in partnership with the Duwamish tribe. Results will be tracked with metrics of sites, volunteers engaged, work accomplished as well as engaging with new homeowners, holding a neighborhood gathering about the program, developing ecosystem related resources for homeowners which foster stewardship. | More details |
| EarthCorps | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Commencement Bay: Restoration of Squally Beach and Yowkwala Sites | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | Pierce County | Washington | http://www.earthcorps.org | EarthCorps is engaged in community-based restoration projects throughout Puget Sound and is currently leading an effort in the coastal area and surrounding watersheds of Commencement Bay. Earthcorps will begin restoration activities, in conjunction with the Puyallup Tribe, on Yowkwala and Squally Beach. Earthcorps will remove invasive species and plant native trees and shrubs in Yowkwala’s upland forests which will help prevent water runoff into Puget Sound and soil erosion. Earthcorps will also monitor past years’ work on adjacent project sites within the upland forest area. On Squally Beach, Earthcorps will remove aggressive, noxious weeds and conduct other place-specific restoration activities in the intertidal marsh area which is essential habitat for a complex food web upon which local marine life thrives. The specific noxious weeds in the project site will require years or mitigation efforts to allow local flora and fauna to thrive. | More details |
| Earthrise Law Center at Lewis & Clark College | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Legal Advocacy and Outreach to Combat Temperature and Toxics in the Mainstem Columbia River | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Justice;Environmental Health and Toxics;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Oregon | http://law.lclark.edu/centers/earthrise/ | This grant will support the work of Earthrise Law Center (Earthrise) and Northwest Environmental Advocates (NWEA). Both organizations will work closely together to address two major water quality problems facing the Columbia River: temperature and toxics. In recent years, massive numbers of migrating salmon and steelhead have died from high river temperatures, making the need for cold-water refuges—formed where certain tributaries empty cooler water into the mainstem—an absolute necessity for their survival. Further, toxic contamination, often measured in fish, continues to be high, as actions are not taken to curtail pollution sources—both regulated discharges, as well as effectively unregulated polluted runoff from farms and logging. First, Earthrise and NWEA will build on decades’ worth of successful advocacy that has improved the regulatory regime related to the fundamental temperature requirements that impact cold-water salmonid species. These fish are not only greatly imperiled, but they also serve as important parts of the culture and the subsistence of Pacific Northwest communities, including treaty tribes and smaller towns. This work will include two lawsuits, and related community outreach, to address temperature in the mainstem Columbia and the state and federal governments’ failed approaches to this emergency. Second, the grant partners will address the ever-growing problem of unregulated and under-regulated toxic pollution into the Columbia through use of administrative petitioning. Additionally, the grant partners will pilot new enforcement actions through work with tribes adjacent to and in the Columbia River. | More details | ||
| East Side of the River | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Environmental Education;Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County | California | https://eastsideoftheriver.org/ | To empower BIPOC communities through nature-based education, indigenous ceremonies, art classes and mural painting, nature cleanups, mentorship and community activism. ESR uses environmental justice and cultural self-determination to address issues of criminality and gang violence in the most vulnerable segments of South and East Los Angeles. | More details |
| Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; Nationwide;California | Assessing the Assessments: Maximizing the Effectiveness of Algorithmic & Privacy Risk Assessments | Advocacy;Education | Statewide | California | epic.org | EPIC was established in 1994 to secure the fundamental right to privacy in the digital age for all people through advocacy, research, and litigation. With this grant, EPIC seeks to develop model privacy and algorithmic risk assessments and other materials to educate consumers and to promote best practices for entities processing personal data. A risk assessment is an analysis of how personal data will be collected, processed, stored, and transferred by a business. When implemented properly, risk assessments force businesses to carefully evaluate and disclose the risks to consumers of planned data processing—including risks associated with automated decision-making—and can deter businesses from adopting harmful data practices in the first place. The resources developed as part of this project will be tools for both education and advocacy. On the education front, the findings will educate consumers about the assessments that businesses must conduct to comply with California Consumer Privacy Act and other relevant privacy laws. The group will also provide consumers and businesses with sample assessments they can use as a reference and ensure that consumers have the greatest possible access to clear, comprehensive information about how businesses are processing their personal data. Given that the CCPA is currently the strongest comprehensive state privacy law in the country, EPIC’s effective analysis of CCPA-required risk assessments is key to both informing consumers about how their data is being processed and to deterring data abuses on the part of businesses. | More details |
| Environmental Council of Sacramento | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2023 | $34,550.00 | Sacramento Valley | Save Sacramento's Farmland! | Environmental Health and Toxics;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Climate Change and Energy;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Sacramento County;Sutter County | California | https://www.ecosacramento.net/ | To defeat the proposed development of the Airport South Industrial Project (ASIP) in the Natomas Basin through extensive outreach and engagement with the public and elected officials. ASIP seeks to turn 450 acres of agricultural land into over 6 million square feet of industrial warehouses. It would be inconsistent with City and County General Plans by developing land zoned for agriculture. And it would be inconsistent with the community’s intention to preserve habitat, agriculture, and open space, as expressed in the Natomas Basin Habitat Conservation Plan (NBHCP) and the Sacramento County Urban Services Boundary, both established in the 1990s. Stopping ASIP could curtail future development of other, much larger projects that present similar issues. Environmental Council of Sacramento will conduct extensive outreach and engagement with the public and elected officials to build an organized and motivated public response to the DEIR. | More details |
| Environmental Science Center | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $20,000.00 | South Puget Sound | From Salmon Heroes to Schoolyard Heroes | Environmental Education | King County | Washington | http://envsciencecenter.org/ | This grant will support a multifaceted program that will bring water quality education and water stewardship projects to thousands of students, teachers, and families in south King County. The 'Salmon Heroes' student component is a four-part field trip program for 4th-8th grade students, delivered by the Environmental Science Center’s naturalists. The 'Schoolyard Heroes' teacher professional development component is a four-part workshop series designed to give 4th-8th grade teachers the knowledge, skills, and tools they need to confidently and effectively engage students in water quality stewardship projects on their schoolyards and adjacent creeks. Through this combined approach, ESC hopes to engage students in meaningful experiences connecting with and stewarding the land and water where they live. | More details |
| Fairplay | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $75,000.00 | Nationwide | Protecting Young People’s Privacy in the Metaverse | Consumer Privacy; Advocacy;Technology/Product/Service | Nationwide | https://fairplayforkids.org/ | Protecting Young People’s Privacy in the Metaverse project will determine whether existing federal privacy and consumer protection laws can effectively ensure young people’s privacy rights in virtual reality (VR) environments. Fairplay will use this grant to conduct original research to identify privacy risks to minors on VR apps for Meta’s Quest 3 headset and analyze whether the privacy policies and practices of Meta and the VR app developers violate the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act or Section V of the FTC Act. If the group’s analysis finds violations of existing law, they will file a Request for Investigation of Meta and/or VR app developers. Should existing laws be deemed insufficient to adequately protect children and teens from the unique privacy threats of VR environments, the group will draft model legislation and share it with federal lawmakers for consideration. In addition to these tasks, Fairplay will educate consumers about the privacy risks for young people through either media coverage of the anticipated FTC complaint or by releasing a report to accompany model legislation. | More details | |
| Families for a Future | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $3,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Environmental Education;Climate Change & Energy;Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County;Orange County | California | https://www.families4future.com/ | To build an inter-generational, multiracial, family-centered, youth-led movement to face the climate chaos with love, hope, and courage in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. | More details |
| Fight for the Future Education Fund | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $75,000.00 | Nationwide | Stopping the spread of consumer biometric surveillance | Consumer Privacy;Human Rights & Civil Liberties; Advocacy;Education | Nationwide | https://www.fftfef.org/ | Fight for the Future Education Fund (FFEF) has long been advocating against broad biometric surveillance and campaigning to stop its current spread and future adoption. Biometric tech, including facial recognition technology, palm scanning, and emotional Artificial Intelligence (AI), is unlike any other form of surveillance. Its automated monitoring of entire populations is nearly impossible to avoid or opt-out of, and its chilling effect on autonomy and privacy includes such harms as: invasive tracking of consumer behavior; infringement on freedom of movement, protest, and speech; discriminatory misidentification of Black and brown people; and unwarranted use by law enforcement. It also creates myriad chances for data breaches and unauthorized data collecting, sharing, and selling. FFEF will use this grant to focus on schools, where biometric tech, particularly facial recognition technology is rapidly spreading, and where use of this tech disproportionately affects vulnerable communities, including children of color. The group will educate administrators, parents, teachers, student’s and children’s rights groups about the ways in which surveillance technologies such as those increasingly being used to monitor attendance and as “anti-cheating” e-proctoring software are proliferating. FFEF will also mobilize these key constituents to help stop their spread and educate the larger public about the increasing use of biometric surveillance at sports and live events, travel and retail establishments, as well as by the auto industry. | More details | |
| Friends of Ballona Wetlands | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Watershed Protection Project | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.ballonafriends.org/ | Friends of Ballona Wetlands (FBW) has been working in the Ballona Wetlands for over 30 years and is the only nonprofit agency permitted to do habitat restoration in the Ecological Reserve. The Watershed Protection Project is a multi-faceted approach that seeks to strengthen water quality and engage community members through restoration work, education, and advocacy. For this grant, FBW will host at least five restoration events each month, leveraging its 2,500 volunteers to remove at least 31 tons of non-native plants and solid waste and to seed more than 600 native plants within the wetlands ecosystem. Volunteers and staff will monitor those plants as well as the more than 23 special status and endangered species found in the Reserve. Additionally, FBW coordinates two educational programs. Explore Ballona! provides curriculum and field trips to more than 5,000 students to learn about watershed protection, while ECO Quest trains high school-age students to prepare for environmental careers, many of which will relate to water quality work. Finally, FBW helps guarantee water quality through its advocacy work, which focuses on increasing capture of urban runoff upstream, eliminating the use of harmful pesticides and fertilizers that end up in waterways, and advocating for wetlands restoration across Los Angeles. | More details |
| Friends of Fife Creek | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $2,500.00 | Russian River | General Support | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Sonoma County | California | https://www.communitycleanwater.org/ | To protect Fife Creek, undertake riparian enhancements, conduct trash cleanups, monitor creek health, and replace invasive plants with native plants, which will provide much needed habitat to endangered and threatened butterfly species. | More details |
| Friends of Mission Canyon | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $6,000.00 | Santa Barbara Area (incl. Oxnard and Ventura) | SCE Accountability Project | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Santa Barbara County | California | http://friendsofmissioncanyon.org/ | To hold the utility Southern California Edison accountable through citizen advocacy for major environmental harms associated with road maintenance in the Mission Creek Watershed. | More details |
| Friends of Sausal Creek | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $20,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Restoration and Community Access to Sausal Creek at Barry Place | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Climate Change and Energy;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Alameda County | California | www.sausalcreek.org | Barry Place is a public City of Oakland-owned restoration site managed by Friends of Sausal Creek (FOSC) at the intersection of East 27 Street and Barry Place in the flatlands of Oakland. This 0.19-acre site is one of the only City-owned creek access points in the lower Sausal Creek Watershed. For over 20 years, FOSC has worked at Barry Place to increase native species biodiversity, restore the riparian habitat, improve creek access, reduce litter, improve water quality, and promote greater public awareness of Sausal Creek within the surrounding neighborhood. This project seeks to expand this work in several ways. First, FOSC will develop a revegetation plan with the goal of restoring the health of the riparian habitat of Sausal Creek at Barry Place. The implementation of the revegetation plan will offer a model for creekside residents by demonstrating how native plants appropriate to the habitat can enhance creekside soil stability and biodiversity. FOSC will also expand their capacity for water quality monitoring at Barry Place, which experiences many challenges including biohazards, and illegal dumping (including oil and large household items) in the creek. Native rainbow trout are found in this stretch, and consistent water quality is key to their survival. In order to help reduce illegal dumping and create new accessible green space in a neighborhood that lacks it, FOSC will also undertake a design and planning process for a pocket park. The local community will be deeply involved in conjunction with a highly qualified environmental consulting firm. Finally, FOSC will continue to organize and implement community volunteer workdays to help steward the site and build connections between the diverse volunteers throughout the East Bay who care about Barry Place and Sausal Creek. | More details |
| Friends Of Skagit Beaches | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | Coastal Puget Sound & North Sound Citizen Science Stormwater Monitoring | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Island County;King County;Skagit County;Snohomish County;Whatcom County | Washington | skagitbeaches.org | This organization has an existing program for volunteer citizen science stormwater monitoring, and this grant will allow stormwater monitoring to occur in three additional cities, Bellingham, Everett, and Shoreline WA. Volunteers will be recruited, trained, and outfitted with equipment, and city mayors and stormwater managers will be contacted regarding the group’s planned stormwater monitoring to invite their collaboration. Volunteers will submit data to the volunteer/data coordinator for all project towns, and monthly reports will be issued to local stormwater managers and ECY NPDES permit manager. Stormwater monitoring will be started around October 2023 and continue through June 2024. The group’s long-term goal is to expand their partnership with volunteers, stormwater managers, and WA Department of Ecology staff to conduct stormwater monitoring around Northern Puget Sound/Salish Sea with a focus on areas where National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Phase 2 permits have been issued. Lastly, Friends will initiate work to develop expanded outreach tools using social media and updates to website capabilities. This will expand public awareness about issues related to stormwater pollution. | More details |
| Friends of the Los Angeles River | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $35,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Source to Sea | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.folar.org | Since 1986, Friends of the LA River (FoLAR) has led the largest annual urban river cleanup in the country - over the years, 78,000 Angelenos have removed over 1.6 million pounds (800 tons) of trash and hundreds of thousands of gallons of invasive species from along the LA River. Their Source to Sea Watershed Education program offers 40 classes of K-12 students access to immersive standards-based STEM education, which includes an interactive field trip to the LA River. Priority is given to schools with the highest % of low-income students (measured by % eligible for Free or Reduced Price Meals) – a group historically under-represented in STEM. This grant will allow FoLAR to incorporate a habitat restoration and river cleanup component to the traditional field trips for the first time ever. Habitat Restoration will take place at the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve as one of three locations depending on the school location. Students will engage in removing invasive species of weeds that threaten the natural riparian ecosystem in this watershed park that is at the head of our 51-mile LA River. These restoration trips will be a part of a comprehensive curriculum focused on teaching the history of the river, components of the riparian ecosystems, the connection between the environment and public health, and STEM skills such as water sampling. | More details |
| Friends of the Lost Coast | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $6,500.00 | North Coast | Outreach, Technology & Diversity Project | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Environmental Justice | Humboldt County;Mendocino County | California | https://lostcoast.org/ | To implement critical organizational growth initiatives including administrative support for outreach and fundraising, a website revamp, and Spanish translation of FOLC’s educational materials and programming. | More details |
| Friends of the Santa Clara River | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $6,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Preserve Floodplains to manage Climate induced floods and Promote Groundwater Recharge | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Climate Change & Energy | Los Angeles County;Ventura County | California | https://fscr.org/ | To oppose L.A. County's approval of new Floodway Maps along the Santa Clara River near Newhall Ranch, which expose sensitive habitat to future development. | More details |
| Friends of the Swainson's Hawk | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | Sacramento Valley | Protect the Natomas Basin Habitat Plan for Threatened Species | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security | Sacramento County;Sutter County | California | http://www.swainsonshawk.org | To coordinate legal and technical experts to challenge a new industrial development that threatens key wildlife habitat in the Natomas Basin, northwest of Sacramento. | More details |
| Futurewise | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | Protecting Salmon Habitat and Wetlands in Snohomish County | Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Snohomish County | Washington | https://www.futurewise.org/ | Futurewise will participate and strengthen upcoming comprehensive plan and Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO) updates in Snohomish County. In 2024, Snohomish County will update its comprehensive plan and associated development regulations that will shape land use patterns in the county for decades to come and will have a profound impact on waterways and water quality in the Central and North Sound. Critical Areas Ordinances accompany the comprehensive plan update cycle and are one of our best tools for protecting waterways from pollution and conserving wildlife habitat from development. A strong CAO in Snohomish County will improve water quality in the Sauk, Skagit, Stillaguamish, and Snohomish river basins, as well as protect wildlife habitat throughout the county. Futurewise will shape the adoption of the comprehensive plan update and CAO in Snohomish County by focusing on submitting comment letters, organizing community members to provide public comment, providing technical guidance to county staff, and conducting community outreach and communications efforts to educate the public about the comprehensive plan and CAO update. | More details |
| Garden of the Salish Sea Curriculum | PNW Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $10,000.00 | Pacific Northwest; North Sound/Salish Sea | General Support | Children & Youth;Environmental Education;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Thurston County;Whatcom County | Washington | https://www.gardensalishsea.org/ | Garden of the Salish Sea Curriculum partners with the Pacific Shellfish Institute in Washington's Whatcom County, to provide K-12 shellfish-based ocean education focused on stewardship, hands-on learning, field experience, and personal responsibility. GSSC focuses on North Sound water quality by emphasizing education about waste, its effects on climate and the ocean, and waste reduction. GSSC will partner with Whatcom County schools to educate about stewardship, marine debris, and waterfront recycling audits through classroom lessons and hands-on field trips that will include removal of trash on beaches and adjacent areas. Ocean plastics and waste reduction education will be added to and expanded upon in the curriculum provided by GSSC and delivered to at least 600 K-12 students who will engage in direct marine debris removal. The curriculum culminates in the Salish Sea Challenge program which provide high school and college internships that promote careers in sustainable aquaculture, marine science, and water quality. | More details |
| Gardena Willows Wetlands Preserve | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $2,500.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.gardenawillows.org/ | To provide environmental stewardship and public education about the Gardena Willows Wetland Preserve, the last intact remnant of the former Dominguez Slough, an important vernal marsh and riparian forest in L.A. County. | More details |
| Gill Tract Farm Coalition | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education;Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security;Environmental Justice | Alameda County | California | https://www.gilltractfarm.org/ | To sustain their volunteer-run farm community's social-justice-guided agroecology programs and activities by staffing a part-time employee and intern to provide stability within the collective. | More details |
| Gill Tract Farm Coalition | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Alameda County | California | https://www.gilltractfarm.org/ | We will use these funds to pay a consultant to advise us on strategic planning at our annual retreat this spring. We are excited to work with this consultant, a long time friend of the farm, in discussions on the political, social, economic, and ecological landscape. | More details | |
| Great Peninsula Conservancy | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Other Washington Watersheds; | Mulch circles: a novel approach for restoring climate resilient forests | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Education;Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Kitsap County | Washington | www.greatpeninsula.org | Great Peninsula Conservancy’s "Mulch Circles" Forest Restoration Project will implement an innovative habitat reforestation technique to restore 2-acres of pastureland to mixed riparian coniferous habitat at the 34-acre Martha John Creek – Seman Preserve. The Preserve protects salmon habitat along Martha John Creek, which flows into Port Gamble Bay, an estuary with 1.5 miles of undeveloped shoreline including the nearby 3,500-acre Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park. Establishing functioning upland forestland in the area will add riparian habitat and improve existing habitat thereby improve water quality discharges into the creek. The group will follow the Preserve’s Forest management plan but alter the methodology to include low impact strategies such as mowing, minimizing herbicide use, creating mulch circles, and planting (through the mulch). The group anticipates that the mulch planting will improve seedling survival due to increased soil moisture retention and suppression of competition by exotic pasture grasses. Additionally, this project will have a public engagement component in the form of organized field trips. Led by GPC’s staff and AmeriCorps members, students and volunteers will be directed to collect data and compare growth and mortality measurements of plantings within and beyond the mulch circles. | More details |
| Greater Treme Consortium, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2023 | $1,000.00 | Louisiana | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | https://greatertreme.org/ | To reestablish GTC website so that it can become interactive and informative to everyone who visits. Most importantly, the website will provide staff with additional and essential IT skills. | More details | ||
| Green River Coalition | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Other Washington Watersheds; Soos Creek Basin | Lower, Middle, and Upper Green River Expansion & Operations Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | King County | Washington | https://www.greenrivercoalition.org/ | Grant project funding will support ongoing riparian restoration efforts within the Soos Creek Basin and Lower Green River and expand efforts in the upper Green River at Palmer Slough, just downstream from Howard Hansen Dam, and Burns Creek in the middle Green. The funding will support maintenance at 15 riparian restoration sites within Soos Creek Basin, 4 restoration sites in Tukwila, and critical portions of the mainstem Green River. This grant will assist GRC in expanding to 3 additional sites within the Soos Creek Basin, including a critical site on the upper Green River, Palmer Slough, and Burns Creek. This project will also help to support employment for a part-time operations manager and oversight functions for the Green River College intern program. Lastly, this grant will allow the grantee to conduct more community outreach in project communities. | More details |
| Growing Gardens | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $47,000.00 | Bioswale in the Columbia River Slough | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Education;Environmental Justice;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Oregon | www.growing-gardens.org | This grant will support the establishment of a bioswale on 20,000 square feet of land north of, and outside, Columbia River Correctional Institute (CRCI) in the Columbia Slough. The project will be directed by Lettuce Grow and the bioswale will be built by CRCI inmates in cooperation with the Department of Corrections. The project supported by this grant will filter stormwater runoff, restore native habitat, control erosion, and minimize invasive species, while simultaneously giving inmates an opportunity to learn about the Columbia River and watershed health and develop job credentials for living-wage employment in the green jobs sector after release from incarceration. Further, this projects goals include a feasibility study exploring the purchase of a rainwater catchment system to divert rainwater from the institution’s roof as well as establishing a class and curriculum within the institution about the design and construction of bioswales with the hopes of creating green job opportunities once individuals are released. The class will be open to 50 incarcerated individuals. This population is one of the least served in the region and suffers from major barriers to finding living wage jobs, creating a vicious cycle of recidivism and re-incarceration. To foster further equity, programming at CRCI aims to engage Black and African American inmates to expand equity both inside and outside the facility. This program provides inmates with the unique opportunity to develop a wider set of skills and certifications, alongside practical experience in principles, planning, design, and construction of bioswales. | More details | ||
| Harbor WildWatch | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | South Puget Sound | Expanding Community Science through Collaboration in the South Sound | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation;Climate Change & Energy | King County;Kitsap County;Pierce County;Thurston County | Washington | https://harborwildwatch.org/ | This grant will support the operation of the group’s existing community science activities in 2023, as well as the continued implementation of their training program for community partners. Harbor WildWatch’s (HWW) Community Science program mobilizes residents to collect meaningful water quality data at select south Puget Sound locations. Founded in 2013, activities include biodiversity monitoring, salmon observation, water quality testing, beach clean-up events, habitat restoration, and surveys of sea stars, rockfish, sea birds, and forage fish. Each year, this program has developed improved procedures, implemented new techniques, and grown in volunteer participation. Annually, this program conducts 100+ community science monitoring events with 1,000+ individual volunteers. The grant will expand these efforts throughout the Puget Sound region by training other small marine organizations to conduct similar events in their watersheds. These efforts will be facilitated through HWW's participation in the Community Marine Science Centers of the Salish Sea – a group of similarly sized organizations whose mission is to share evidence-based practices, resources, and capacity building strategies to strengthen education, stewardship, and advocacy within local waters. | More details |
| Heal The Ocean | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $15,000.00 | Santa Barbara Area (incl. Oxnard and Ventura) | Survey of Abandoned Homeless Camps in Environmentally Sensitive Areas - Santa Ynez Riverbed | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Santa Barbara County | California | https://www.healtheocean.org/ | As the housing crisis in California continued to worsen, unhoused individuals seek out shelter in a variety of places, including along the Santa Ynez Riverbed. Not only do these people deserve safe and consistent housing, but encampments alongside the riverbed expose both people and water to potential harm. Debris and human waste can end up in waterbodies, worsening water quality, while fluctuations in water levels from storm surges, king tides, or the opening of dam floodgates put people’s safety and property at risk. Heal the Ocean (HTO) has been working on wastewater issues in Santa Barbara County for 25 years and now serves as a partner to the county and various municipalities in addressing this complex issue. After an encampment is identified, social workers connect with the individuals present and seek out alternative housing. Once housing is identified and the individuals depart the site, Heal the Ocean works with Earthcomb, an organization led and staffed by formerly unhoused individuals, to clean up now abandoned encampments, often after communicating with the departing individuals to ensure nothing of value is left behind. Heal the Ocean has also brought dumpsters and other supplies to active encampments so that individuals living there can properly dispose of waste and live in more sanitary conditions. This grant will fund these on-going efforts to clean the Santa Ynez Riverbed. | More details |
| Healthy Community Services | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | Louisiana | Peer Learning Session Honorarium | Louisiana | https://www.hcsnola.org/ | To lead a peer learning webinar on Strategies for Working Together. | More details | ||
| Healthy Community Services | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2023 | $1,000.00 | Louisiana | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | https://www.hcsnola.org/ | To hire professional trainers on development of urban ag skills, specifically, horticulture and/or Irrigation licensing. These skills will further enhance the organization's ability to provide training to residents on these topics. The purpose of the training is also to learn wise water conservation techniques for successful urban ag practices to respond to the severe weather conditions caused by high heat indices. | More details | ||
| Hollister Guardians | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $6,000.00 | Central Coast (incl. Monterey Bay and San Luis Obispo) | General Support | Environmental Education;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Environmental Justice | San Benito County | California | https://sites.google.com/view/hollisterguardians/whose-city-council/ | To empower historically marginalized Latino members of Hollister’s west side to advocate for their interests on environmental and land use issues that affect their quality of life. | More details |
| Hollygrove Neighbors Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2023 | $1,000.00 | Louisiana | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | https://www.facebook.com/hollygroveNOLA/ | To purchase a speaker, microphones and a screen for meetings and events. The purchase of this equipment will support ramping up engagement in the community. | More details | ||
| Interfaith Coalition for Earth Justice | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | San Diego Area | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | San Diego County | California | https://icejsd.org/ | To purchase a branded tablecloth and print ICEJ tri-fold brochures. | More details | |
| Interfaith Coalition for Earth Justice | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $3,500.00 | San Diego Area | General Support | Environmental Education;Climate Change & Energy;Environmental Justice | San Diego County | California | https://icejsd.org/ | To educate, equip, and mobilize faith communities to work for environmental and climate justice though policy advocacy, direct action and educational outreach. | More details |
| International Rescue Committee Turlock | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $95,000.00 | Central Valley; California | Auto Education for Central Valley Refugees | Education | Stanislaus County | California | https://www.rescue.org/united-states/turlock-ca | IRC’s mission is to help people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future. IRC Turlock opened in the early 2000s and is the only official refugee-serving agency in the Central Valley. At its core are federally funded Reception and Placement services including housing support, access to public benefits, case management, English classes, job readiness training/placements, healthcare navigation, and immigration/legal services. For many IRC clients, their first major purchase in the U.S. will be a car. This project will help refugees and immigrants make informed car-buying decisions and critically assess seller claims regarding performance, warranty, vehicle history, and reliability. The course will serve 80 students who plan to buy a car within 12 months of course enrolment. An Auto Education Specialist will adapt IRC’s existing auto education course materials to add content on California laws around car purchasing. The course will include quarterly field trips to former refugee-owned auto dealers and driver education centers to reinforce classroom instruction, plus peer-education sessions with IRC clients who will share their car-buying experiences. | More details |
| InvestigateWest | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $15,245.00 | Idaho | Abortion, Consumer Data Privacy, and Law Enforcement Access in Idaho | Consumer Privacy;Human Rights & Civil Liberties; Education | Idaho | invw.org | InvestigateWest will use this funding to produce a long-form investigative article exposing the potential dangers of personal data (such as web browsing history, health records, financial records, geolocation information, and electronic communications) being exposed to law enforcement officials in Idaho who could seek such information to shed light on an individual’s abortion decision. In a state with one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, activists are concerned agencies could collect this information without the consumer's knowledge. The Fourth Amendment generally requires law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant before collecting personal data, but this requirement typically does not apply when the information is held by a third party to whom the data has been shared or sold. Further, federal data privacy law provides relatively limited constraints upon law enforcement’s ability to acquire privacy data relating to criminal activity, potentially including abortion activity proscribed under the state laws. The purpose of the article will be to raise awareness of how this may be playing out in Idaho in particular and more broadly to help inform lawmakers of the need for new laws that would specifically address the treatment and disclosure of abortion-related data. | More details | |
| Just Futures Law | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; Nationwide;California;Colorado;Georgia;Illinois;Minnesota;North Carolina;Virginia;Washington;Washington, D.C. | Centering immigrants rights and racial justice in the consumer rights sector | Consumer Advocacy;Consumer Privacy;Human Rights & Civil Liberties; Advocacy;Education;Other (explain below); Litigation and legal | Statewide | Nationwide | www.justfutureslaw.org | Just Futures Law seeks to transform how litigation and legal support serves communities and builds movement power. The group works to combat the sprawling systems of surveillance and mass deportation through movement lawyering through local, state, and federal advocacy campaigns. Led by women of color and 100% female founded, JFL staff are experienced legal strategists who have decades of experience in legal advocacy and litigation. Just Futures will use the grant to complete two short term projects to support privacy enforcement and advocacy in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI) and data broker surveillance and technologies, both of which implicate privacy, consumer rights, immigrants' rights, and human rights. First, Just Futures will produce legal and advocacy memos related to the viability of interventions in AI uses in immigration enforcement and policing. On databroker surveillance, the group will continue its successful federal, local, and state advocacy campaigns to uplift the role that commercial and personal data have in immigration enforcement and limit the sale, transfer, or sale of such data. The group will also provide support for policies currently under development in Illinois. By demonstrating proof of harm to immigrant communities, this project will help generate new tactics in litigation and policy to tackle the abusive use of AI. The group aims to advance a pro-immigrant and pro-privacy narrative that can be used to educate the public and needed policy stakeholders. | More details |
| Klamath Forest Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,500.00 | North Coast | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Sustainable Forestry | Del Norte County;Humboldt County;Shasta County;Siskiyou County;Trinity County | California | https://klamathforestalliance.org/ | To defend forests, watersheds and wildlife in the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion by active participation in planning, commenting, collaborating, monitoring and litigating projects while applying Traditional Knowledge, science, law, policy, place-based knowledge and community needs. | More details |
| Klamath Forest Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $6,500.00 | North Coast | Defending Wildlife and Wild Places in Northern California | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Sustainable Forestry | Del Norte County;Humboldt County;Shasta County;Siskiyou County;Trinity County | California | http://klamathforestalliance.org | To limit the scope of post-fire timber sale plans and protect mature forests, watersheds and wildlife on public land in the Klamath, Six Rivers, Shasta-Trinity and Mendocino National Forests. | More details |
| La Asociacion de Gente Unida por el Agua | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | Fresno County;Kern County;Kings County;Madera County;Merced County;Monterey County;Tulare County | California | https://www.aguacoalition.org/ | To secure safe, clean and affordable drinking water in California's San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast through water justice movement building and community-led campaigns for safe and affordable drinking water, groundwater protection; and PFAS and Chrome 6 regulation. | More details |
| La Asociacion de Gente Unida por el Agua | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $384.48 | Central Valley; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Fresno County;Kern County;Kings County;Madera County;Merced County;Monterey County;Tulare County | California | https://www.aguacoalition.org/ | AGUA would spend the Mini-Grant on Zoom licenses for the organization. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we transitioned our monthly meetings to virtual meeting. We recently (in March 2023), changed our meetings to a hybrid model to allow for members to attend in person if they can, and to allow others to attend virtually. While the pandemic is seen as over, we have many members who are medically vulnerable. In addition, we have expanded the coalition to the Central Coast. With members scattered across the San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast, it has been very important to have a virtual option for meeting attendance, and in fact, it has increased our engagement levels overall. Our Zoom licenses are now integral to our base-building and grassroots organizing efforts. | More details | |
| Library Freedom Inc | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $146,000.00 | Nationwide | Popular privacy education through libraries with Library Freedom Project | Consumer Advocacy;Consumer Privacy;Human Rights & Civil Liberties; Education | Nationwide | libraryfreedom.org | Library Freedom will use this grant to expand their work through the creation of a new Privacy Advocacy intensive training for librarians and the development of new resources. The group’s previous intensives–Library Freedom Institute and LFP Crash Courses–were enormously successful and turned dozens of librarians into privacy experts in their communities. Training librarians on privacy issues allows this information more efficiently and effectively reach communities across the country. The group will develop new resources for in-person trainings and expand their standalone online trainings to reach an even wider audience. These educational materials aim to support librarians-as-trainers and the diverse publics they serve on how everyday people are impacted by the loss of privacy. This grant will have a multiplier effect on the group’s current work, engaging librarians to promote privacy advocacy and education in communities nationwide. The grant will also allow the group to identify gaps in current educational materials and needed content for improvement, and Library Freedom will hold an annual weekend-long summer retreat which gives their librarian members an opportunity to meet, share strategies, resources, and successes. | More details | |
| Long Beach Roots of Unity | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $2,500.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Environmental Education;Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security;Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County | California | To engage community residents in implementing a garden project which will serve as a site for community-building and education about sustainable agriculture, climate change and environmental justice. | More details | |
| Marin City People's Plan | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2023 | $1,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area; California | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Marin County | California | https://marincitypeoplesplan.com/ | For trainings to develop our Steering Committee into a board that is empowered and knowledgeable about how a board operates. | More details | |
| Mariposa Trails | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Mariposa Forest Resiliency Project | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Sustainable Forestry | Mariposa County | California | https://mariposatrails.org/ | To build environmental constituency in Mariposa County while conducting trailwork and removing ladder fuels around Black Oak trees along a 3-mile stretch of trail in Yosemite National Park. | More details |
| Memorial Medical Center Foundation | Port of L.A. Air Pollution Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $250,000.00 | Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma (LBACA) Community Education, Asthma Intervention and Home Visitation Program | Environmental Education;Environmental Justice;Environmental Health and Toxics;Children & Youth | California | memorialcare.org/mmcf | LBACA is an essential part of the hospital’s Asthma Center of Excellence and is dedicated to improving the lives of children with asthma. This grant will provide general support for the ongoing program and help fund numerous program staff that work directly with impacted families in San Pedro and Wilmington, the two communities closest to the Port of Los Angeles. LBACA’s Community Health Worker Program serves children with the greatest need for intervention services due to air pollution exposure, disease risk, and lack of access to quality care. The program’s components are recommended by the National Heath, Lung, and Blood Institute for comprehensive and effective asthma care and include monitoring, education and awareness of environmental factors, and proper medication management. LBACA uses a socio-ecological approach that places the child in the center of efforts to address asthma and expands outwards to encompass the different factors that influence the ability of a child and their family to effectively control and manage their asthma. Through education, support, and removal of home environmental hazards, the group works to decrease symptom severity while also reducing use of rescue and quick relief medications. A central part of the program is home visits by Community Health Workers. The program has proven to successfully reduce emergency department visits, hospitalizations, missed school days, and workdays missed by caretakers. In addition to working with children and families, LBACA conducts outreach to the San Pedro and Wilmington communities to educate people about the health impacts associated with air pollution and how their program can support children with asthma. LBACA tracks progress of participants in the Asthma Intervention Program using a rigorous evaluation methodology which evaluates program participants pre- and post-intervention. The goal of the program is to significantly reduce children’s asthma symptoms and number of missed days of school and empower them to control their condition with support from their families and schools. | More details | ||
| Mid Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Student Driven Restoration: Removing Invasives, Tree Planting & Water Quality Testing | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | King County | Washington | www.midsoundfisheries.org | Mid Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group (MSFEG) will work to restore the water quality of the Green Duwamish and Central Puget Sound watershed while engaging students and young adults in educational opportunities through hands-on learning. The MSFEG project includes three distinct parts that together provide considerable benefit to the local watershed while engaging students who have traditionally not had access to environmental education opportunities. First, a Green Jobs Youth Crew Program will work with 8 youth composed of high school-aged, underserved individuals from the Auburn community. These students will remove invasive vegetation, plant native trees, and learn about Green Job pathways from strong partners in our watershed while receiving environmental education to promote watershed and salmon literacy. The second piece of the project will provide hands-on learning for middle and high school students in the Kent and Auburn school districts as part of the group’s Green Duwamish Student Stewards program. This includes six field trips, creating lesson plans and providing materials and travel to local parks to increase community connection to the local watershed. Third, this funding will support the Salmon in Schools Elementary Program, working with high poverty schools in South King County, to provide salmon life cycle education. | More details |
| Mini Mart City Park | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Green Stormwater Infrastructure Expansion at Mini Mart City Park | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | King County | Washington | http://minimartcitypark.com | Mini Mart City Park (MMCP) is engaged in water quality improvement efforts to its immediate and surrounding environs through expansion of its existing green stormwater infrastructure capacity. This project will directly contribute to water health onsite with emphasis on chemical and toxic pollutants traveling to the site from nearby roads, alleys, and parking strips. MMCP will install native plantings (trees, shrubs, and perennials) as well as a 1,000+ gallon rainwater harvesting and collection system for treatment and use onsite. Additionally, the planning and implementation will be conducted by youth participants as part of an ongoing green stormwater training program. MMCP’s stormwater expansion project will be the central project for an 8-week curriculum focusing on: (1) the types of contaminants (arsenic, lead, petroleum, solvents, and PCB’s), (2) the history of the Duwamish River, (3) the water cycle, and (4) an introduction to green stormwater infrastructure. The curriculum will be supplemented with special workshops, field trips, and relationship-building with community partners. These young leaders will also serve as community-mentors to volunteers during a series of 2-3 public work parties to help install plantings and conduct general maintenance across the site. In addition to leading work parties, these young leaders will also plan activities that engage the community in citizen science activities through water and soil testing. | More details |
| Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2023 | $35,000.00 | North Central & East | National Monument Campaign for Medicine Lake Highlands and Protection of its Vital Aquifer | Environmental Justice;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Modoc County;Shasta County;Siskiyou County | California | http://www.mountshastaecology.org/ | To work in collaboration with the Pit River Tribe to defend and protect the unique, pristine, culturally significant, hydrologically vital, sacred Medicine Lake Highlands from desecration by landscape-fragmenting industrial geothermal development—through ongoing legal efforts with Stanford Environmental Law Clinic to end the geothermal leases, and through participation in a collaborative work plan for a tribally-led National Monument campaign. To also engage in related efforts to build support for the National Monument designation, including advocating with state and federal agencies for Outstanding National Resource Waters designation of the immense volcanic aquifer, source of the Fall River Springs, California's largest spring system; participating in California's 30x30 strategy through the Power in Nature Coalition and Far Northern California Work Group; and conducting outreach with environmental organizations and local communities. | More details |
| Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | North Central & East | Forest & Watershed Watch - Protecting Biodiversity | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Sustainable Forestry | Siskiyou County | California | http://www.mountshastaecology.org/ | To increase public oversight of local, state, and federal forest and watershed projects in the Mount Shasta area by monitoring and commenting on proposed timber, salvage-logging and energy projects. | More details |
| Move LA | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Statewide | Campaign to Achieve CA's Climate Goals By Reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled | Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Climate Change and Energy;Other | Statewide;Los Angeles County | California | https://www.movela.org/ | To launch a grassroots-led coalition building and broad-based digital communications campaign to achieve California’s aggressive climate goals with equitable and affordable multi-modal transportation, smart growth strategies, and efforts to get people to drive less. Driving in California produces more planet-heating gasses than every power plant and the state’s entire building sector combined, and unless we reduce car usage by 25% by 2030, we will not meet the carbon reduction targets set by the State, even if we achieve vehicle electrification goals. | More details |
| Moving South Berkeley Forward | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | San Francisco County | California | https://movingsouthberkeleyforward.weebly.com/ | To support the 501(c)(3) application process for MSBF which will be provided by the East Bay Community Law Center. The center is a community service of the U.C. Berkeley Law School. The funds will cover the cost of filing. The Law Center in addition to assisting the filing process will collaboratively work with future board members (currently community members) to draft the bylaws for MSBF as well. While other city garden sites are dues based, MSBF will be a sweat equity site. Therefore having a board that can apply for funding, recruit garden educators/admin staff, obtain tools and support structures, and interact with community and city partners is integral to this projects' success and longevity. | More details | |
| National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2023 | $35,000.00 | Statewide | 23rd Annual NATHPO Conference | Environmental Education;Environmental Justice;Environmental Health and Toxics;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Climate Change and Energy;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Statewide | California | https://www.nathpo.org/ | To host the 23rd Annual NATHPO Conference Feb. 13-17, 2023 -- the first in-person gathering of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, Tribes, federal agencies and related organizations since 2018. T THPOs work to build constituencies and secure stronger protections for public lands; protect landscapes of concern from sprawling development; safeguard existing conservation protections on public lands; defend against projects impacting National Forest, National Park, National Wildlife Refuge, and BLM lands; and advocate for strong agency rulemaking standards related to their Tribes. This convening will educate, inform and unite THPOs nationwide; including a large contingent of California-based THPOs, in fact 24% of all Tribes with a THPO are located California. | More details |
| National Consumer Law Center | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $40,206.00 | Statewide; California | PACE Loan Advocacy: Protecting and Enforcing Consumer Rights for Low Income CA Homeowners | Advocacy;Education | Statewide | California | http://www.nclc.org | PACE loans finance energy efficiency/renewable energy products and home improvements, but these loans have been used unscrupulously to trick homeowners into making costly and unnecessary repairs. Consumer abuses with PACE continue to threaten homeownership, and many abuses result from predatory lending/sales practices targeted at low-income and communities of color, and seniors living on fixed incomes. This group’s past efforts have helped to highlight abusive PACE loan practices and slow the growth of abusive PACE loans from being made. This project will aim to further consumer protections and restitution in the state of California for low-income homeowners who have been victimized by the PACE loan program. The group will seek to strengthen protections for low-income CA homeowners, enhance enforcement of existing CA consumer protections of vulnerable homeowners, and provide legal education/resources to California legal aid attorneys representing homeowners harmed by door-to-door contractors or lenders who give the impression that PACE is a free govt. program providing significant tax breaks/rebates, or that loans pay for themselves. | More details |
| Native Health in Native Hands | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | North Coast | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security;Environmental Justice | Humboldt County;Mendocino County;Trinity County | California | https://www.nativehealthinnativehands.org/ | To empower native youth and other native community members to become caretakers of ancestral lands by providing opportunities to access nature and learn traditional ecological skills. | More details |
| NextGen Policy | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2023 | $8,800.00 | Statewide | VMT Policy Roadmap | Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Climate Change and Energy;Housing | Statewide | California | https://www.nextgenpolicy.org/ | To draft a brief, technically-grounded, and highly practicable study that can serve as a policy roadmap for non-governmental organizations to facilitate the implementation of California’s Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) reduction goals. The study's main goal is to show that realistically available policy hooks exist that can effectively reduce per capita VMT and carry massive public benefits. | More details |
| Nipomo Action Committee | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | Central Coast (incl. Monterey Bay and San Luis Obispo) | Targeted Communications | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | San Luis Obispo County | California | https://stopdanareserve.com/ | To protect and conserve a 288-acre oak woodland in Nipomo, CA which is threatened by a luxury housing development. | More details |
| Nisqually Land Trust | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | South Puget Sound | Nisqually Watershed Riparian and Floodplain Habitat Stewardship | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Lewis County;Pierce County;Thurston County | Washington | http://www.NisquallyLandTrust.org | The Nisqually Land Trust enhances and restore forests in floodplain and riparian habitats on Land Trust protected lands along the Nisqually River mainstem and its tributaries, including Powell Creek, Lackamas Creek, Toboton Creek, Ohop Creek, Muck Creek, the Mashel River, and on properties protected by the Land Trust along Puget Sound nearshore shorelines that contribute to the Nisqually Marine Aquatic Reserve. Project activities will include coordination of volunteers from throughout south and central Puget Sound to engage in events, service projects, and service-learning activities. Activities will focus on restoring riparian and floodplain forests and include planting on a property recently protected by the Land Trust. This will increase the diversity of trees, shrubs, and perennials in young forest stands, thereby improving soil health and stability. These restoration activities will lead to increased filtration and water quality improvements. | More details |
| Nisqually River Foundation | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | South Puget Sound | South Puget Sound Water Quality Monitoring: Student Data to Student Voice | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Education | Pierce County;Thurston County | Washington | https://nisquallyriver.org | This project will involve 1,500+ students from schools in the Nisqually Watershed in hands-on water quality monitoring of their local streams, a Student GREEN Congress to share their results and recommendations for water pollution solutions, and a field investigation on Puget Sound beaches. Students and teachers will receive training, supplies, and field trip support from the Nisqually River Education Project to test their local watershed streams for 6 parameters affecting salmon health. Training will include opportunities to learn from local scientists and cultural experts. Students will participate in fall and winter monitoring and compare their data with 30 years of past student data to draw conclusions and make recommendations to improve their local water quality. A select group of 250 students will present their findings at the spring Student GREEN Congress, a student-led water quality conference, and work with peers to create action plans to improve water quality in their communities. 500 students will participate in nearshore field investigations to Puget Sound beaches to conduct inquiry-based studies of marine water quality and aquatic life. By collecting real-world data through outdoor field experiences and making connections to the important role of water quality in human and environmental health, students will gain experience as citizen scientists and as stewards of their waters and environment. | More details |
| NO Canyon Hills | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $6,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Los Angeles County | California | https://nocanyonhills.org/ | To protect and conserve 300+ acres of open space in the Verdugo Mountains in Sunland-Tujunga, currently under imminent threat of luxury, gated exurban development. | More details |
| No Penny Opera | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security | San Francisco County | California | http://thefreefarm.org/ | To provide healthy, sustainable, and free food to low-income residents in the Mission District of San Francisco, along with garden training and seedlings from the community garden so residents can grow their own food. | More details |
| North Coast Watershed Association | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $27,000.00 | NCWA Water Quality Data Inclusivity | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Education;Environmental Justice;Environmental Health and Toxics | Oregon | https://www.clatsopwatersheds.org/ | This grant will supplement and enhance current water quality monitoring efforts- including long-term stream temperature and turbidity monitoring and roadway runoff sampling – through increased outreach to the growing Spanish-speaking communities in the North Coast area of Oregon. NCWA will work with non-profits in Astoria that are serving Latinx and socio-economically disadvantaged populations to develop and distribute surveys to learn if or where there are gaps in access to education on water quality and where there might be opportunities to implement restoration projects in areas frequented by these under-served populations. NCWA will host two bilingual, educational events to share water data, help people make connections between their daily lives and water, share volunteer and career opportunities in natural resources, and underscore that everyone is a part of the watershed ecosystems. To demonstrate the efficacy of these outreach campaigns, NCWA will use internal expertise to analyze initial and follow-up survey data alongside measures of community engagement. Another goal of the grant will be to supplement existing data-sharing structures, ensuring that NCWA staff are able to share water quality data with the community, to keep data quality high by increasing capacity to coordinate volunteer data collection, and to continue to direct this data into the coffers of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Clatsop County, and other project partners. This supplemental funding will allow the NCWA to direct more resources to marginalized communities, measure outreach effectiveness, perform more effective volunteer coordination, and develop materials needed to engage larger, more diverse audiences. | More details | ||
| Northwest Environmental Advocates | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | South Puget Sound | Puget Sound Toxics Reduction Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice | Clallam County;Grays Harbor County;Island County;Jefferson County;King County;Kitsap County;Pierce County;San Juan County;Skagit County;Snohomish County;Thurston County;Whatcom County | Washington | https://northwestenvironmentaladvocates.org/ | Northwest Environmental Advocates (NEA) will engage in advocacy efforts related to bio-accumulative toxic pollutants, including PCBs and PBDEs, particularly aimed at toxic discharges in mixing zones by sewage treatment facilities and others. This project, a partnership between Northwest Environmental Advocates and the Western Environmental Law Center, has three Puget Sound-specific objectives: (1) to eliminate the use of regulatory mixing zones for bio-accumulative toxic pollutants in discharge permits; (2) to require the removal of unregulated PFAS chemicals from indirect discharges to municipal sewage collection systems through pretreatment rules; and (3) to seek the regulation of CECs by enforcing the Clean Water Act against a major discharger of toxic pollutants to the Sound. To achieve these objectives, NEA will engage in research, writing, submission of and public support for rulemaking petitions to Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Not only will these petitions reduce toxics in Puget Sound, but they will create opportunities for extensive community engagement in rulemaking. | More details |
| Northwest Environmental Defense Center | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $50,000.00 | Clean Water Initiative - Phase 2 | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Justice;Environmental Health and Toxics | Oregon | www.nedc.org | This grant will support NEDC’s Clean Water Initiative which is designed to reduce pollution from point source discharges to the Columbia River and its Oregon tributaries. NEDC will advocate for improved water quality at all stages of the regulatory process. This will include: (1) ensuring that state-issued water quality permits are sufficiently protective and comply with the Clean Water Act; (2) filing lawsuits challenging insufficiently protective water quality permits, and citizen lawsuits against industrial facilities that are violating these permits; (3) performing detailed analysis of water quality sampling data from across the state, to determine effectiveness of pollution control measures across multiple watersheds and different types of industrial activities. Of particular concern for the scope of this grant is protecting the Columbia River and its tributaries from improperly managed stormwater pollution. When not managed properly, this stormwater runoff can carry dangerous amounts of toxic pollutants to these waters, with severe impacts to aquatic life and ecological health. State resources for monitoring and enforcement of these new permit requirements are limited, creating a critical need for public interest groups to fill these regulatory gaps. In addition to stormwater permitting and compliance, grant activities will include reviews of water quality permits for state-operated fish hatcheries, state issued water quality certifications for federally permitted activities, and reviewing permits for new proposed mines in the Columbia Basin that will impact water quality. | More details | ||
| Northwest Maritime Center | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Maritime High School: Duwamish Water Quality and Community Engagement Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | King County | Washington | https://nwmaritime.org | In the fall of 2021, the Northwest Maritime Center and Highline Public Schools launched Maritime High School, a partnership-driven effort that engages students in maritime education. Now MHS has more than 130 students immersed in project-based learning including water stewardship. MHS students will engage in water quality projects on the Duwamish/Green River in South King County where they will develop real-world science and problem-solving skills, and also become more deeply connected to their community’s waterways and their challenges. Students will spend time on the water engaged in water quality monitoring activities aboard a floating classroom. The student projects will have a special focus on understanding, analyzing, and monitoring water quality in the Duwamish Waterway as large-scale cleanup efforts begin in earnest in 2024. MHS will educate the students on Duwamish River water quality and environmental justice issues. Students will work in small boats to access stormwater outfalls and sewer overflow sites, bringing them closer to pollution sources for monitoring. Educators will underscore the scientific method in student inquiry, students will map their questions, hypotheses, testing, analysis, and conclusions - driving further questions for future Field Work Experiences. | More details |
| Oakland Climate Action Coalition | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Climate Change & Energy;Environmental Justice;Other | Alameda County | California | http://oaklandclimateaction.org/ | To create equitable climate solutions that advance racial, economic, environmental and climate justice and strengthen the resilience of frontline communities, particularly low-income communities of color, in Oakland, CA. | More details |
| Oakland Privacy | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $50,000.00 | Statewide; California | Enhancing Regional Privacy Rights Infrastructure - Privacy Rights Fellowship 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 | Consumer Privacy; Advocacy | Statewide | California | https://oaklandprivacy.org | Oakland Privacy, a largely volunteer run organization, will use the funding to support two Privacy Rights Fellows to build out the organization’s capacity on crucial fronts. Overall, the group will focus on the growing artificial intelligence debate, continue educating people about the lack of transparency associated with the Chrome browser’s privacy controls, and offer digital security and online safety resources to the public. In particular, the fellows will oversee and submit comprehensive comments to the California Privacy Protection Agency in their ongoing artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision-making rulemaking. The fellows are expected to suggest enhancements for proposed rules, parameters for future rule-makings, and will expose industry pushback. They will also track and guide responses to state-level legislation expected to be introduced in 2024 and develop targeted model legislation focusing on impact auditing, algorithmic transparency, and complaint/appeal processes. These model policies will be used to educate local city and county municipalities in Northern California on how local regulations can be used to strengthen individual privacy rights. Finally, the fellows will create a comprehensive advocacy guide to spread the message that smart consumers should not use the Chrome browser due to its being compromised and under-protective of individual’s privacy. | More details |
| OC Habitats | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Riparian and Salt Marsh Restoration in the Upper Newport Back Bay | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Orange County | California | https://www.ochabitats.org/ | To build environmental constituency in Orange County and support the restoration of riparian and wetland habitats by removing invasive species and planting native species. | More details |
| Okanogan Highlands Alliance | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $15,091.00 | Preventing the Buckhorn Mine from becoming a long-term polluter in the upper Columbia River basin | Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Washington | okanoganhighlands.org | This grant will support the Okanogan Highlands Alliance (OHA) as it works towards stopping illegal discharges of pollutants into headwater streams in the Columbia River Basin at Buckhorn Mine. The mine is regulated under the Clean Water Act by a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Waste Discharge Permit and sets a capture zone which defines where pollutants are allowed. It also sets numeric limits for mine-related constituents at compliance monitoring locations. However, the mine has amassed many permit violations in the last five years. These violations of the Clean Water Act will be central to OHA’s strategy for this grant as it works with the mine owners and operators to develop a plan for preventing and mitigating pollution at the mine site and to protect headwater streams and aquatic habitats, which will require extensive contributions by numerous experts including OHA’s mine engineer, aqueous geochemists, hydrologist, and biologists. OHA will use this grant to support its continued legal efforts, and to secure experts that provide the scientific basis for activities that will stop the mine from becoming a long-term source of pollution. Additionally, OHA will continue ongoing work to evaluate the water quality data from the Buckhorn Mine and advocate for regulatory action by the mine operators and the Washington State Department of Ecology. | More details | ||
| Orange County Coastkeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $35,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Santa Ana River Watershed Education and Cleanup Program | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | Orange County;Riverside County;San Bernardino County | California | https://www.coastkeeper.org/ | In the highly developed inland areas of the Santa Ana Watershed, students tend to associate the term "environment" with somewhere far removed from the paved streets of their neighborhood, such as a rainforest or a coral reef. Orange County Coastkeeper (OCCK), in partnership with Inland Empire Waterkeeper, seeks to change that perception with their River KATS: Kids Activism Together with Science program. River KATS targets junior high and high schools with underserved populations, such as minority and low-income, to increase at least 600 students' participation and achievement in STEM fields. The curriculum takes students from the upper watershed regions in their neighborhoods all the way down to the coast through a series of presentations, educational field trips, community outreach events, river cleanups, and advocacy work. Students will conduct research in sensitive riparian habitats to monitor ecosystem health and restoration efforts to improve water quality. The project will have two main components: (1) educational activities such as presentations and field trips to restoration areas with students, and (2) trash cleanups and other restoration and education events for the public within the Santa Ana River Watershed. The project goals include providing community members who have historically been excluded from outdoor spaces with hands-on environmental education and increased access to the outdoors. The project will also foster community involvement and increase environmental literacy by inviting participants to think critically and share their concerns. | More details |
| Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $20,000.00 | Clean Water Justice Fellowship (Oregon PSR) | Environmental Education;Environmental Justice | Oregon | https://www.oregonpsr.org/ | OPSR will utilize Rose Foundation funding to oppose expansion of the Port Westward Diesel Refinery as well as advocate for seismic retrofitting of Critical Energy Infrastructure along the Willamette River. First, OPSR will engage with the environmental impact statement process for the Port Westward Diesel Refinery from the Army Corps of Engineers, particularly the health impacts section. OPSR will develop and distribute health impact guides to community members so that they may better understand the health impact of the refinery and will organize events for public voices to be heard. OPSR will also work to organize health professionals and other public health advocates to give expertise on potential health impacts associated with the refinery’s emissions into land, air, and water. Next, OPSR will advocate for improved seismic resilience of the Critical Energy Infrastructure zones in and near the Columbia and Willamette Rivers which are needed to protect these watersheds from accidental industrial discharges after a major seismic event. This will include a tour of the CEI zones for health professionals, securing expert speakers for educational purposes for the public and for policy makers, raising awareness about, and ultimately trying to prevent, the catastrophic consequences of inaction for the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, and advocating for more resilient infrastructure to prevent toxic spills in the event of a seismic event. | More details | ||
| Organizacion en California de Lideres Campesinas, Inc. | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | Campaign for Healthier Solutions | Advocacy;Education | Statewide | California | www.liderescampesinas.org | Líderes Campesinas is a 35-year-old statewide network of farmworker women and girls in California based in 13 rural counties whose mission is to strengthen the leadership of farmworkers to be agents of social, economic, and political change to ensure their human rights. The Campaign for Healthier Solutions will educate California consumers on toxic chemicals in dollar store products and provide tools and strategies for consumer-based organizing for corporate policies that protect the rights of consumers to toxic-free products. The lack of grocery stores in rural, poor, and communities of color opened the door to dollar stores and their toxic products and poor food options. Members and staff in the Central Valley will use this grant to continue working with campaign partners to conduct product purchase for testing, outreach and education with indigenous and non-indigenous farmworkers. Farmworker communities will be mobilized and connect with local store managers and dollar store executives at headquarter offices. They will also participate in stockholder meetings to demand top dollar store chains eliminate toxic chemicals and require their suppliers to use inherently safer alternatives. Rural, poor, communities of color cannot shop their way out of danger, they need tools and training to demand solutions. | More details |
| Our Children's Earth Foundation | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $20,200.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Our Vallejo Waterfront: planting for resiliency | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Climate Change and Energy | Solano County | California | www.ocefoundation.org | Vallejo’s 94589 and 94590 zip codes sit along the mouth of the Napa River as it empties into the Cariquinez Strait and the San Pablo Bay. Vallejo is diverse and these neighborhoods are largely economically disadvantaged, which a higher percentage of Black and Latino residents than the rest of the city. Our Children’s Earth Foundation (OCEF) will focus on these zip codes as they build out a new project focused on local water quality. First, OCEF will build collaborations with local community groups and community members through direct outreach and a physical presence at a variety of events in the area. Most immediately, this outreach will allow OCEF to identify planting locations for trees and shrubs that can slow stormwater runoff in these zip codes on the way to the Napa River. OCEF will provide both the plants and, as needed, labor to plant and maintain them. In the process, OCEF will grow awareness about local water quality issues and build a broader coalition of groups and community members that will collaborate on an industrial stormwater sampling plan. Existing water sampling efforts neglect key industrial zones of the city, such as South Vallejo and Mare Island, and this project will help fill that gap, with sampling expected to take place in late 2024 / early 2025. | More details |
| Pàah Áama | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | North Central & East | General Support | Environmental Education;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Justice | Humboldt County;Siskiyou County | California | To strengthen the ability of Native youth in CA’s Klamath Basin to defend and enjoy their ancestral waterways and prepare native youth to be the first to paddle an undammed Klamath river from source to sea. | More details | |
| Pacific Shellfish Institute | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $20,000.00 | South Puget Sound | Budd Inlet Water Quality Outreach and Education | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Climate Change & Energy | Thurston County | Washington | https://pacshell.org/ | This grant will support environmental education and community engagement activities in and around Budd Inlet in South Puget Sound. The goal of Pacific Shellfish Institute’s (PSI) work is to educate students and the community about Budd Inlet water quality issues, engage them in activities that connect them to their watershed, and inspire them to take actions to protect Puget Sound. To meet this goal, PSI will conduct several activities that will get students and their families involved in NOAA’s Sound Toxins phytoplankton monitoring program which includes monitoring events, student mentorships, and volunteer opportunities. PSI will conduct field trip presentations about Budd Inlet plankton, water quality and stewardship to over 1,000 middle and high school students in Thurston County, and partner with local organizations to host cleanups and promote the Sound Science Stewards sticker program. These activities will provide community members and students from a variety of backgrounds the opportunity to explore their curiosities about marine ecosystems and thereby increase accessibility to science and stewardship opportunities happening in their backyard. | More details |
| Pacoima Beautiful | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Angeles National Forest Junior Field Rangers | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Los Angeles County | California | www.pacoimabeautiful.org | This grant will support the Junior Field Rangers program which aims to engage Southern California BIPOC youth to help develop their knowledge about natural resources such as water and forge a deep-rooted connection to the land. The program provides twelve high school youth and at least three college age youth from the Northeast San Fernando Valley a 10-week paid program with classroom and on the field experience. Youth participating in the program assist with restoration work on four acres of riparian habitat and two river miles of the Big Tujunga Creek, a major tributary of the Los Angeles River Basin, through clean-up efforts and re-naturalizing of areas impacted. The youth also interact with visitors to the Angeles National Forest and community members from the Northeast Valley to provide information about outdoor access, recreational opportunities and how to protect our waterways and wildlife habitat. Upon completion, youth earn a California Naturalist certification and college credit through the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources extension. This provides participants with knowledge of local ecology and the issues facing their public lands. In addition to the water quality and stewardship benefits, the program teaches participants about careers and career pathways in natural resource management, all with the aim of creating a diverse next generation of public land managers and stewards. | More details |
| Parents Against the Santa Susanna Field Lab | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $20,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Santa Susana Field Lab | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | Los Angeles County;Ventura County | California | https://parentsagainstssfl.com/ | The Santa Susana Field Lab (SSFL), formerly known as Rocketdyne, was a Cold War-era testing facility used for experimental nuclear work, rocket engine tests, experimental fuels, liquid metals, and chemical laser research. The 2,850-acre site experienced is one of California’s most toxic sites due to multiple nuclear meltdowns, leaks, radioactive fires, and illegal waste practices. The SSFL is located at the headwaters of the Los Angeles River and as such has the potential to impact local water quality throughout LA County. Parents Against Santa Susana Field Lab (Parents) aims to protect kids and families from exposure to toxic and radioactive contamination from SSFL. This project will advocate for a strict National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit to protect the LA River from the Boeing Company’s dangerous SSFL contamination. Historically, this permit has been weakened at every renewal and at present does not adequately regulate VOCs, PCBs, and PFAFs, which have all been documented either at the site or in the LA River. Parents will accomplish this advocacy by organizing community participation at LA Regional Water Quality Control Board public hearings, meeting with Water Board Staff, and strategizing with other NGO partners. To support this work, Parents will train at least 5 members of a new Advocacy Corps who will help expand outreach to community members, generating Spanish-language materials for local Latino communities, and engage decision and policy makers around these issues. | More details |
| People of the Confluence | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | Planting Roots & 13 Moons of Medicine: Protecting Water and Honoring the Salmon Nation | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation;Climate Change & Energy | King County;Snohomish County | Washington | https://peopleoftheconfluence.org/ | People of the Confluence will conduct watershed restoration, water quality testing, and nature-based environmental education including middle school through college-age Riparian Observation trips throughout the Salish Sea, including but not limited to the Green-Duwamish Watershed and the Snoqualmie-Skykomish-Snohomish Watersheds. Restoration work will take place in riparian zones on property belonging to tribal family members and community partners, as well as on public lands like parks, pedestrian trails, and easements. People of the Confluence will conduct restoration activities to include planting native species and invasive removal work as well as installing large woody debris in appropriate locations along watershed project sites. Additionally, People of the Confluence will conduct water quality testing across several project sites with a focus on areas where there are major highways and pipelines. Finally, People of the Confluence will engage in communications work, including developing a short documentary about the threat invasive plants pose to both water quality and salmon health in an effort to engage community members in efforts to prevent threats to human and salmon health. | More details |
| Point Molate Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $4,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Environmental Justice | Contra Costa County | California | https://ptmolatealliance.org/ | To advocate for the conservation of Point Molate, the last undeveloped natural headland on the San Francisco Bay, as a public resource and regional park. | More details |
| Point Molate Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space;Environmental Justice | Contra Costa County | California | https://ptmolatealliance.org/ | To advocate for the conservation of Point Molate, the last undeveloped natural headland/native coastal prairie on San Francisco Bay, as a public resource and a regional park. | More details |
| Privacy Rights Clearinghouse | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $75,000.00 | Statewide; Nationwide;California | Privacy Rights Clearinghouse - General Support | Consumer Privacy; Advocacy;Education | Statewide | California | https://privacyrights.org/ | Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with over thirty years of experience dedicated to advancing data privacy and fostering the value that privacy is a fundamental human right. PRC’s approach is to listen to people and those who represent them, then identify patterns, and analyze the issues to help inform and connect people, and advocate where there are gaps. This grant will be used for general organizational support for their highly regarded consumer policy and advocacy work. During the grant period, PRC will expand and improve upon their role coordinating with other advocates working in California, develop and implement an advocacy strategy around the organization’s policy priorities, and increase their capacity to weigh in on agency proceedings at the federal and state level. There are two priority areas that PRC will address over the course of the grant through research, education, and coalition advocacy. PRC will broaden understanding of and advocate for privacy protections in digital course materials for post-secondary students at public, private, and for-profit institutions. In addition, the group will build on their successful work in California and will strive to extend data broker protections across the U.S. by tracking relevant California Privacy Protection Agency rulemakings and providing analysis and comments to advocate for enhanced regulatory protections. | More details |
| Privacy Rights Clearinghouse | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $82,280.00 | Statewide; California | Privacy Research Tools | Technology/Product/Service | Statewide | California | https://privacyrights.org/ | This grant will allow PRC to expand their Privacy Research Tools – a project launched in part with funding from the 2021 Consumer Products Fund round. They will work in close collaboration with both data science and design experts to improve upon their data breach chronology and launch a data broker database and associated tools. The data broker project will serve as both a directory of registered data brokers across the country and as a tool for those seeking to remove their information or learn more about data broker practices. This project is comprised of publicly accessible data and interactive visual dashboards designed to increase access to high-quality, issue-relevant insights and information for consumer advocates, journalists, researchers, and policymakers. PRC’s goal is to help people better understand how their personal data is handled by companies providing consumer products and services and their existing rights and choices. They also hope to allow those working in the public interest sector to efficiently investigate privacy and security claims of consumer products and services, analyze privacy statements and practices, and incentivize improved public policy and business practices. | More details |
| Protect the Peninsula’s Future | PNW Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | Other Washington Watersheds; Washington | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Clallam County;Kitsap County;Kittitas County;Klickitat County | Washington | http://www.protectpeninsulasfuture.org/ | The Gill Tract Farm Coalition will spend our Mini-Grant on a subscription to the MailerLite mass email platform. GTFC has built an email list of approximately 3,000 supporters over the past decade. Many of these folks participate in person as volunteer farmers; many more participated directly in the past and remain committed to the mission of the Gill Tract Farm Coalition, though they may live far away. Without a paid platform, volunteers manage this list "by hand" using Google Docs, and send messages through Google Groups and our individual accounts, which is both time-consuming and inefficient. A paid email platform will allow us to build, manage and maintain a consistent and professional communications presence with our supporters, including a quarterly e-newsletter (launched in Fall 2022), more effective fundraising appeals, invitations to workshops and events, etc. MailerLite's market rate for one year is $348; their nonprofit discount is $244 (30% discount). A $500 mini-grant will cover 22 months of a two-year subscription if we are granted the nonprofit discount rate; about 16 months if we have to pay the market rate (as a fiscally sponsored project rather than an independent 501c3). (Our fiscal sponsor receives 8% of grant funds, so the total available to spend on the platform will be $460). In either case, we have funds available to make up the two-year subscription. | More details | |
| Protect the Peninsula’s Future | PNW Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Pacific Northwest; Other Washington Watersheds | General Support | Environmental Health and Toxics;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Clallam County | Washington | http://www.protectpeninsulasfuture.org/ | Protect the Peninsula's Future (PPF) is a small, rural, volunteer organization with an emphasis on protecting the natural resources on Washington State's North Olympic Peninsula. PPF will engage in a legal effort to require the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services (USFWS) and associated federal agencies to act according to the federal Refuge Improvement Act guidelines. This includes conducting a compatibility determination, as required by law, prior to approving permits for commercial and industrial use in the Dungeness Spit Wildlife Refuge. As USFWS did not conduct the compatibility determination, PPF will mount a legal challenge to the permit and ask that environmental impacts are well understood prior to using sensitive habitats for new commercial activities which could impact several different protected animals in the region. Further, PPF will engage its volunteer base and local community, show up at county meetings, pass out literature at farmers markets in the region, and organizing public participation in public comment periods. | More details |
| Protect Wild Petaluma | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | Russian River | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Sonoma County | California | https://www.facebook.com/SaveNorthPetalumaRiver/ | To attend the Environmental Law Institute Boot Camp (virtually). It is a 3-day training and is considered highly useful for environmental professionals such as environmental managers, policy and advocacy experts, paralegals, and technicians seeking deeper knowledge of environmental law. | More details | |
| Proyecto Pastoral | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $28,999.96 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Promesa Boyle Heights: Watershed Health Community Project | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.proyectopastoral.org/ | This grant will support Promesa staff and environmental health community outreach workers who will facilitate an expanded version of an interactive Watershed Health curriculum for 100-120 local residents over three-five sessions. The program will include (1) facilitation of the Watershed Health curriculum for three classes of Roosevelt High School students over three sessions; (2) coordination of two in-person career panels to introduce 100-120 Roosevelt High and Mendez High students to careers in the watershed health, science, and environmental justice fields; and (3) four community cleanup events throughout Boyle Heights with approximately 20-30 adult and youth residents participating in each event. Promesa is excited to incorporate a new youth leadership component to the overall project, recruiting students who are especially interested in and passionate about environmental and watershed health to help facilitate future workshops and get involved in Promesa’s larger leadership pipeline. In addition to improving watershed health and beautifying the community, program participants will learn what watersheds and surface water runoff are and the direct connection between litter and the pollution of lakes, rivers, and the ocean. Particular focus will show how parks and other local multi-benefit projects play a role in stormwater runoff management and water capture. These events will also serve as an entry point to Promesa’s wider EJ leadership development and community advocacy efforts. | More details |
| Public Health Institute | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | Improving Consumer Safety for Air Cleaners in California | Advocacy;Education | Statewide | California | https://www.phi.org/ | This project will expand on work funded in the 2021 Consumer Products Round which allowed an investigation of home air filters to identify products that produce indoor ozone, which is a health hazard. The results from that study were shared with regulators as well as low-income and Spanish speaking populations that experience poor air quality from pollution and fires. With this grant, PHI will follow up on their discovery that multiple companies sell illegal ozone producing filters in California, by educating the media and the public to ensure that people are aware of their dangers. The group will develop science-based recommendations for more health-protective regulations, with guidance from California Air Resources Board staff, indoor air quality researchers, policymakers, and advocacy organizations, and they will continue to educate policymakers about the need to protect public health by strengthening the current approach to air cleaner certification. Outreach will also include California agencies that fund air cleaner distribution (e.g., air districts, schools) about safe air cleaners. | More details |
| Restaurant 2 Garden | PNW Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Pacific Northwest; Central Puget Sound | R2G General Support | Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security;Environmental Education;Environmental Justice | King County | Washington | www.Restaurant2Garden.com | Restaurant 2 Garden (R2G) will establish localized, high-capacity composting throughout the greater Seattle-area. Currently, R2G transforms local food scraps from businesses into nutrient-rich compost for local gardeners in the Danny Woo Community Garden with plans to scale up operations to other Seattle neighborhoods. Additionally, R2G is engaging in a green stormwater infrastructure project in partnership with a neighboring organization. This project will allow R2G to capture stormwater run-off and treat it onsite for use in gardens and composting operations. It will also allow R2G to construct a localized rain garden to slow storm water streetside in an area that is heavily paved and has little ground penetration opportunities for water. | More details |
| Rich City Rays | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Climate Change & Energy;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | Alameda County;Contra Costa County | California | https://www.richcityrays.com/ | To recruit, train and equip a flotilla of “kayaktivists” to challenge the oil and gas industry through on-water protests and disruptions in Richmond, CA. | More details |
| Richmond Shoreline Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | Contra Costa County | California | https://richmondshorelinealliance.org/ | To promote a healthy and accessible shoreline for all Richmond residents and to demand a single-family residential grade cleanup of the AstraZeneca Superfund-qualified toxic waste site near the Crescent Park community. | More details |
| Richmond Shoreline Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Contra Costa County | California | https://richmondshorelinealliance.org/ | To transfer our website to a more user-friendly web host. The new host will enable features that are not available with our current host, such as a calendar of events. It also doesn't require users to use HTML. | More details | |
| River Access Paddle Program | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | River Access Paddle Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation;Climate Change & Energy | King County | Washington | River Access Paddle Program (RAPP) will engage in restoration activities on and surrounding Kellogg Island in the Duwamish River. Activities will include invasive plant removal, shoreline restoration, debris removal, site monitoring, water quality monitoring, wildlife count, and general management of the 5-acre critical habitat that is Kellog Island. RAPP will conduct water quality monitoring and testing by kayak in partnership with Maritime High School, Highline High Schools, Atlas School, local youth organizations, and the University of Washington. On-water garbage cleanups are open to public participation, and RAPP will engage volunteers in regular clean-up activities in the surrounding area. Additionally, RAPP will plan and host eight restoration site visit trips to Kellogg Island, and their trained restoration and river guides will provide education on restoration techniques. This will include job training for youth in critical shoreline preparation, planting, and bank stabilization. Trained youth will employ pollution prevention techniques and will conduct water quality sampling in the Spring-Fall of 2024. Finally, RAPP will host three community tours and garbage pickups for the wider Seattle community with the goal of removing 3,000 pounds of debris. | More details | |
| River Otter Ecology Project | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Statewide | California | http://www.riverotterecology.org | To promote the restoration and conservation of Bay Area watersheds through citizen science monitoring, research, and educational programming about local river otter populations. | More details |
| Rogue Flyfishers | Rogue River Fund | 2023 | $18,542.00 | Rogue River; Oregon | Rogue River Reconnaissance Survey | Environmental Health and Toxics;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Jackson County | Oregon | www.rogueflyfishers.org | The Rogue Flyfishers are a community-oriented group of fisherman who fish throughout the Rogue River and have a vested interest in the health of fish and water quality throughout the river. Funds will be used to support a variety of stewardship activities. | More details |
| Russian Riverkeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $8,000.00 | Russian River | Water Quality and Public Trust Protections for San Pablo Bay | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Sonoma County | California | www.russianriverkeeper.org | Russian Riverkeeper will use this grant to challenge the recently adopted Sonoma County Well Ordinance (Well Ordinance) to protect public trust resources and water quality in streams and downstream receiving waters. In County streams such as the Petaluma River and Sonoma Creek, groundwater pumping has led to streamflow depletion that has degraded water quality in downstream receiving waters in the San Pablo Bay. Because the Petaluma River and Sonoma Creek are critical habitat for endangered steelhead trout and exert a strong influence on the health of the San Pablo Bay, the pumping has also may diminish habitat for listed Steelhead Trout, as low flows cause water temperatures to become lethal or streams become dry or disconnected. The Well Ordinance allows issuance of new well permits despite abundant evidence that existing groundwater pumping is depleting adjacent streams leading to degradation of water quality and habitat for listed species. In adopting the new Well Ordinance, Sonoma County did not analyze whether proposed mitigations will lead to protection of water quality or natural resources nor analyze whether the new Ordinance will allow cumulative impacts to continue. Given the precarious nature of water quality and public trust resources today, this advocacy will assist in improving water and habitat quality in the watersheds tributary to San Pablo Bay. | More details |
| Salish Sea Collective | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Salish Sea Collective Environmental Justice Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Clallam County;Island County;Jefferson County;King County;Kitsap County;Mason County;Pierce County;San Juan County;Skagit County;Snohomish County;Thurston County | Washington | The Salish Sea Collective (SSC) is a group of dedicated non-profits and community-based organizations committed to stewardship, access and quality of the Salish Sea through equitable governance structures, community-based participatory models, and environmental accountability tools. Na'ah Illahee Fund (NIF) one of the organizations within SSC and will serve as project facilitator. This grant will support the eel grass planting in Commencement Bay and surrounding waterways. Additionally, NIF will recruit and support new tribal members’ participation in the collective and related stewardship activities. Lastly, the NIF will continue to participate in implementation of the HEAL Act, and work with agencies including Ecology and the Puget Sound Partnership to assist in embedding environmental justice throughout their work. The organizations will provide input to both agencies and affinity groups around issues of healthy waterways and watersheds for the communities within the Salish Sea ecosystem. | More details | |
| Sama Sama Cooperative | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Alameda County;Contra Costa County;San Francisco County;Santa Clara County | California | http://samasamacooperative.org/ | We have recently launched an updated public website through a new host, Squarespace which integrates with Google Workspace. Through workspace, we plan to maintain our domain name, website, and Google Workspace subscriptions. We are seeking this capacity grant to help fund the projected annual combined subscriptions for Squarespace and Google Workspace. | More details | |
| San Francisco Baykeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Sacramento Valley | Protecting Sacramento River Ecosystem Functions and Fishes | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation | Butte County;Colusa County;Glenn County;Sacramento County;Shasta County;Sutter County;Tehama County;Yolo County | California | https://baykeeper.org/ | The productivity of the Sacramento River, as well as the entire San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary, depends on inflow of fresh water to provide water quality conditions that support healthy fisheries and communities. Yet less than half of winter and spring runoff in Central Valley rivers makes it all the way to the Bay in most years, due to excessive diversions to supply industrial agriculture and cities outside the Central Valley. As a result, the Sacramento River suffers from species loss, collapsing fisheries, habitat destruction, and water quality deterioration. Even so, industrial agriculture is fighting to divert even more water, and state water agencies are refusing to adapt their management approaches to support healthy flows and sustainable fisheries. In the coming year, Baykeeper will use the grant funding to pursue advocacy, litigation, and scientific analyses to secure protections for the Sacramento River flows and its native fish, for the benefit of the Sacramento and the larger Delta and San Francisco Bay to which the Sacramento River drains. | More details |
| Saticoy Food Hub | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $3,000.00 | Santa Barbara Area (incl. Oxnard and Ventura) | General Support | Environmental Education;Agriculture / Gardens / Food Security;Environmental Justice | Ventura County | California | https://www.saticoyfoodhub.org/home | To create equitable economic opportunities for food producers, while increasing access to fresh, local food for community members in Ventura County. | More details |
| Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Modernizing the Columbia River Treaty for water quality, salmon recovery, and justice - 2024 | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Justice;Climate Change & Energy | Washington | https://www.wildsalmon.org/ | This grant will support Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition’s work on the 1964 U.S.–Canada Columbia River Treaty which has managed mainstem Columbia River flows for power production and flood risk management, without consideration of ecological health or fish and wildlife. Currently, the U.S. and Canada are in talks to “modernize” this agreement. These negotiations represent a critical window of opportunity to add for the first time the ‘health of the river’ as a new treaty purpose including water quality and biodiversity. With strategic organizing, communications and policy work, SOS and the NGO Treaty Caucus are focused on helping to educate and mobilize people to give input to policymakers in Congress and the Federal Administration to secure a modernized Treaty before the end of 2024. This grant will support and expand a strategic, multi-pronged advocacy effort to educate and engage allied regional and national groups, their members, the public, and key policymakers to secure a new treaty that (1) establishes the health of the Columbia River, including water quality, as a new purpose, co-equal with hydropower and flood management, and (2) improves current governance structures to ensure the river’s health becomes a priority in Treaty implementation moving forward. These improvements will safeguard water quality in the lower mainstem of the Columbia River so that it continues to serve as a viable migratory corridor for salmon and other aquatic species as climate change intensifies. Further, the grant will help in establishing tribal voice as part of the treaty modernization process. | More details | ||
| SeaDoc Society, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine | Orca Fund | 2023 | $55,000.00 | Oregon Coast; North Sound/Salish Sea | Refining high return tools for remotely assessing health in southern resident killer whales | Clallam County;Island County;Jefferson County;King County;Kitsap County;Mason County;Pierce County;San Juan County;Skagit County;Snohomish County;Thurston County;Whatcom County | Washington | https://www.seadocsociety.org/ | The SeaDoc Society develops tools for remotely assessing southern resident (SRO) orca health. Recently, SeaDoc refined its list of health metrics suitable for evaluating potentially sick SROs and identified areas where tools or metrics need more research and development. SeaDoc will refine those high-value, low-impact health metrics and sample collection tools that need more work. This development and refinement effort includes work on the measurement techniques such as maximizing the volume of breath droplets captured by drone and calibrating infrared taken blow hole temperature to core body temperature. The grant will also allow the researchers to explorethe feasibility of using a drone-based imaging tool for developing a 3-D replica of the animal, which would allow for a much more detailed understanding of body condition such as changes in fat from various regions of the body. All data will be uploaded in the Killer Whale Health Database which is being transferred to the Center for Whale Research for analysis and shared use. All tools for measuring health metrics, once fully developed and validated, will be shared with other scientists and managers for the benefit of the wider SRO research community. In addition to individual Orca health, these newly validated health parameters will enable SeaDoc to make wider health assessments by matriline, pod, or population. In addition to annual body condition, reproductive success and population counts, NOAA, DFO, and WDFW resource managers in Canada and the United States will use these health data to evaluate in real-time the effectiveness of management actions for improving the health of southern residents. | More details | |
| Secure Justice | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $75,000.00 | Statewide; California | California Consumer Data Dictionary | Technology/Product/Service | Statewide | California | https://secure-justice.org/ | Secure Justice will design and develop a suite of tools that will allow California consumers to understand how major corporations are collecting and storing information on them. With their past work funded by the Consumer Products Fund, the group showed that even when companies may attempt to comply with California privacy laws by disclosing collected personal information to consumers, those data disclosures can be complicated for the average Californian to understand, especially without technical expertise. The California Consumer Data Dictionary will be an interactive tool suite that gives the average California consumer the ability to understand their personal information that is collected and stored by corporations. With a human-centered and privacy-focused approach, Secure Justice will produce a set of technological solutions that allow Californians to view their data and learn how a company’s collection activities can impact their privacy, security, and autonomy, so California consumers can benefit from the law's protections. | More details |
| Shared Spaces Foundation | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Southwest Seattle Watershed Restoration | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation;Climate Change & Energy;Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space;Other | King County | Washington | http://www.sharedspacesfoundation.org/ | Shared Spaces Foundation (SSF) will conduct forest and riparian restoration activities on its Heron’s Nest site in conjunction with the Duwamish River Tribe. SSF will build an aquaponics system that will allow the Heron’s Nest greenhouse to propagate thousands of wetland and estuarine plants to use in restoration work onsite, as well as to donate to numerous other riparian and marine restoration projects across the Puget Sound region. This will include donation of plants to other community-based, volunteer-driven projects like Heron’s Nest. SSF will organize work crews to restore riparian and estuarine sites along Puget Creek, Longfellow Creek, the Lower Duwamish River, and various sites along Elliott Bay. In addition to plant nursery activities and hands on riparian restoration, SSF will host trainings and facilitate the installation of compost filtration socks into storm drains and other small streams threatened by contaminants from roadway runoff. Installation locations will be along West Marginal Way, in South Park, Georgetown, Highland Park and other areas that contribute stormwater run-off to the Lower Duwamish River watershed. Finally, SSF will produce a documentary about the harm to Puget Sound watersheds from municipal and industrial waste and dumping. | More details |
| Silent Spring Institute | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | A digital at-home audit for CA women of color to avoid toxic ingredients in beauty products | Technology/Product/Service;Education | Statewide | California | http://www.silentspring.org/ | Silent Spring partners with environmental justice groups to document racial disparities in chemical exposures and support impacted communities. They have been working with partners groups on a study called Taking Stock (TS) to understand how personal care products used by women of color influence their exposure to EDCs. SSI will use this grant to develop a digital product audit that prioritizes consumers’ riskiest products for replacement. Women in the pilot cohort will log their beauty products at home, and the app will convert a photo of a product label into machine-readable text. SSI will assess products based on the number of toxic ingredients, where they are applied, and how often. Each individual’s audit report will prioritize which products to replace, as well as explain health concerns of toxic ingredients. SSI will pilot test the audit in a California study with women of color and collaborate with Clearya, a technology platform that helps people and organizations create a healthier environment through data-driven insights. The existing Clearya free app and browser extension empowers shoppers to make healthier choices by screening product ingredients for chemicals of concern and suggesting safer alternatives, based on authoritative chemical hazard data. Unlike other apps, the improvement funded with this grant will allow users to evaluate usage patterns and ingredients together. After they validate the tool with this research study, SSI plans to make it available to the public, so anyone can perform this kind of product audit. | More details |
| SLO Beaver Brigade | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | Central Coast (incl. Monterey Bay and San Luis Obispo) | Salinas River Watershed Health | Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | San Luis Obispo County | California | https://www.slobeaverbrigade.com/ | To monitor beaver dam habitat and advocate for policies and decision making that ensure the protection and enhancement of the Salinas River watershed. | More details |
| Sonoma County Tomorrow, Inc. | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | Russian River | General Support | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Sonoma County | California | https://broccoli-caterpillar-wlt7.squarespace.com/ | To fund a lawsuit requiring a full Environmental Impact Assessment of the proposed development of the Sonoma Developmental Center's 750 acres of wildlife habitat and historical sites. | More details |
| Sonoma Safe Ag Safe Schools | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | Russian River | General Support | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Toxics & Environmental Health;Environmental Justice | Sonoma County;Statewide | California | https://www.sonomasass.org/ | To educate communities and local and state leaders on how to manage roadside vegetation without synthetic herbicides like RoundUP. | More details |
| South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group (SPSSEG) | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $20,000.00 | South Puget Sound | Skookum Creek Restoration at River Mile 6.5 | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Mason County | Washington | www.spsseg.org | South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group (SPSSEG) focuses on restoring stream and river habitat to improve salmon health throughout South Puget Sound. SPSSEG will conduct restoration activities along 1,100 feet of Skookum Creek and its adjacent floodplain aimed at restoring habitat for salmon, water quality, and improving ecological functions supporting aquatic and riparian habitat. Skookum Creek is a vital stream system within the homeland of the Squaxin Island Tribe which supports South Sound stocks of chum and coho salmon, also feeding into Puget Sound at Totten Inlet. Degradation of the Skookum Creek system from extended land conversion, logging, and agricultural related impacts to riparian and floodplain functions has been ongoing for several decades, and this has contributed to losses in salmon habitat, declines in salmon populations, water quality, and shellfish health. This project will take place on a large property purchased by the Squaxin Island Tribe specifically for restoration purposes. Key restoration tasks will include installing log structures and log clusters to improve stream complexity, salmon spawning and rearing habitat, sediment sorting and water filtration, as well as riparian vegetation and wetland enhancement to improve shading, reduce water temperatures, and reduce bacterial input. In-stream work includes building of log structures to slow water as well as riparian vegetation preparations and plantings. This property and project are part of a broader restoration initiative in Skookum Valley led by the Squaxin Island Tribe, SPSSEG, and other partners. | More details |
| South River Watershed Alliance | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2023 | $1,000.00 | Georgia | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Georgia | https://www.southriverga.org/ | To hire professional trainers on development of urban ag skills, specifically, horticulture and/or Irrigation licensing. These skills will further enhance the organization's ability to provide training to residents on these topics. The purpose of the training is also to learn wise water conservation techniques for successful urban ag practices to respond to the severe weather conditions caused by high heat indices. | More details | ||
| SR3 Sealife Response, Rehab and Research | Orca Fund | 2023 | $65,000.00 | Oregon Coast; North Sound/Salish Sea | Quantitative photogrammetry of Southern Resident killer whales: linking health to population status | Clallam County;Island County;San Juan County;Skagit County;Whatcom County | Washington | https://www.sealifer3.org/ | SR3 uses aerial photogrammetry to develop the only quantitative time series on the health of Southern Resident Orcas (SRO). Measurements from high-resolution photographs have provided annual and seasonal measurements of body condition and growth for the majority of the population and has lead SR3 to the development of its “whales of concern” designation that can serve as an early warning system for whale management. SR3 will extend its unique time series on body condition to deliver new stand-alone products focused on the identification of “whales of concern” in the short term and the impact of condition and growth changes on population status and viability in the long-term. This will be achieved through three elements: 1) detecting changing body condition of SRKWs through 2025; 2) updating relationships between individual condition and subsequent survival and its relationship to pod condition; and 3) investigating relationships between demographic rates and variability in body size, particularly fecundity in adult females. The outcomes of this study will greatly extend and enhance the ability to monitor health of SROs to detect changes, identify “whales of concern” to facilitate enhanced management responses before whales die, and will improve predictions and tracking of future population viability. | More details | |
| Stewardship Partners | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Adopt-a-Downspout | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | King County | Washington | http://www.stewardshippartners.org | This funding will support Stewardship Partners’ project to develop, optimize, and deploy bioretention planter systems to capture and treat highway runoff from elevated roads. The group will work alongside partners including the University of Washington, Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), The Nature Conservancy, Herrera Environmental, and others to complete this stormwater demonstration project. Stewardship Partners will install and monitor a pair of bioretention planter systems under the I-5 Ship Canal bridge in Seattle. These “boxes of rain” will treat runoff from approximately 3 acres of high-traffic road surface that currently discharge directly into the Lake Washington Ship Canal, an impaired Coho Salmon (Chinook, Sockeye and Steelhead too) migration corridor. | More details |
| Stop LAPD Spying Coalition | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $75,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County); California | Fighting Social Media Surveillance, Youth Data, & Political Targeting | Arts, Culture, & Media;Children & Youth;Consumer Advocacy;Consumer Privacy;Human Rights & Civil Liberties;Other; Advocacy;Education; Community Organizing | Los Angeles County | California | https://stoplapdspying.org/ | The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition is a community group based in the Skid Row neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. Founded in 2011, the group has been researching, exposing, and organizing as part of broader movement-building to abolish police spying and infiltration. For years, Stop LAPD Spying has mobilized around the concept of 'datafication' i.e. the non-consensual collection of information about communities, which is then used to control or commodify populations. The group is most concerned with the fact that police both generate and gather data about local communities that is repurposed for profit. Individual’s relationships, communication, movements, and biographies are reduced to data points that are collected and shared by the police, who have become the largest data brokers. With this grant, the group will grow their work by addressing surveillance and data gathering in several key areas. First, the group will focus on identifying partnerships between social media corporations, law enforcement agencies, and third-party social media surveillance software companies. They will also intensify organizing efforts against a youth surveillance app known as "Los Angeles Schools Anonymous Reporting" (LASAR) which collects data on Los Angeles students. In addition, Stop LAPD Spying is committed to expanding its efforts in highlighting LAPD’s suppression of protests. The group will hold monthly meetings to inform local residents and empower them to advocate on all of these issues. | More details |
| Surveillance Technology Oversight Project | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $25,000.00 | Nationwide;New York | Ending Mass Surveillance: Building a Nationwide Privacy Model for Statewide Protections | Consumer Advocacy;Consumer Privacy;Human Rights & Civil Liberties; Advocacy;Education | New York | https://www.stopspying.org/ | Founded in 2019, The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P) litigates and advocates for privacy, working to abolish local governments’ systems of mass surveillance and fighting to ensure that technological advancements don’t come at the expense of age-old rights. S.T.O.P. will use the funding to lead advocacy and community education efforts, with the goal of building legal firewalls to dismantle surveillance systems around the country. With New York as the group’s home base, they will scale up their efforts to fight for these protections nationally to begin demanding overhauls of flawed surveillance practices. Building on the success of previous Freedom of Information litigation, legislation, and public education work, the group will: (1) file and pursue 15+ public information requests; (2) push for bans on facial recognition, geofence and keyword search warrants, and police use of fake social media accounts; (3) partner with 15+ national organizations to ban these technologies in other states; (4) conduct dozens of privacy trainings for community members; (5) publish 30+ op-eds and interviews in major and local news outlets; and (6) host 3-5 community organizing events. s project responds to a moment in which our actions in the short term will dictate our lives for decades or generations to come. Collectively, these actions will help halt the use of mass surveillance systems before they become normalized, and the group will work towards the long-term goal of comprehensively protecting Americans’ privacy. | More details | |
| Taraaz | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $75,000.00 | Nationwide;Other | Protecting Privacy and Civil Rights Through Responsible Municipal AI Procurement | Consumer Privacy;Human Rights & Civil Liberties; Education | Nationwide | taraazresearch.org | Taraaz is a research and advocacy non-profit dedicated to advocating for human rights in the digital age by conducting human rights impact assessments, developing educational tools, and advocating for responsible tech policy. Through successful a campaign and coalition building, the group was able to help ban the use of predictive policing technology that led to discriminating against marginalized communities in Santa Cruz County. This project will develop educational resources and hands-on engagement to help municipal policymakers responsibly procure AI technology to protect constituents' privacy and provide equitable access to public services. Through extensive literature review and interviews with municipal policymakers and civil society experts, the group will evaluate various AI vendors that sell software to municipalities and create tailored guides for vetting vendors, structuring contracts, and implementing oversight to prevent discrimination, inequity, and surveillance. After creating educational resources, the group will organize a workshop, in partnership with the National League of Cities, to provide hands-on experience to 45+ municipal officers to apply these guides to real-world municipal AI procurement scenarios. This project aims to empower municipal policymakers and officers with practical tools to embed consumer privacy rights, surveillance, and equitable access in public sector AI adoption. | More details | |
| The Common Acre | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | The Green Line Stewardship | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | King County | Washington | www.commonacre.org | The Common Acre (TCA) is engaged in a long-term stewardship project in South Seattle’s “Green Line” forest and wetland area. The Green Line is a 2-acre pollinator conservation project along the Creston-Duwamish transmission corridor of Seattle City Light. TCA will host youth and intergenerational education workshops and restoration work parties in partnership with Foster High School. TCA will engage up to eight youth from Foster High School’s environmental science course in a youth internship program focused on the following topics: stormwater and wastewater management; best management practices of ecological restoration work; native and invasive plant ID and management; and site assessment skills. TCA will also increase community engagement at the site with Rainier Beach residents as well as local Coast Salish and Indigenous community members to increase volunteerism in the project. TCA will employ the services of a local landscape designer to design and implement a site expansion for up to two additional acres. The design will focus on improving native habitat and increasing stormwater infiltration on the project site by expanding The Green Line into a camas prairie and removing invasive species including Reed Canary Grass and Himalayan Blackberry. Finally, TCA will incorporate Indigenous cultural activities involving land and water stewardship at The Green Line, expanding efforts to make The Common Acre a more inclusive space for Indigenous people. | More details |
| The Friends of the Snoqualmie Trail and River | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Securing Technical Capability and Supporting Community Engagement to Protect the Snoqualmie River | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation;Climate Change & Energy;Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | King County | Washington | https://fosvtr.org/ | This grant will allow The Friends of the Snoqualmie Trail and River to conduct basic scientific research to underpin efforts to educate the community and government agencies. The project includes a hydrological study to assess the ability of the Snoqualmie River to support planned and ongoing growth in the area. The group will also add multicultural community outreach to new and diverse communities, particularly local Muslim communities, to engage with the river including partnering with the local “Eat with a Muslim” group to visit the river and conduct water quality testing. The Friends will then promote their research findings and share initiatives to encourage actions towards protecting the river, including expanding an existing water temperature project and training of volunteers to expand water quality testing capabilities. | More details |
| The Institute of Student Loan Advisors | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $50,000.00 | Statewide; California | Understanding Your Student Loan Rights | Advocacy;Education | Statewide | California | https://freestudentloanadvice.org/ | The Institute of Student Loan Advisors (TISLA)’s goal is to help empower borrowers. The group does not manage borrower’s loans but instead, borrowers are given expert advice to explain current regulations and statutes, which includes their rights to certain levels of service, payment options, and forgiveness and discharge programs. With this grant, TISLA plans to offer five webinars to California residents, offered in partnership with the Dept of Financial Protection & Innovation, who will broadcast these on their YouTube channel and provide outreach to California residents as to both the live and recorded sessions. The topics will include: 1) Understanding the California Student Loan Borrower Bill of Rights, 2) Understanding the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, 3) Utilizing the Income Driven Plans, including the temporary waiver, 4) How Defaulted Student Loan Borrowers Can Benefit from the Temporary Fresh Start Program and Get Back in Good Standing, and 5) Student Loan Repayment Restart – How it will work and how to ensure you can successfully navigate your repayment options. This information is especially important now, with the long COVID repayment pause ending, as there are real dangers of high delinquency and default rates as borrowers struggle to afford their payments, understand their options, and try to work with an already overloaded student loan servicing system. | More details |
| The Regents of the University of California - UC Berkeley Center for Economic Justice | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $148,000.00 | Nationwide;California | Protecting Consumers from Harmful Technologies Through Advocacy Networks | Consumer Advocacy;Consumer Financial Education;Consumer Privacy;Economic Development;Human Rights & Civil Liberties; Advocacy;Education;Other (explain below); Network/coalition-building | Nationwide | The Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice is the nation’s leading academic center dedicated to building the field of consumer law. The Center works to create economic justice by developing policies that prevent fraud and deception, protect low-income communities and communities of color, and promote financial security and empowerment. The Center will use this grant to activate the Economic Justice Policy Advocacy Conference (EJPAC) and Consumer Law Advocates, Scholars & Students (CLASS) networks—nationwide teams that it launched and co-directs—to address urgent threats to the privacy and economic security of low-income consumers from emerging technologies. The grant will enable the Center to hire for the first time a Policy Director who will transform EJPAC from a periodic convening into a standing active coalition of policy advocates focused on issues of privacy, technology, and economic justice. The Director will also galvanize the student and professorial resources of the CLASS network to design, refine, promulgate, and implement new legislative and regulatory initiatives. The Center will facilitate cutting-edge policy research, engage in regulatory advocacy, and use the courts to protect and implement policy victories to address consumer privacy from a consumer/economic justice focus, in contrast to other organizations that tend to approach the issue from technocentric or democracy/human rights perspectives. | More details | ||
| The Watershed Project | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $20,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Water Quality Monitoring & Apprenticeship in Contra Costa County: Fostering Community & Stewardship | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | Contra Costa County | California | http://www.thewatershedproject.org/home.php | The Watershed Project (TWP) has been coordinating community-based water quality monitoring efforts across Contra Costa County in the Bay Area since 2017. Today, they partner with 12 different local organizations to monitor 46 different creek sites and perform other water quality-related activities. All data collected is published via The California Environmental Data Exchange Network (CEDEN), ensuring it is accessible to state regulators and other professionals. This grant will ensure the help TWP’s water quality monitoring program continues at existing sites and expands to three new local watersheds, all while maintaining the high data quality required to align the data with CEDEN standards to ensure it is scientifically sound and actionable by decision makers. TWP is also adding a Water Quality Apprenticeship Pathway to their Green Collar Corps program. This program will train two local low-income and BIPOC young adults in key skills for fieldwork, restoration, data collection, analysis, and networking. Since TWP's work is community-based, this grant will also support activities to strengthen their local network of water quality volunteers and advocates through both outreach and an annual gathering to share water quality data and identify new community priorities and opportunities. | More details |
| The Watershed Research and Training Center | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2023 | $33,000.00 | Statewide | Balancing fire restoration and protection of public health in EPA's PM 2.5 rulemaking | Environmental Health and Toxics;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Statewide | California | https://www.thewatershedcenter.com/ | In early January 2023, the EPA proposed a rule to reduce the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for particulate matter (PM2.5). This action is intended to improve public health, but would inadvertently curtail the use of prescribed fire and cultural burning, some of the only tools available to help reduce wildfire smoke. The Watershed Research & Training Center (WRTC) will develop proposed policy solutions that will protect both the use of prescribed fire and the public health and build a coalition to advocate for regulatory or statutory changes in order to submit a comment letter to the EPA for this rulemaking. | More details |
| Toxic Free Future | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $50,000.00 | Statewide; California | Retailer Report Card: Educating California Consumers About Toxic Chemicals in Products | Advocacy;Education | Statewide | California | http://www.toxicfreefuture.org | Toxic-Free Future’s mission is to create a healthier tomorrow by advocating for safer products, chemicals, and practices through research, grassroots organizing, and consumer education and engagement. Mind the Store, their marketplace program, challenges the nation’s top retailers to reduce the use of toxic chemicals and plastics in consumer products and packaging. Their respected science team conducts strategic product testing and other research to support the group’s campaigns. With this grant, TFF will research, write, and publish the 2023 Who’s Minding the Store? Retailer Report Card to educate consumers and drive retailer action to protect California consumers. The group will directly engage California’s largest retailers and educate and mobilize the state’s consumers to urge retailers to phase out harmful toxic chemicals in products. TFF’s education and advocacy efforts will focus on the most harmful and widely used chemicals in consumer products like PFAS, organohalogen flame retardants, bisphenols, and phthalates that pose serious risks to public health including reproductive harm, asthma, learning and developmental disabilities, and cancer, health problems disproportionately faced by low-income people and people of color. | More details |
| Toxic Free Future | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound; South King County | Partnering with King County Communities to Reduce Toxic Chemical Pollution in Puget Sound | Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Other | King County | Washington | http://www.toxicfreefuture.org | Toxic-Free Future (TFF) will engage with King County community-based organizations on the impacts to water quality from common household products and provide them with tools to advocate for safer homes, communities and local water quality through strong implementation of the Safer Products for Washington law. Over the past 6 years, TFF has deepened relationships with low-income and communities of color through a project with Seattle King County Public Health which raised awareness about lead exposures in homes and communities. Building on those relationships, TFF will continue to partner with communities to expand their understanding of the link between chemicals in common household products and water quality. TFF will work with communities by focusing on the priority chemicals in product categories that can be regulated under the Safer Products for Washington law. TFF will provide information about chemicals in everyday products that end up in wastewater systems or leach from landfills and contribute to the toxic chemical contamination in Puget Sound. TFF will support communities’ engagement directly with the Department of Ecology to identify products with priority chemicals and to advocate for restrictions on harmful chemicals in those products that impact water quality and harm the health of their communities. | More details |
| Trees Foundation | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | North Coast; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | El Dorado County | California | http://www.treesfoundation.org | To hire a consultant to advise our bookkeeper and provide training to augment her skills in grant tracking and invoicing. As our organization grows, an important part of our capacity building includes the need to accurately budget for the year. We have already reached out to one of our partner groups to connect with their consultant who has agreed to provide one-on-one skill building trainings, as well as to assist us in creating a new annual budget. | More details | |
| True Nature Society dba Quail Springs | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2023 | $15,000.00 | Santa Barbara Area (incl. Oxnard and Ventura) | Improving Burges Creek Surface Water Quality with Beaver Dam Analogs | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education;Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Climate Change and Energy | Santa Barbara County;Ventura County | California | www.quailsprings.org | Quail Springs is located in the Cuyama Valley, a rural high-desert majority Latino community. Over the last nearly 20 years, they have honed and implemented a number of stream restoration techniques appropriate to this unique and water-scarce ecosystem. This grant will support the creation of beaver dam analogs (BDAs) in Burges Creek in the Santa Maria Watershed, which will improve water quality, increase water storage, create wetland habitat, and enhance riparian vegetation and biodiversity. These structures are intended to encourage the creek to slow down and create a greater wetted area, flow downstream further and for longer into the dry summer, and decrease sediment load. Decreased sediment load is a common benchmark for improved surface water quality. The BDAs will be constructed over the course of three workshops in the late spring and early summer, where Quail Springs staff and volunteers will be joined by community members from the Cuyama Valley who will participate as paid interns. Interested community members will be identified in collaboration with other local organizations, such as the Cuyama Valley Family Resource Center and the Blue Sky Center, and bilingual educational materials and instruction will be made available. | More details |
| United Policyholders | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | Insurance Consumer Adaptation Project | Advocacy;Education | Statewide | California | www.uphelp.org | United Policyholders has provided information, assistance, and advocacy services to California insurance consumers (policyholders) since 1991. While the organization’s overall goal is to ensure fair business practices across all lines of insurance, their programs focus on helping households be resilient to adversity by having adequate property insurance coverage in place and by reaching prompt and full claim settlements after everyday losses and catastrophic events. With this grant, the group will update their print, online and video renters, home and condo owners’ insurance shopping/buying guidance and outreach and engage in related advocacy activities. The updates will help Californians contend with new exclusions, coverage limits, and price increases that insurance companies are implementing due to the increase in claims caused by climate change. United Policyholders will do advocacy work to stem the tide of shrinking protection for water, mold, and weather-related damage. In the aftermath of recent storms and record-breaking rainfall throughout the state, many impacted households were denied any insurance funds to pay for repairs. This project will raise awareness among California homeowners that having insurance in place doesn’t necessarily mean their current policy will finance repairs or rebuilding if an event damages or destroys their home. | More details |
| United States Public Interest Research Group Education Fund | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $125,000.00 | Statewide; Nationwide;Arizona;California;Colorado;Illinois;Maryland;Massachusetts;Oregon | U.S. PIRG Education Fund Don't Sell My Data campaign | Children & Youth;Consumer Advocacy;Consumer Privacy; Advocacy;Education | Statewide | California | www.uspirgedfund.org | Since 1984, U.S. PIRG Education Fund has used research, public education, advocacy, and litigation to achieve dozens of milestones for consumer protection and support organizations committed to a strategic approach to social change. U.S. PIRG Education Fund’s Don’t Sell My Data campaign will build upon PIRG’s historical work in the privacy space, and the organization will continue fighting for consumer internet privacy rights. In partnership with state PIRG groups, U.S. PIRG will launch a state lawmaker and consumer education project, creating and releasing a state privacy law scorecard, holding a national briefing for state lawmakers on how to protect consumers’ data privacy online, and disseminating state-specific tips guides for consumers on how to exercise their rights. The group will also support the CFPB in its Fair Credit Reporting Act rulemaking and continue work to identify and uplift emerging Gen Z privacy leaders on campuses. The goal of this work is to both arm lawmakers with information about what effective consumer privacy protections look like as well as to empower consumers in states with laws to use their rights. Informed and motivated consumers are a powerful force when given the right tools. Empowering consumers in states with privacy laws to use their right to access & delete data will not only help individual consumers, including youth and families, better protect themselves, this will send the marketplace a signal that the public is becoming less tolerant of abusive data practices. | More details |
| University of Washington | Orca Fund | 2023 | $75,000.00 | Oregon Coast; Central Puget Sound | The right fish at the right time: studying shifts in SRKW diet to improve prey resource conservation | King County;San Juan County | Washington | https://www.washington.edu/research/osp/ | In Partnership with Wild Orca and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA), the UW Whale And Dolphin Ecology (WADE) lab will sequence DNA from up to 100 fecal samples collected by Wild Orca during 2020-2024 to improve understanding of Southern Resident Orca (SRO) diet and foraging behavior. Despite multiple years of monitoring and sample collection by NOAA and their partners, major gaps exist in understanding SRO diet and foraging behavior still inhibit managers’ capacity to apply appropriate conservation measures to ensure this population has a reliable food source throughout the year. Parallel sample collection by Wild Orca has been focused on analyzing changes in hormones in SRO, however, this existing sample set has great potential to have a wider impact by increasing understanding of SRO diet changes throughout the year and examine pod-level differences in diet and foraging behavior at a level never before possible. Using this work as a learning opportunity, the WADE lab will train an undergraduate intern from historically underserved communities, via UW Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP), and a scientist from SDZWA in lab procedures to determine SRO diet from fecal samples. The WADE lab and trainees will also work with Wild Orca to collect new SRO field samples, increasing datasets available to the research community and ensuring proper training of future marine mammal scientists. While the first half of the internship will be focused on generating new data to inform SRO conservation, the second half will be focused on effective communication of this new information. The WADE lab, intern, and Wild Orca will develop outreach materials and participate in events that keep the public informed of and engaged in SRO conservation. Finally, the WADE lab will share these results directly with regional, federal, and state management agencies to support the conservation of prey resources most heavily used by SRO. | More details | |
| US Green Building Council Central California | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Central Valley; California | Green Labels Demystified | Education | Fresno County | California | www.usgbccc.org | This group’s work is focused on education, outreach, advocacy, and project management in the field of green buildings and communities. The Green Labels Demystified program will empower communities in the City and County of Fresno with knowledge and background on ecolabels and green product certifications through outreach and education. Although there are sustainable labels for everything from sofas to energy ratings, consumers are generally not familiar with what these labels mean. This project will provide education on a wide variety of ecolabels including EPA created ecolabels as well as green product certifications like GREENGUARD, Forest Stewardship Council, Cradle to Cradle and others. The group will develop easy to understand outreach materials in English and Spanish to inform consumers about the meaning of different labels and certifications, their relevance and application, and reach a wide range of users. The outreach will include community groups, clubs, organizations working in the building field as well as tabling events and presentations at home improvement stores. | More details |
| Voice For Our Children | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Environmental Education;Climate Change & Energy;Toxics & Environmental Health | Tulare County | California | To protect and educate child daycares and young mothers to reduce the use of harmful pesticides and products around children in Tulare County. | More details | |
| Voice For Our Children | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | Central Valley; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Tulare County | California | Quickbooks system to help with accounting and bookkeeping. | More details | ||
| Washington Conservation Action Education Fund | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $30,000.00 | Building Community Power Along the Lower Columbia River | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Justice;Environmental Health and Toxics;Climate Change & Energy | Washington | https://wcactionef.org/ | This grant will support the Washington Conservation Action Education Fund (WCA) to educate and organize communities in Southwestern Washington around harm caused by fossil fuel discharges into waterways. Port communities along the Lower Columbia are disproportionately exposed to industrial pollution and face significant impacts to water quality from shipping and fuel transport. WCA will work with these frontline communities to strengthen water quality protections in the Columbia River Basin. WCA seeks to prevent harmful oil spills and stop pollution from reaching the Lower Columbia through a focus on local land-use plans to establish restrictions that curtail fossil fuel developments, preventing future harm to the environment in the region and the health of the Columbia River. WCA will lead a range of activities including community organizing, relationship building with local policy makers and other interested parties, capacity building and training for local environmental interest groups, legal and regulatory advocacy, public education and outreach, and in-person demonstrations and community events. Local land use planning and policies represent a crucial pathway for preventing impacts to the region’s health from fossil fuel production and transport. Further, WCA will facilitate relationship building between community organizations and key decision-makers in the cities of Longview and Kalama, as well as throughout Clark and Cowlitz counties. | More details | ||
| Water Climate Trust | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $6,500.00 | North Central & East | Water for Nature Campaign | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Climate Change & Energy;Environmental Justice | Plumas County;Sacramento County;San Francisco County;Shasta County;Siskiyou County;Statewide | California | https://www.waterclimate.org/ | To advocate for the restoration and protection of instream flows in rivers and streams in the upper Sacramento River watershed through policy advocacy and participation in key state regulatory processes | More details |
| WaterWatch of Oregon | Columbia River Fund | 2023 | $20,497.00 | Building Climate Resilience for Thermal Refugia in the Columbia River | Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Justice | Oregon | www.waterwatch.org | This grant will support Water Watch of Oregon in their efforts to improve water management policies and practices in key Columbia River tributaries. Excessive stream temperatures in the Columbia Basin often result from reduced stream flows caused by inadequate water policies which are amplified by the effects of climate change. This threatens cold-water habitat in the Columbia Basin in encourages the growth of undesirable bio-contaminants, such as algae, that impact stream and human health. As such, Water Watch seeks to restore dry season stream flows, protect aquifers that provide cold source waters to streams and secure smarter water management practices in the Columbia Basin in Oregon. Water Watch will address changes in hydrology and water temperature by protecting and restoring stream flows and cold-water inputs like groundwater in Columbia River tributary streams including the Hood and Umatilla Rivers in Oregon. This grant will address streamflow protection strategies, direct legal protection for water, and improved management of water in the relevant subbasins. By protecting cold water in these streams and thermal refugia, these projects will provide greater climate resilience to the mainstem Columbia and tributaries in Oregon. | More details | ||
| West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project | Consumer Products Fund | 2023 | $55,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area; California | Induction Cooktop Teaching Project (ICTP) | Technology/Product/Service;Education | Alameda County | California | woeip.org | Since their inception, WOEIP has focused programs on the engagement and education of the West Oakland community negatively impacted by industrial activity at the Port of Oakland. The group has educated truckers, freight industry groups, and the Port about the ever-growing risk from the use of diesel fuel and the consumer product sector represented by fossil fuels. The organization’s latest program area focuses on educating consumers, families, and low-income residents on the significant risks inherent in gas appliances. The project will provide families with suggestions for how to reduce those pollution harms even while using gas appliances, and it also introduce students and their families to the health and safety superiority of modern electric kitchen appliances, including but not limited to induction electric cooktops. Through projects that vary by grade level, the group will loan out induction kits to students and their families with the option to keep the unit if desired. The group will organize cooking demonstrations that will be made available in multiple languages. WOEIP intends that this work will influence the improvement of indoor air quality for families with children who need it most. As lower-income people also tend to live in smaller spaces with more people, indoor air pollution harms associated with gas cooking appliances are thus spread to more people, more intensely. | More details |
| West Plains Water Coalition | PNW Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $7,500.00 | Pacific Northwest; Spokane River | General Support | Environmental Health and Toxics;Environmental Justice;Water Resources / Watershed Protection | Spokane County | Washington | https://westplainswater.org/ | West Plains Water Coalition (WPWC) works to educate, engage, and empower the citizens of Spokane's West Plains watershed towards public health safety and solutions to groundwater and drinking water contamination, and water table resources. WPWC is an organization composed of mostly rural homeowners on private wells that are or are at great risk of PFAS contamination. Members live within the150 square mile aquifer contaminated by Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport from 1975-2017. PFAS, a known health and habitat hazard, have been found in high concentrations throughout local wells but also throughout the Spokane River and come from the same sources. WPWC will engage in regular water quality testing, develop storytelling and data capacity using GIS mapping to create visuals for local water quality data, and will engage with elected officials and relevant committees. | More details |
| West Plains Water Coalition | PNW Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | Spokane River; Washington | Grow Your Roots Mini-grant | Spokane County | Washington | https://westplainswater.org/ | The Mini-Grant request for Moving South Berkeley Forward will support the 501(c)(3) application process for MSBF which will be provided by the East Bay Community Law Center. The center is a community service of the U.C. Berkeley Law School. The funds will cover the cost of filing. The Law Center in addition to assisting the filing process will collaboratively work with future board members (currently community members) to draft the bylaws for MSBF as well. While other city garden sites are dues based, MSBF will be a sweat equity site. Therefore having a board that can apply for funding, recruit garden educators/admin staff, obtain tools and support structures, and interact with community and city partners is integral to this projects' success and longevity. | More details | |
| Wholly H2O | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $6,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Environmental Justice | Alameda County;Contra Costa County | California | https://whollyh2o.org/ | To help communities of the San Francisco Bay Area connect with their watershed ecosystems through education programs that spotlight the history of BIPOC environmental activism, “Walking Waterhoods” tours, citizen science events, and an informational podcast. | More details |
| Wholly H2O | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area; California | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Alameda County | California | https://whollyh2o.org/ | Our grant writing team is looking at online training courses to bolster the hands-on experience they’ve had so far, with expert resources and educational content. We will use the Grow Your Roots Mini Grant for grant writing trainings, and as online trainings are usually made accessible for a year, it is likely these trainings will benefit our current grant team as well as our next year’s team. | More details | |
| Wild Orca | Orca Fund | 2023 | $125,000.00 | Oregon Coast; North Sound/Salish Sea | Southern Resident Killer Whale Health Monitoring Program | Jefferson County;King County;San Juan County | Washington | http://www.wildorca.org | Wild Orca’s Southern Resident Orca Whale Health Monitoring Program will continue to build on the 15-year legacy of groundbreaking work at the University of Washington (UW) by monitoring and tracking the health of the Southern Resident Orcas (SRO). Wild Orca will increase understanding of SRO core summer habitat as well as wild Chinook salmon populations, the SRO’s primary prey species. Wild Orca will use non-invasive techniques to collect fecal samples for lab analysis to monitor SRO reproductive health—including pregnancy success and failure—and hormone levels related to stress and nutrition. Wild Orca will build on knowledge gained through research by UW, NOAA, and other health monitoring studies over the last decades to keep the science on the SRO’s health up-to-date to assess change over time and better understand recovery solutions. However, Wild Orca will make data and findings available for more immediate protection of SROs rather than storing results for later publication. Further, Wild Orca will use its conservation research findings to engage with federal and state agency scientists tasked with SRO and salmon recovery. Wild Orca seeks to inform policy through top-down and bottom-up engagement by directly engaging with lawmakers and supporting grassroots activism to engage in meaningful, informed actions. Accessible, easily digestible information will be available for all key audiences to ensure that the best available, most up-to-date science is used to inform the policy and regulatory changes necessary to save the SROs from extinction. | More details | |
| Wolf Creek Community Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $500.00 | Sierra Nevada | Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Nevada County | California | http://www.wolfcreekalliance.org/ | To purchase a mobile WIFI hot spot for faster internet connectivity, and a small room AC for climate control in the heat of summer, so that the monitoring program director can work effectively during monitoring days and so that samples can be properly stored and analyzed. Any remaining funds will be put toward the monthly fee for fundraising software charged by Donor Perfect. | More details | |
| Wolf Creek Community Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $6,060.00 | Sierra Nevada | Rewilding Wolf Creek Preserve | Habitat / Wilderness / Preservation;Water Resources / Watershed Protection;Land Management / Urban Sprawl / Open Space | Nevada County | California | http://www.wolfcreekalliance.org/ | To lead 6 volunteer community workdays to remove invasive plants and install native plants in the Roy Peterson Wolf Creek Preserve; restoring native habitat and building the conservation community in southern Nevada County. This work will improve conditions for pollinators, birds, and other wildlife, while educating the community about the importance of native plants for supporting climate resilience and biodiversity. | More details |
| World Relief Seattle | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2023 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Paradise Parking Plots Community Stormwater Mitigation Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection;Environmental Health & Justice;Environmental Education | King County | Washington | https://worldrelief.org/western-wa/ | World Relief Western Washington (WRWW) is one of the foremost non-profit organizations linking stormwater management and food security in the Puget Sound. WRWW works to mitigate water pollution while also providing opportunities for the refugee and immigrant population in King County to grow culturally relevant foods for themselves, their families, and their communities. Towards that end, WRWW created Paradise Parking Plots where over 24,000 sq. ft. of asphalt was de-paved and an underutilized parking lot was transformed into a thriving community garden. The Site acts as a leading example of community-designed green stormwater infrastructure (GSI), and the group has integrated five rain gardens, a 2,300 sq. ft. bioswale, and 20,000 gallons of rainwater catchment into the garden space. With the garden now established, WRWW is engaged in regular maintenance activities, but this grant will also allow the group to shift its focus towards expanding GSI impact in the community. Using Paradise Parking Plots as a laboratory model and a springboard, WRWW will monitor and quantify the effectiveness of the garden’s GSI on local water quality, advocate for the modernization of Kent City codes to account for GSI and extend the impact of GSI through additional community-based projects. | More details |
| Youth For Privacy | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2023 | $5,000.00 | Nationwide | Youth for Privacy | Children & Youth;Consumer Advocacy;Consumer Privacy; Advocacy;Education | Nationwide | https://www.youthforprivacy.org/ | The Youth Privacy Ambassadors Program aims to empower a select group of young individuals to champion privacy rights in their communities and schools. This grant will support six ambassadors who will be chosen and will go through a several month-long training process, where they will learn the basics of privacy, in intersection with topics like disarmament and data values. At the end of the training, they'll be provided with both a mentor and a $500 mini-grant each to execute privacy-related projects (with preference toward creative and joint deliverables). The program will prioritize publicity and promotion, ensuring a wide reach for the call for ambassadors and the final virtual showcase event. Ambassadors will be recognized at this event, celebrating their contributions. The project aligns with the organization's mission to foster a youth-led privacy-focused responsible internet through education and advocacy. | More details | |
| Zero Waste Humboldt | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $575.00 | North Central & East; California | Grow Your Roots Mini- Grant | Humboldt County | California | https://zerowastehumboldt.org/ | To support 2 ZWH Board members in attending the 2024 Deconstruction and Reuse Conference in Savannah, Georgia. This is the only North American conference focused on reuse in the building environment. | More details | |
| Zero Waste Humboldt | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $3,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Environmental Education;Climate Change & Energy;Other | Humboldt County | California | https://zerowastehumboldt.org/ | To educate and empower the community to implement strategies that reduce waste generation by helping local businesses integrate reusable materials into their processes and providing citizens with material reuse alternatives. | More details |
| Zero Waste San Diego | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2023 | $3,000.00 | San Diego Area | General Support | Environmental Education;Environmental Justice;Other | San Diego County | California | http://zerowastesandiego.com/ | To advocate for resource management policy change and educate the people of San Diego on how they can move toward a sustainable lifestyle, promote repair culture, support trade skill development, and reduce the number of repairable items thrown in landfills. | More details |
| A Community Voice | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Louisiana | General Support | Environment | Louisiana | http://www.acommunityvoice.org/ | To organize residents and politicians around the Blight to Bioswales project, which works with the lowest income and most vulnerable residents to develop strategic plans to install bioswales and rain gardens that prepare communities for impending disasters. | More details | |
| A Community Voice | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Louisiana | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Louisiana | http://www.acommunityvoice.org/ | To organize residents and politicians around the Blight to Bioswales project, which works with the lowest income and most vulnerable residents to develop strategic plans to install bioswales and rain gardens that prepare communities for impending disasters. | More details | |
| Alliance for Felix Cove | Anthony Grassroots Prize | 2022 | $1,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area; California | Theresa Harlan/Alliance for Felix Cove | Alameda County | California | https://www.alliance4felixcove.org/ | In recognition of the ongoing efforts of Theresa Harlan and Alliance for Felix Cove to restore and represent the history, culture, and ecological wisdom of the Coast Miwok at their ancestral homeland in Point Reyes National Seashore, establish a historical district at Point Reyes, and re-affirm the ancestral relationship of Native Peoples with our public lands. | More details | |
| Amargosa Conservancy | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $6,080.00 | Southern Deserts | Support for the Amargosa Summit | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Inyo County ; San Bernardino County | California | http://amargosaconservancy.org/ | To coordinate a professionally facilitated, two-day Amargosa Summit which would include Nevada and California federal and state agencies, non-profits, and Tribes, and would open dialog for the creation of a common conservation vision of the Amargosa Basin. | More details |
| Amigos De Bolsa Chica | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Follow and Learn about the Ocean and Wetlands (FLOW) | Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Toxics & Environmental Health | Orange County | California | https://www.amigosdebolsachica.org | To implement an enhanced citizen-science water quality monitoring program in the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve with the goal of better identifying, understanding and responding to sources of pollution and collecting data to inform management decisions. | More details |
| Arroyo Seco Foundation | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $22,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Arroyo Seco Trout Scouts | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.arroyoseco.org/ | The Arroyo Seco Trout Scouts Project (ASTS) aims first to enhance and restore the natural hydrology and ecosystem functioning of the Arroyo Seco watershed, a key tributary of the Los Angeles River and secondly, to build support for watershed protection and restoration activities. In the upper mountain watershed, the stream has been choked by sediment, patches of invasives, and a series of human-created barriers that reduce stream flow and water quality and inhibit fish and wildlife passage. The urbanized twelve miles of the Arroyo Stream has been channelized and degraded by trash and polluted runoff. With this funding, ASTS will first conduct stream surveys to measure and record key habitat with the goal of improving the natural hydrology and habitat for fish, wildlife, and people. The data collected will be used to create maps which identify habitat conditions, the presence of invasive species, and fish inventories. The data will be shared with scientists at state agencies for use in evaluation and restoration projects. The assessment surveys also serve the purpose of educating volunteers about watershed processes and documenting relevant conditions to help the broader community better understand watershed health and the needs of wildlife. ASTS will also include an extensive program of educational activities directed at local communities including monthly in-person and online presentations, social media postings, workshops and programs developed with local disadvantaged communities and their organizations. | More details |
| Ascend Wilderness Experience | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $500.00 | North Coast | Grassroots Fund Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Trinity County | California | http://ascendwilderness.org/ | More details | |
| Ascend Wilderness Experience | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,000.00 | North Coast | Sugar Pine Trail Restoration and Preservation | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Trinity County | California | http://ascendwilderness.org/ | To lead an adult backpacking and backcountry trail restoration project in the Trinity Alps during summer 2022, achieving the twin goals of restoring impacted habitat and building the conservation community in Trinity County. | More details |
| AsianWeek Foundation/Florence Fang Community Farm | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | San Francisco County | California | https://ffcommunityfarm.org/ | To build a strong community by pursuing food and environmental justice in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood through regenerative community farming. | More details |
| Battle Creek Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | North Central & East | Battle Creek Alliance Watershed Protection | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Shasta County ; Tehama County | California | http://www.thebattlecreekalliance.org | To collect long-term, year-round data regarding the diminished water quality downstream from clearcut and salvage-logged land in the Sierra and Cascade mountain ranges and pursue litigation to promote resource conservation and protect the climate, water supply, forest, watershed, and wildlife inhabitants and habitat from further degradation. | More details |
| Bay Area Green Tours | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Grassroots Fund Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Alameda County | California | https://www.bayareagreentours.org/ | More details | |
| Bigfoot Trail Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,000.00 | North Coast | Siskiyou Wilderness Collaborative | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Del Norte County | California | http://bigfoottrail.org/ | To support a collaborative team that will maintain ten miles of the Bigfoot Trail in the Siskiyou Wilderness, keeping it accessible to hikers and building the conservation community in Del Norte County. | More details |
| Bike Bakersfield | Kern County Air Pollution Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $150,000.00 | Central Valley | E-Bikes for East and Southeast Bakersfield Loan-to-Own Transportation Program | Planning ; Environmental Education | Kern County | California | https://bikebakersfield.org/ | E-Bikes for East and Southeast Bakersfield is a loan-to-own electric bicycle education and encouragement program designed to engage residents of some of the most disadvantaged, transit-isolated communities in active transportation and air pollution mitigation strategies. Program participants are loaned a free electric bicycle, commuting accessories, and safety equipment for one year while documenting a minimum of 30 miles per week traveled, participating in in-depth interviews, and attending a series of workshops taught by local industry professionals and group rides to maximize confidence and the ability to replace vehicle trips with an electric bicycle trip. E-bikes for East and Southeast Bakersfield provides a free, reliable form of transportation for low-income individuals, and it will build solidarity and collective knowledge of active transportation options and air pollution mitigation within some of the most underserved and underrepresented communities in Bakersfield, California | More details |
| Black Farmers Collective | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $30,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Building Towards Food Sovereignty and Black Liberations through Healthy Communities | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | King County | Washington | https://www.blackfarmerscollective.com | At Black Farmers Collective, one of our biggest priorities is to uplift Black brilliance and leadership. This grant project will go towards supporting young Black leaders and farmers who are deeply invested in the community building, educational programming, and farming we do. With these young leaders supported, we will be able to host more community workshops around food sovereignty and environmental justice as well as work more closely and intentionally with youth in our community. Having a bigger team will allow us to support more community members, grow more food, and create more economically feasible opportunities for Black and brown people to be in this work. There are so many barriers to getting into farming, community work, and education without having access to institutional resources and we are devoted to supporting young Black people who have shown clear commitment through volunteering over the years and other work they've participated in and provide the support system, training, and opportunities for self-determination and liberation. With more people on our team, youth and community will see that there are people like them who are land stewards, farmers, organizers, leaders, educators, healers, and much more in their community. | More details |
| Black Star Farmers | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Rainier Valley Water Resiliency Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | King County | Washington | https://blackstarfarmers.org/ | Our project seeks to train, mentor and fund certification fees for 10 BIPOC apprentices on effective residential and commercial site water management principles in South Seattle District 2. In short, there will be two cohorts of students, with the first session beginning in Winter 2023 and concluding in Summer/Fall of 2024 with our second session/cohort. Through a tailor made curriculum focusing on watershed management, education and proficiency development, our students will leave the program with both the knowledge and proven skills to immediately make a positive impact on our south sound watersheds especially WRIA’s 8 + 9 | More details |
| Bring Back the Kern | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $500.00 | Central Valley | Grassroots Fund Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Kern County | California | https://www.bringbackthekern.org/ | More details | |
| Bring Back the Kern | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Kern County | California | https://www.bringbackthekern.org/ | To advocate for the return of water to the Kern River in Bakersfield for the benefit of communities and wildlife. | More details |
| Bunny Friend Neighborhood Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Louisiana | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | Louisiana | https://www.bunnyfriend.org/ | To install green infrastructure projects like french drains, rain gardens, bioswales, permeable pavers and rain barrels to mitigate the impact of flooding on Upper 9th Ward residents. | More details | |
| California Desert Coalition | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Southern Deserts | Defend-the-Desert Series | Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change & Energy | Inyo County ; Mono County ; Riverside County ; San Bernardino County | California | https://www.cadesertcoalition.org/ | To conduct a series of conservation advocacy workshops that encourage community participation in land-use decisions and environmental policy to protect the Mojave Desert. | More details |
| California Field School | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $2,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; Marin County ; San Francisco County | California | https://www.californiafieldschool.org/ | To help Bay Area youth of color develop skills, familiarity, and connection with traveling by bicycle, and learn about the social and ecological histories of the land they live on, through bike tours and educational programing. | More details |
| California Greenworks | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $23,850.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Urban Forestry, south Los Angeles | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy | Los Angeles County; Los Angeles County ; Orange County | California | http://www.californiagreewnorks.org/ | The Urban Forestry, South Los Angeles project will promote stormwater capture, management, water and air pollutant treatment, and it will also increase community access to healthy green spaces by planting over 200 trees in the next two-year period. California Greenworks (CGW) will use the grant to plant and maintain 35 trees which will help the Ballona Creek stormwater catchment and help reduce air particulate and water pollutants in historically underserved communities. Grant funds will be specifically used for tree purchasing and maintenance. The objectives of the program are to: 1) address environmental justice issues, 2) mitigate air and water pollutants in underserved communities, 3) address historical urban blight. Success will be evaluated through community participation, pollutant measurements, and quality of life surveys. CGW will partner with their local conservation corps to assist with the planting and maintenance of the trees for 3 years, after which time the host city will maintain the trees. CGW will continue tracking water pollution levels in Ballona Creek (especially after storms/significant rain and during extreme heat events) to evaluate water quality improvements as well as the amount of stormwater capture and pollution mitigation per tree. | More details |
| California Public Interest Research Group Education Fund | Consumer Products Fund | 2022 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | CALPIRG Education Fund Consumer Watchdog Program | Advocacy ; Education | Statewide | California | https://pirg.org/california/edfund/ | Too many products, practices and technologies put consumers’ health, safety or well-being at risk. People can’t have a lab in their home to test their shampoo for parabens or kids’ toys for lead, and they don’t necessarily know the details of consumer protection laws to make companies uphold a warranty. Our Consumer Watchdog program gives consumers the information they need to lead safe, healthy, and secure lives. In the coming year, we will continue and expand our Consumer Watchdog program to address the growing program of counterfeit products in the marketplace, educate consumers about product recalls while pointing out needed changes to the CPSC's recall system, and help consumers get the most out of product warranties. | More details |
| California Urban Streams Alliance - The Stream Team | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Butte County ; Glenn County ; Mendocino County ; Tehama County | California | http://www.thestreamteam.org/ | To protect, enhance, manage, and restore the biological integrity of crucial California river systems while simultaneously providing educational opportunities about these ecosystems targeting rural communities in Butte and Mendocino Counties. | More details |
| Californians for Pesticide Reform | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $25,000.00 | Santa Barbara Area (incl. Oxnard and Ventura) | Reducing Pesticide Use to Improve Ventura County Water Quality | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice | Ventura County | California | https://www.pesticidereform.org/ | Portions of both of Ventura County’s major watersheds (Santa Clara River and Calleguas Creek) are classified as impaired under the Clean Water Act because of pesticide pollution. Since 2015, California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation has found pesticides in Ventura County surface water and sediments over 200 times, with glyphosate, malathion, chlorthal-dimethyl, and bifenthrin being the most frequent problems. Pesticide use in California is an enormous, multi-faceted problem, and there are no simple, quick solutions. However, Californians for Pesticide Reform’s (CPR) local coalition in the Oxnard area has achieved considerable momentum in local and state campaigns and movement building. The group has participated in both statewide and local policymaking to reduce pesticide use with the goal of protecting water quality. CPR will use the grant funding to continue engaging Ventura County residents and leaders to reduce regional pesticide use and join in statewide pesticide policy campaigns aimed at reducing usage and protecting water resources in the County. The group’s long-term goal is to reduce the use of the most hazardous pesticides in the county and to support safe replacements for drift prone pesticides. In addition to putting the region on a path for agricultural sustainability, it will produce direct watershed benefits by decreasing toxic pollutants in local waterways and creating healthier habitats for aquatic dependent species. | More details |
| Campesinas Unidas Del Valle De San Joaquin | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $500.00 | Central Valley | Grassroots Fund Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Kern County ; Kings County ; Tulare County | California | https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Nonprofit-Organization/Campesinas-unidas-Del-Valle-de-san-joaquin-101148844963934/ | More details | |
| Campesinas Unidas Del Valle De San Joaquin | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | Safe and Sustainable Food Systems | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Kern County ; Kings County ; Tulare County | California | https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Nonprofit-Organization/Campesinas-unidas-Del-Valle-de-san-joaquin-101148844963934/ | To work with rural, low-income, farmworker communities to grow sustainable food gardens, conduct outreach and communication regarding pesticides, mercury, clean water and other environmental hazards. | More details |
| Center for Biological Diversity | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $25,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Promoting Ecologic and Community Resilience in the Santa Ana River Watershed | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Orange County ; Riverside County ; San Bernardino County; Los Angeles County ; Orange County ; Riverside County ; San Bernardino County | California | https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/ | The Center for Biological Diversity is pleased to submit this proposal to the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment’s California Watershed Protection Fund. We respectfully request support for our work to promote ecologic and community resilience in the Santa Ana River watershed. In the Santa Ana River watershed, the Center will focus on preventing impacts to local wildlife, communities and the environment posed by two destructive developments: – Seven Oaks Dam: The Center has worked for many years to ensure this major flood control dam does not destroy wildlife and fish populations downstream of the dam. The Center sued the Army Corps of Engineers for violating the Endangered Species Act regarding the impact of Santa Ana River flood-control projects on the federally protected Santa Ana sucker fish and its designated critical habitat. We will continue mediation with stakeholders to develop science-based solutions to address impacts of the dam to species, including the Santa Ana sucker fish, San Bernardino kangaroo rat and Santa Ana River woolly-star. – Lytle Creek Ranch South Development: This development, as proposed, would destroy nearly 1,000 acres of critical habitat for the critically endangered San Bernardino kangaroo rat and would hasten the extinction of the subspecies. The Center will follow up on a formal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for violating the Endangered Species Act for impacts of the proposed development. | More details |
| Center for Farmworker Families | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | Central Coast (incl. Monterey Bay and San Luis Obispo) | General Support | Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Toxics & Environmental Health | Monterey County ; Santa Cruz County | California | http://www.farmworkerfamily.org/ | To provide a central resource center for farmworkers and strengthen relationships with ally organizations, in order to pursue local and state campaigns to restrict hazardous pesticide use and inform impacted residents about pesticides. | More details |
| Central Area Collaborative | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $10,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | The Central Area Neighborhood Business District Water Quality Initiative | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | King County | Washington | https://www.cacseattle.org | The project we are proposing is part of a three phased approach to addressing Clean Water and culturally based environmental justice solutions in the historically Redlined community neighborhoods in Seattle known as the Central Area, a formerly African American neighborhood that is now the target of rapid gentrification. In our first phase, the Central Area Collaborative (CAC) received a grant from the King County Waterworks program. In phase one, we are constructing a rain water/storm water drainage project to mitigate the effects the run off and pooling are creating on an adjacent public park, that the City’s Department of Parks and Recreation have failed to address over the years. Phase one is to be completed by the end of May 2022. In our next two phases, the CAC is looking to 1) create a neighborhood area flood assessment, around the various redevelopment projects that are contributing to the rain water/storm water problems around our public spaces (parks, community centers, playgrounds) and 2) provide a student led STEM project around water sampling and analysis of Lake Washington, where it borders the eastern edge of the Central Area neighborhood community. There have been several infrastructure projects addressing sewage and storm water runoff effects into Lake Washington in other wealthier neighborhoods, such as Madrona, Mt Baker and Seward Park. However, our inquiries have not resulted in the identification of such projects in our lower socio-economic and historically marginalized communities. Part of this funding would be to create student teams to collect water samples and have them analyzed during the spring and summer (especially at the beaches) to ensure water quality safety is being addressed equitably and/or highlight any abnormal findings. To be clear, depending on the level of funding received, the CAC is looking to begin either phase or both concurrently. | More details |
| Central California Asthma Collaborative | Kern County Air Pollution Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $100,000.00 | Central Valley | Reducing Asthma and Air Pollution in Homes and Schools (RAAPHS) | Planning ; Environmental Education | Kern County | California | https://www.centralcalasthma.org | CCAC will collaborate with one or more school districts in Kern County to implement a school-based air monitoring network, an indoor (classroom) air pollution mitigation intervention, collaborate with school district staff to develop air pollution and air monitoring curriculum for middle school STEM students and establish a community steering committee to educate and engage the general public about air pollution health effects, sources and mitigation strategies. CCAC will also work with school district health services and Kern County's managed care health plans (Kern Family Health Care, Health Net, Kaiser) to identify children and adults with asthma who live in low-income and disadvantaged communities. At-risk asthmatics will be enrolled in CCAC's Comprehensive Asthma Remediation and Educational Services (CARES) Program, which provides in-home asthma education and environmental remediation to reduce exposures to asthma triggers, like air pollution, inside the home. | More details |
| Central California Environmental Justice Network | Kern County Air Pollution Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $200,000.00 | Central Valley | The FLIR Project - Finding Leaks Impacting Residents | Environmental Education | Kern County | California | https://ccejn.org/ | This project will reduce planet-warming and health-harming pollutants from leaking oil infrastructure in Kern County. To accomplish this, CCEJN will enhance its technical capacity to proactively identify and report leaks to ensure a timely response from regulatory agencies. CCEJN will simultaneously conduct culturally appropriate outreach and education to residents living fence line to oil and gas operations and involve interested residents in community enforcement and air monitoring projects. CCEJN will also work with public health experts to develop a Strategic Inspection Plan that will prioritize community inspections of wells within 3,200 feet of homes or schools. Considering the recent and ongoing crisis of leaking oil wells in Bakersfield, and our leaders’ failure to implement a proactive approach to address it, we believe this project is essential to keep oil infrastructure from poisoning our frontline communities and exacerbating climate change. | More details |
| Central Valley Air Quality Coalition | Kern County Air Pollution Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $100,000.00 | Central Valley | Kern County Community Air Protections and Resilience | Environmental Education | Kern County | California | http://www.calcleanair.org | This project will provide information and resources on how to protect yourself from and improve local air pollution impacts while receiving guidance on priority concerns and interventions, with a focus on the most impacted neighborhoods and populations in Kern County. Platicas/listening and discussion sessions will facilitate a reciprocal exchange between CVAQ staff, local partners, and community members. These sessions will culminate in a community toxics and resilience tour for staff and decision makers connected to the priorities identified. | More details |
| Centreville Citizens for Change | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Illinois | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Illinois | https://floodedandforgotten.com/ | To mobilize local residents in generating political will around urban flooding protection, future planning, and emergency planning, in conjunction with local, state, and federal agencies. | More details | |
| Citizens' Committee for Flood Relief | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $1,000.00 | Missouri | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Missouri | https://www.facebook.com/groups/609613372545223/ | More details | ||
| Citizens' Committee for Flood Relief | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Missouri | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Missouri | https://www.facebook.com/groups/609613372545223/ | To mobilize local residents in generating political will around urban flooding protection, future planning, and emergency planning, in conjunction with local, state, and federal agencies. | More details | |
| City Fruit | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $15,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Community Outreach and Youth Education Program | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | King County | Washington | https://www.cityfruit.org | Since our founding in 2008, City Fruit has worked with public lands managers and private tree owners to harvest and secure access to pesticide-free, healthy fruit, reducing food waste and climate impacts while providing access to sustainably grown, local foods. A community-based organization, City Fruit cares for urban fruit tree systems and harvests ~40,000 pounds of fruit annually from fruit trees on public and private land. Through our partnerships with 25+ food banks, community organizations, and meal programs, we provide access to this local, organically-grown fruit for 25,000 families and individuals who may lack access to fresh fruit. Our Community Outreach and Education Program cultivates fruit tree stewards and environmental champions in hands-on environmental education and volunteer opportunities that help youth and adults connect to their communities, develop an appreciation of the land, and contribute to a sustainable food system. These opportunities are hosted as one-day and multi-week educational workshops, and generally run 2-4 hours. We tailor activities to fit different ages and group sizes (from 5 to 45 participants) and use Seattle’s urban orchard ecosystems as sites to center on various themes related to orchards, their care, and their impact. Some of these themes include Water Systems and Storm Water Management; Soil Layers; Orchard Biodiversity and Fruit Guilds; Carbon Cycle; Invasive Plants and Pests, and Food Justice & Fruit Diversion. This project utilizes two orchards in West Seattle as spaces to discuss orchard and storm water management and tree impact on local waterways. We will connect how individual homes and local parks can contribute to a hyperlocal food system that reduces climate impacts while restoring water systems to native conditions for river and sound health. Funds will support the development of this programming and the engagement of the local community in the care and understanding of resources in their neighborhood. | More details |
| Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Del Norte County ; Humboldt County | California | https://transportationpriorities.org/ | To educate and advocate for policies and infrastructure that support low-carbon, healthy transportation in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties. | More details |
| Coalition for Wetlands and Forests | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | New York | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | New York | http://www.sicwf.org/ | To ameliorate the effects of climate change flooding in Graniteville Staten Island through the protection of wetlands, buffer the effects of air pollution, and empower those most impacted by the climate crisis. | More details | |
| Comite Progreso de Lamont | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Climate Change & Energy ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Kern County | California | https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community-Organization/Comite-Progreso-de-Lamont-1441249392556175/ | To advocate for environmental health protections and community investments in the Kern County budget process, and ensure proper implementation of the county’s planned flood mitigation efforts and improvements to Lamont Park. | More details |
| Committee for a Better Arvin | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Kern County | California | https://www.facebook.com/betterarvin/ | To advocate for environmental justice for disadvantaged communities in the San Joaquin Valley by participating in the AB- 617 implementation process for the city of Arvin, advocating for a state pesticide application notification system, and providing community input on the Kern County budget in support of infrastructure investments. | More details |
| Communities for a Healthy Bay | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $25,000.00 | South Puget Sound | Leveraging Research, Advocacy, and Community to Combat Industrial Pollution in Commencement Bay | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Climate Change & Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Pierce County | Washington | http://healthybay.org | CHB is continuing our research and organizing work to ensure that land use policy and decisions in Tacoma are forward-thinking and prepare Tacoma to transition away from an economy reliant on fossil fuels and other heavy polluting industry. With help from the Rose Foundation, CHB was instrumental in the passage of a moratorium on heavy, polluting industry in the Tacoma Tideflats that is permanent until the adoption of the Tideflats Subarea Plan (TSP). Now we must focus on what is next. Recognizing that we will be most successful in reducing harmful emissions and discharges from heavy industry if we work holistically throughout the community, not just in Tacoma’s Tideflats, we are broadening our scope to include city-wide initiatives. So, we will be tackling two policies that will work together in Tacoma’s transition to becoming a hub for renewable fuels, innovative technologies that bring safe, good-paying jobs, and regulations that will limit polluting industrial discharges and emissions: the TSP and the Tacoma Green New Deal (TGND). CHB will be a leading organizer and supporter of the TGND, a comprehensive policy that consists of three pillars: Environmental Justice for All; Just Transition Off of Fossil Fuels; and Good Green Jobs. The momentum for this project has already been started by a diverse coalition of volunteer community groups and leaders, and given CHB’s policy, technical, and organizing assets, and paid staff capacity, it is time for us to engage in and support this effort to ensure the policy platform is adopted by City Council. The TSP provides a venue for proactive visioning for the Tacoma Tideflats. The TSP will establish a long-term vision for the Tacoma Tideflats. CHB’s leadership as a member of the TPS Stakeholder Advisory Committee will generate long-term policies that reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, incentivize green stormwater infrastructure, promote public transit, and enhance the creation and protection of natural areas. | More details |
| Community Action Project | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $4,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change & Energy | Calaveras County | California | http://calaverascap.com | To protect open space and promote sustainable development through citizen engagement in planning and land use decisions and litigation of the Calaveras County General Plan. | More details |
| Community Action Project | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security | Calaveras County | California | http://calaverascap.com | To protect open space and promote sustainable development through citizen engagement and litigation of the Calaveras County General Plan. | More details |
| Community Environmental Advocates Foundation | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $500.00 | Sierra Nevada | Grassroots Fund Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Nevada County | California | http://www.cea-nc.org/ | More details | |
| Community Environmental Advocates Foundation | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | Stop the Idaho-Maryland Mine | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Nevada County | California | http://www.cea-nc.org/ | To oppose the reopening of the Idaho-Maryland gold mine though citizen advocacy, technical analysis of environmental impacts, public outreach, and education. | More details |
| Community RePower Movement | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Environmental Education ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.communityrepower.org/ | To conduct a major clean up of the Compton Creek channel in order to address flooding, water quality, water supply, ecological health, public health, community education, homeless services and neighborhood beautification for the surrounding community. | More details |
| Consumer Federation of America | Consumer Products Fund | 2022 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | Buy Now, Understand Later? Consumer Knowledge of Buy Now, Pay Later Products | Advocacy ; Technology/Product/Service ; Education | Statewide | California | https://www.consumerfed.org | Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) options are proliferating, yet consumer understanding varies with many not viewing BNPL as credit. California is the only state to require certain providers to comply with lending laws. CFA is especially concerned about how products may use promises of limited or no credit checks to entice consumers with thin or no credit files. This project would explore consumer knowledge, usage of BNPL, and how BNPL may affect financial security through a statewide survey. CFA and partner organizations would use the results to develop education about BNPL and other credit products. The project will end with a stakeholder roundtable to discuss how these products can best meet the needs of consumers with necessary protections. | More details |
| Consumer Watchdog | Consumer Products Fund | 2022 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | Truth In Privacy Project | Education | Statewide | California | https://www.consumerwatchdog.org | Corporations make promises and warranties in their marketing and labeling about respecting consumers' privacy choices. California now has the ultimate test of how well they live up to their word with the implementation of the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) in 2022 - 2023. Some companies are fighting implementation of new privacy rights rules while others are encouraging them. The Truth In Privacy Project will chart the development of the new rules with an eye toward chronicling which companies make good on their privacy rights stances and which don't. The education project will utilize the free and social media to educate the public about companies' and industries' stances on the new privacy rights rules being developed. | More details |
| Creek Lands Conservation | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $25,000.00 | Santa Barbara Area (incl. Oxnard and Ventura) | Santa Maria River Healthy Agriculture Watershed Initiative | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice | Santa Barbara County | California | https://www.creeklands.org | As a follow on to the Santa Maria River Healthy Watershed Initiative, this proposal continues to bring attention to this highly degraded watershed and its impaired estuary by continuing with two aspects of the first grant that would allow us to drill down into the agricultural sector to advance the work initiated under the first grant. The first grant successfully initiated building partnerships with local organizations and got the watershed report card underway. Significantly, the first grant allowed us to leverage two additional grants, one with Whale Tail/California Coastal Commission and a second with Cal EPA’s Environmental Justice program. Those grants are currently active and focus on community education and outreach advances beyond the first Rose Foundation grant. We return to Rose to focus on only ag sector development with a voluntary storage/recharge project on the upper SMR, a voluntary wetland treatment project at the confluence of the SMR and Orcutt Solomon Creek (OSC), and Small Farm Advisor relationship building to position parcels for additional voluntary treatment wetlands along OSC. This proposal would also provide support to both CLC and the Coastal San Luis Resource Conservation District to position OSC for a State Coastal Conservancy grant using a model successfully implemented on the Lower Salinas by the Central Coast Wetlands Groups (CCWG) and Central Coast Water Quality Preservation, Inc. (Preservation, Inc.) with whom we are currently partnering to apply their model for treatment wetlands in the Lower SMR/Estuary. Both CLC and CCWG are parties to the CCRWQCB’s Irrigation Lands Regulatory Program’s Third Party Programs through Preservation, Inc. A successful OSC project would be a first for the SMR watershed under the 3rd party agreement. | More details |
| Cudahy Alliance for Justice | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.facebook.com/cudahyallianceforjustice | To ensure the City of Cudahy and KIPP SoCal work with the Department of Substances Control to conduct the proper studies and clean-up before a new school is built on the toxic site of a historic metal foundry. | More details |
| Del Amo Action Committee | Los Angeles Community Water Justice Grants Program | 2022 | $62,100.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Environmental Justice Educational Program: Protecting Our Water through Stormwater Management | Los Angeles; Los Angeles County | California | https://delamoactioncommittee.org/ | Our overarching goal is to create the opportunity for our grassroots groups to engage in solution oriented discussions around stormwater runoff issues and ways to empower our communities to take action at the local individual level, which we would hope leads to larger projects like “green street†concepts that could enhance buffer zones around our venerable communities. The effectiveness of our network is in its collaborative process with each other and agencies charged with water infrastructure like the Water Replenishment District. We recognize the great value of community "boots on the ground" and our ability to see from a view invisible to others. We will draw on the research being conducted on watershed management so we can prepare our educational materials to be current and relevant. This work is timely and relevant because agencies need to partner with environmental justice communities to truly understand impacts occurring there. This project will provide capacity building opportunities for many areas in Los Angeles. We have a good concept of areas we wish to focus on and will need to verify this direction with the groups that self-select to work on this project. | More details | |
| Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $30,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Expansion of Urban Restoration sites along Longfellow Creek Basin including Delridge Wetland Park | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | King County | Washington | https://dnda.org/ | The Delridge Wetland Park is part of the Longfellow Creek Watershed, and now that pandemic restrictions are lifting, we plan to continue expanding our environmental engagement with youth into other sites along the watershed, where we already engage in restoration work. These include Croft Forest, and 5 other restoration sites in the Longfellow Creek drainage basin. We want to expand urban forest restoration, and bring additional neighborhood youth into these West Seattle urban greenspaces to learn the impacts of environmental awareness and stewardship. As a functioning outdoor classroom, the Delridge Wetland Park is becoming a unique asset to our community as it allows youth, and others in our neighborhood, to engage in systems-based projects while being immersed in Seattle’s urban forest. Contact with nature is essential for healthy mental and cognitive development in young children, and studies have shown that poor access to urban green spaces is associated with behavioral problems, inattention and hyperactive disorders. The pandemic has put aspects of this project on hold, but as restrictions have lifted, we are continuing the park’s construction and once again engaging with youth in this and other green spaces in the watershed. We know that the outdoors is a safer place in the pandemic, and we will continue to adhere to public health guidance as we expand and enhance programs and sites for youth involvement. | More details |
| Deschutes Estuary Restoration Team | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $30,000.00 | South Puget Sound | South Sound Healthy Watershed Program Expansion: Youth and Rural Residents | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Thurston County | Washington | http://www.deschutesestuary.org | In March 2022, the Department of Enterprise Services declared full restoration of the Deschutes Estuary as the likely preferred alternative to managing Capitol Lake. During this pivotal moment in anticipation of the final Environmental Impact Statement coming this fall, Deschutes Estuary Restoration Team (DERT) is expanding the South Sound Healthy Watershed Program in ways that will radiate outwards to encompass more areas of our Waterkeeper Alliance Affiliate Jurisdiction (see attachments for a map) and reach underserved communities. We cannot facilitate the process of a healthy estuary and improvement of Budd Inlet water quality without inclusive community involvement. In 2023, our focus will be on community members in the mid to upper Deschutes area in rural Thurston County. This outreach program has 4 phases: 1) Gather demographic info and contacts from homeowners associations, nonprofits, and other prominent micro-community organizations in this area. 2) Create educational print and web outreach materials for community members. 3) Distribute materials through web communications, mail, and at events. 4) Organize outreach and education events, which may include: a) “on-the-water†education events and water quality data collection in Budd Inlet and accessible stretches of the Deschutes River b) Community forums c) Lead interpretive estuary tours around Capitol Lake, the 5th Avenue dam, and Budd Inlet. The most important aspect of this project is the development of a Deschutes Youth Advisory Council that will provide insight on outreach events and materials in exchange for a stipend and career development training. DERT’s programs center human influence on the health of the Deschutes Watershed, and what the community can do collectively and individually to advocate for the estuary. We aim to influence mindful environmental decisions pertaining to sedimentation, nutrient pollution, shoreline erosion, stormwater runoff, industrial pollution, and more. | More details |
| Dirt Corps LLC | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $28,500.00 | Central Puget Sound | Community Green Job Training and Lower Green Riparian Revegetation Project Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | King County | Washington | https://www.thedirtcorps.com/ | Grant funding will help support the operation and stipends for Dirt Corps’ paid Green Job Training Program while providing additional support to riparian revegetation projects in Tukwila, in which we partner with the Green River Coalition through CWM ReGreen grants (2019-2022). Green River Coalition wil act as Fiscal Sponsor for this project. Modeling the successes of our program, extended through funding from this grant in 2020, our program will train up to thirty participants in the fields of urban forestry, green stormwater infrastructure, and ecological restoration through a combination of classroom and hands-on field training. The goal of our program is to provide opportunities for underserved or hyperlocal communities to access green career pathways. Leveraged funding will support three rounds of community outreach and recruitment, eighteen weeks of training over three sessions, additional field training opportunities for trainees, development of current staff to become crew leaders/instructors, and curriculum development to continue improving and adapting the program’s relevance to the communities we serve. Our training program teaches community members to become stewards of their environment while providing in-demand job skills. DC currently maintains multiple green stormwater infrastructure facilities in South Seattle and ecological restoration projects on tributaries and main-stem sites along the Lower Green-Duwamish River. These projects become our teaching sites and provide further paid opportunities for advanced skill building through maintaining multi-year sites. Shared regional goals of environmental stewardship, workforce development, community resilience, and economic equity create important societal linkages while also serving goals of increased water quality benefits through riparian restoration; direct maintenance of stormwater facilities; and increasing the number of skilled people needed to design, install, and maintain these projects | More details |
| Don't Dump on San Benito | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $6,800.00 | Central Coast (incl. Monterey Bay and San Luis Obispo) | Don't Dump on San Benito | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | San Benito County | California | https://sites.google.com/view/dont-dump-on-san-benito/home | Don't Dump on San Benito (DDOSB) is currently raising awareness of potential water pollution associated with their local county landfill. The John Smith Road Landfill in Hollister, CA is currently in the process of seeking County Board of Supervisors approval to increase the landfill footprint nearly five times in size while also increasing the waste stream from outside the county. This increased daily tonnage could have detrimental impacts on the San Benito County watershed. As rainfall continues to decrease throughout the state, additional strain will be placed upon the watersheds to provide adequate drinking water to its residents. The group will use the funding to work with hydrology experts to identify contaminants that may be affecting the local watershed based on samples that have been collected along the current landfill site and tested for PFAS and other toxic chemicals that are often found in leachate. The group’s goal is to stop the expansion of the landfill and thereby reduce and mitigate any additional water contamination associated with the operation of it. DDOSB will also educate San Benito County residents regarding the potential water pollution associated with the landfill and its expansion. Any findings of contamination associated with landfill operation will be presented to the San Benito County Board of Supervisors before it considers approving the proposed expansion. The group will further work to demand mitigation to the watershed if it is determined the landfill is having a detrimental impact. | More details |
| Dragonspunk | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $4,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | San Francisco County | California | https://www.dragonspunk.org/ | To meet the challenges of food insecurity, urban blight, environmental injustice, soil depletion, carbon footprint reduction, community building, and habitat restoration, through community gardens in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco. | More details |
| Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $39,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Cuidadores de Agua (Water Keepers) | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | King County | Washington | https://www.seattleparksfoundation.org/project/juntos-si-podemos-cuidar-nuestro-rio-duwamish/ | Since 2017, the Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association (DVSA) has been growing the youth program "Juntos Podemos Cuidar Nuestro RÃo Duwamish" (JPCNRD) to work towards a healthy Duwamish River that is accessible and clean for the historically neglected communities of the Duwamish Valley (DV). We educate our community on issues around the Lower Duwamish Waterway (LDW) Superfund Site and elevate their voices in matters concerning the future of the river. Our grassroots approach centers the DV community and its youth in a multi-faceted program that addresses the need for educating our community, collecting our own data about our river, envisioning the future of our river, and then working towards that future together through the following ongoing and cumulative processes. | More details |
| Earth Ministry | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $20,000.00 | South Puget Sound | Education and Advocacy for Living Waters | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy | Pierce County | Washington | https://earthministry.org/ | There is a need for clean water education and advocacy that is not only innovative and scientifically sound, but also hopeful and morally articulate. Earth Ministry/Washington Interfaith Power & Light (WAIPL) brings a unique voice that adds depth to Northwest coalition efforts to protect the Puget Sound. With the support of the Rose Foundation, we will use a values-based framework to educate, train, and mobilize people of faith to take action for the health of the Tacoma Tideflats on Commencement Bay in a way that centers justice, stewardship, and reconciliation. Earth Ministry/WAIPL’s Education and Advocacy for Living Waters project builds on years of successfully organizing faith communities in Pierce County to halt new fossil fuel infrastructure. In this next phase, we seek to expand upon our Tacoma Tideflats educational efforts to help people of faith more fully understand and act in solidarity with the historic and ongoing environmental justice issues in this industrial sacrifice zone. The three focus areas of this project are to 1) incorporate the Tideflats into Earth Ministry/WAIPL’s new statewide environmental justice curriculum, 2) mobilize community members to pass a strong Tideflats subarea plan that ensure better future stewardship of the watershed, and 3) prevent any proposed expansion of polluting fossil fuels from increasing threats to Commencement Bay. All work will follow the leadership of the Puyallup Tribe and other impacted communities. Through strategic outreach, relational education, and coalition-based organizing, this grant will water the roots that we have growing in Tacoma faith communities and also provide Earth Ministry/WAIPL staff with the resources to sow new seeds of connection. Funding will be used to fulfill programmatic needs for content creation, material development, presentations, and travel that invests in the faith community to ensure awareness and advocacy for the health and viability of the living waters of the Puget Sound. | More details |
| EarthCorps | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $30,000.00 | South Puget Sound | Commencement Bay Initiative: Restoration of Squally Beach and Yowkwala Sites | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Pierce County | Washington | http://www.earthcorps.org | EarthCorps is a core partner of innovative community-based restoration taking place in the coastal area and surrounding watersheds of Commencement Bay. The Commencement Bay Stewardship Collaborative (CBSC) is managed by trustees, which include National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Puyallup Tribe of Indians, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, WA Department of Ecology, WA Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Washington Department of Natural Resources. Since 1998, they have worked to restore over 300 acres of habitat throughout the Puyallup River Watershed. In 2014, the Trustees entrusted the ongoing stewardship of 17 individual sites to EarthCorps, which we continue to manage today. Thanks to Rose Foundation’s partnership over the past year, we have begun to expand our restoration to new and important sites within this landscape—Yowkwala and Squally Beach. But the work on these new sites is just beginning. In order to ensure the restoration of these sites is sustained for the long-term, we respectfully request Rose Foundation’s investment in 2022. With your investment, EarthCorps will continue and expand upon the long-term restoration efforts we started at Yowkwala and Squally Beach, lands that belong to the Puyallup Tribe. Rose Foundation’s investment would allow us to: •Continue removing invasive species and planting native trees and shrubs in Yowkwala’s upland forests, which provides myriad of benefits for water quality and salmon habitat. •Continue plantings and controlling aggressive noxious weeds at Squally Beach, which provides an emergent intertidal marsh that consists of a mix of freshwater and saltwater that is essential for a complex food web upon which local marine life thrives. Ultimately, your investment would activate and link restoration on a fuller expanse of the Puyallup Tribe’s CBSC lands, ensuring these sites can safeguard water quality and healthy habitat for salmon and other marine wildlife for years to come. | More details |
| Earthrise Law Center at Lewis & Clark College | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $40,000.00 | Washington | Tomorrow’s Advocates for Puget Sound | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Washington | http://law.lclark.edu/centers/earthrise/ | Earthrise Law Center (Earthrise) maximizes our impact through the work of talented and committed law students, who play a vital role at Earthrise by participating in all phases of our work. Our Tomorrow’s Advocates program enables select Lewis & Clark law students to work full-time as law clerks with Earthrise Law Center during the summer months or part-time during the school year. This program exists to close the gap between the number of well-funded private and government attorneys who work to protect the status quo by developing legal advocates with quality environmental education, intense mentorship, and hands-on legal training while simultaneously engaging in cases that directly protect the environment, including Puget Sound. Student law clerks gain significant experience in public interest environmental litigation and advocacy through drafting legal memos, pleadings and motions; conducting legal research; formulating arguments and strategy; and participating in client meetings and other communications and outreach. They also gain exposure to many pressing environmental issues of our time, and work closely with us to strategically use the legal system to right environmental wrongs. | More details | |
| EarthTeam | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Marsh Creek Restoration Project 2023 | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Contra Costa County | California | http://www.earthteam.net | Fourteen low-income students from Antioch High School will be recruited as research interns for one year to work with the Friends of Marsh Creek Watershed, American Rivers, and EPA to continue the ongoing work to restore native habitat, assess litter contamination, and survey water quality in the Upper Sand Creek Basin. Interns will study the correlation between the restoration of native vegetation and water quality. They will also address litter concentration issues and waterway blockage at the urban drool inflow at the Upper Sand Creek Basin. The Upper Sand Creek Basin is an excellent site for restoration efforts and WQ monitoring because it was constructed recently and revegetated using native plants collected from the basin before excavation. Despite restoration efforts, the basin requires study and maintenance to ensure the effective filtration of water through stream-side willows and the thorough re-installation of diverse native plant species throughout open spaces. The research team will use scientific methods and GLOBE instrumentation to perform WQ surveying, invasive species removal, litter mapping and clean-up, and native plant installations in the Upper Sand Creek Basin for one year, with in-class training and a minimum of 10 field days. Interns will implement an outreach campaign to community members with a series of on-campus presentations and one to two community events at the basin, including the fourth annual Earth Day event. The project has essential long-term ecological restoration objectives that include the viability of the stream for endangered species, including the red-legged frog and California tiger salamander. Other species that call the basin home include red-winged blackbirds, bobcats, owls, and more. | More details |
| Families for a Future | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County ; Orange County | California | https://www.families4future.com/ | To build a youth-led, family centered, intergenerational movement in Los Angeles to address the water crisis and climate catastrophe. | More details |
| Friends of Auburn Ravine | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $4,600.00 | Sierra Nevada | Auburn Ravine Upper Watershed Salmon Survey Project | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Placer County ; Sutter County | California | https://auburnravine.org/ | To expand fish surveys of Steelhead and Chinook Salmon populations in Auburn Ravine Creek to include the 6 miles of creek upstream of the recently removed Hemphill Dam. | More details |
| Friends of Ballona Wetlands | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $15,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Watershed Protection Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.ballonafriends.org/ | The grant to Friends of Ballona Wetlands will sustain and enhance the group’s Watershed Protection Project which includes on the ground restoration efforts in conjunction with educational tours designed to inspire environmental stewardship and efforts to advocate for environmental justice. The group has a large cadre of volunteers that are integral to the group’s restoration efforts at Ballona Wetlands, and they assist with habitat restoration and removal of non-native species. Many of the restoration worksites are the dunes and uplands immediately adjacent to the wetlands which serve as crucial buffer zones that protect wetland habitats and waters. The planting of native species in these areas helps to remove excess nutrients from stormwater runoff before water leaches from the soil into the wetlands. The funding will support ongoing student education and training projects throughout the Greater Los Angeles area including hosting regular restoration events at the wetlands and encouraging participants to bring their families and neighbors to the group’s activities. Friends of Ballona Wetlands is a member of the Wetlands Principles Restoration Coalition, and this grant will also allow them to work collaboratively with other local water quality advocacy groups to capture polluted urban runoff upstream via green infrastructure in order to offset pollutant loading to the lower watershed and wetland. | More details |
| Friends of Fife Creek | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $2,500.00 | Russian River | General Support | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Sonoma County | California | http://www.ccwi.org/ | To protect Fife Creek, undertake riparian enhancements, conduct trash cleanups, monitor creek health, and replace invasive plants with native plants, which will provide much needed habitat to endangered and threatened butterfly species. | More details |
| Friends of Plumas Wilderness | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Protect Plumas: Building Grassroots Support to Protect Public Wildlands in Feather River Watershed | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Butte County ; Plumas County ; Sierra County ; Statewide | California | https://plumaswilderness.org/ | To build local, grassroots community support for the permanent protection of 30% of the Feather River Watershed by 2030. | More details |
| Friends of Puvungna | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Toxics & Environmental Health | Los Angeles County ; Orange County | California | https://www.friendsofpuvungna.org/ | To restore, preserve, and protect Puvungna, a 10,000 year-old sacred site of the Acjachemem and Tongva tribes on the campus of CA State University, Long Beach. | More details |
| Friends of the Eel River | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2022 | $15,000.00 | North Coast | No Coal In Humboldt | Environmental Justice ; Environmental Health and Toxics ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Humboldt, Mendocino, Trinity, Sonoma, Marin | California | https://eelriver.org/ | To coordinate with agencies including the North Coast Railroad Authority, regional city and county municipalities, and the Coastal Commission, and gather evidence to oppose the approval of a coal train right-of-way along the Eel River and the potential development of a coal terminal port in Humboldt Bay. The grand vision of the Great Redwood Trail, the longest rail-trail in the nation, through the rugged Eel River Canyon, is under threat. Coal interests in the Powder River Basin and the Mendocino Railroad have indicated their interest in purchasing the line to transport bulk coal to the coast. A coal train through the Eel River Canyon poses a direct threat to water and air quality along the Wild and Scenic river, endangering sensitive species including steelhead, Chinook and Coho salmon. A broad coalition, No Coal In Humboldt, has formed to prevent the coal train development through the sensitive Eel River Canyon. | More details |
| Friends of the Lost Coast | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | North Coast | Organizational Capacity Building Initiative | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Humboldt County ; Mendocino County | California | https://lostcoast.org/ | To implement critical organizational growth initiatives including the organization’s transition from Board to staff management, an increase in fundraising capacity, and an expansion of the group’s volunteer and donor base through outreach and social media. | More details |
| Friends of the River | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $25,000.00 | Sacramento Valley | River Advocacy Leadership Institute | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy | El Dorado County ; Sacramento County; Contra Costa County ; El Dorado County ; Sacramento County ; San Joaquin County | California | https://www.friendsoftheriver.org | The grant will support the development of the River Advocacy Leadership Institute (RALI) which aims to help grassroots advocates engage with California’s water bureaucracy and develop policies that better protect water resources in the Sacramento Delta. Friends of the River (FOR) has a successful track record of policy advocacy and inspiring passionate river advocates, and this project will allow FOR and related Delta groups advocate for cleaner drinking water standards, flood protection through green infrastructure, resilient water storage and conservation methods, and habitat protection and restoration for a host of endangered fish and wildlife in the Sacramento Delta. The group will network with other stakeholders in both virtual and in-person settings to train leaders from other water quality advocacy groups to effectively demand water policies that protect communities and environmental resources. The funds will allow the group to facilitate networking and coalition building, which will enable Delta communities to advocate for sustainable solutions to large scale problems. RALI participants will come away with more tools for effecting necessary change for their own community and new channels for collaboration. | More details |
| Frontline Catalysts | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County | California | https://frontlinecatalysts.org | To empower frontline youth to lead the movement for transformative climate justice through the Climate Justice Youth Leadership Development Program, a curriculum for middle and high school students in frontline communities in Oakland. | More details |
| Gardena Willows Wetlands Preserve | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | General Support | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.gardenawillows.org/ | To provide environmental stewardship and public education about the Gardena Willows Wetland Preserve,Gardena Willows Wetland Preserve, the last intact remnant of the former Dominguez Slough, an important vernal marsh and riparian forest in L.A. County. | More details |
| Gill Tract Farm Coalition | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Grassroots Fund Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Alameda County | California | https://www.gilltractfarm.org/ | More details | |
| Gill Tract Farm Coalition | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $3,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Tools for Sustainability-Building Project | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security | Alameda County | California | https://www.gilltractfarm.org/ | To sustain a volunteer-run urban community farm, provide hands-on agroecological programming, and donate fresh healthy produce to reduce community food insecurity for Bay Area residents. | More details |
| Greater Neighborhood Alliance of Jersey City, NJ | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $1,000.00 | New Jersey | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | New Jersey | https://gnanj.org/ | More details | ||
| Greater Neighborhood Alliance of Jersey City, NJ | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | New Jersey | General Support | Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security | New Jersey | https://gnanj.org/ | To create, organize, and strengthen block and neighborhood associations in Jersey City and advocate for residential quality-of-life issues that include safety, land use, development, affordable housing, stormwater/flooding issues, and the lack of trees and access to green spaces. | More details | |
| Greater Treme Consortium, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Louisiana | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Louisiana | https://greatertreme.org/ | To develop an environmental education, renewable energy, and cultural arts site, including cultural aspects of the Treme community; have conversations about green infrastructure, climate change, and how to address its effects in the community. | More details | |
| Healthy Community Resources and Advocacy | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Louisiana | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | Louisiana | https://www.hcsnola.org/ | To address repetitive flooding with green infrastructure and increase access to healthy food choices by growing food locally in New Orlean's 7th Ward. | More details | |
| Hollygrove Neighbors Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Louisiana | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | Louisiana | https://www.facebook.com/hollygroveNOLA/ | To continue installing and maintaining green infrastructure, convening community members, repurposing vacant lots, and spreading their message to build a more sustainable future. | More details | |
| Humboldt Baykeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $7,950.00 | North Coast | Arcata Bay and Janes Creek Bacteria Source Tracking Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Humboldt County | California | http://www.humboldtbaykeeper.org | The Arcata Bay Bacteria Source Tracking Project is the next phase of a long-term strategy to restore water quality by identifying the primary sources of bacteria pollution in Arcata Bay and several of its tributary streams. Using genetic analysis, gut bacteria from human, dog, cattle, and bird hosts will be quantified at six sample sites during three sampling events. From 2005 to 2012, Baykeeper volunteers sampled streams to document the levels of various pollutants in stormwater before, during, and after First Flush, the first major storm in the fall. In 2010, we submitted five years of data to support designating six streams as impaired by bacteria. These streams were added to the Clean Water Act’s Section 303(d) list of impaired waters in 2015, compelling the State to take action to restore and protect water quality. In 2012, we shifted our focus to bacteria pollution, since our results showed widespread high levels of indicator bacteria. In 2015, the Regional Water Board began sampling dozens of North Coast streams to identify the sources of bacteria pollution using genetic markers for gut bacteria from human, dog, bird and ruminants such as cattle, deer, and elk. The Humboldt and Sonoma County Public Health Labs became the first non-commercial labs in the State to offer this analysis to the public. In 2015, we conducted focused studies of Janes Creek and Little River to identify the sources and locate hotspots of bacteria. Our study was folded into the larger Regional Water Board study, which was completed in 2019. The draft reports have yet to be finalized and released to the public (but we have the data and the draft reports). In 2020, we began sampling in Jolly Giant Creek, an Arcata Bay tributary with high levels of human bacteria identified in the 2019 study. This research was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic after just one sampling event. The Regional Water Board took over that study, and sampling is ongoing. | More details |
| Interfaith Coalition for Earth Justice | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | San Diego Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | San Diego County | California | https://icejsd.org/ | To educate, equip, and mobilize faith communities to work for environmental and climate justice though policy advocacy, direct action and educational outreach. | More details |
| Klamath Forest Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $500.00 | North Coast | Grassroots Fund Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Del Norte County ; Glenn County ; Humboldt County ; Lake County ; Shasta County ; Tehama County ; Trinity County | California | http://klamathforestalliance.org | More details | |
| Kwiáht | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $14,000.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | Clean Clams for all: island clam gardening | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | San Juan County | Washington | http://www.kwiaht.org | The cost and availability of safe, healthy food is an issue that has begun bringing together Tribal and non-Tribal people in the San Juan Islands. Inequities have increased as a result of an influx of “Covid refugees†raising land prices and closing shoreline harvesting sites. Climate change is meanwhile threatening the remaining public-access areas for shellfish and seaweed harvesting. Discussions with Tribal cultural people, food-program leaders and other islanders prioritized the negotiation of “access agreements†on private tidelands that would allow scheduled, supervised harvesting dates for responsible families, and scientific oversight to ensure sustainability as well as food safety. Kwiaht proposes a pilot project to develop and implement 5-10 agreements with private tideland owners in the San Juan Islands, and educate an initial cohort of Tribal and non-Tribal harvesters in how they can help protect and maintain these clam “gardens†as conditions change in the near future. Food security and water quality are inextricably linked through clams and other shellfish growing in the nearshore. While the immediate focus of this project is advancing food equity, building an organized constituency for “clean clams†in the San Juan Islands will help advance water quality in the longer term. Kwiaht scientists will ensure that threats to water quality are addressed in the documentation for each harvest-access sites; in particular, the growing frequency of toxic algal blooms that result from warming waters and nutrient-rich rain runoff. | More details |
| Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability | Kern County Air Pollution Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $150,000.00 | Central Valley | Equitable Air Quality in Kern County | Planning ; Environmental Education | Kern County | California | http://www.leadershipcounsel.org | Leadership Counsel will engage residents of lower income communities of color in Kern County to advocate for improved policies and programs that will address the poor air quality. We will advocate for improved land use planning, increased investment, and improved community engagement in the General Plan update process including the Environmental Justice Element and identification of Climate Adaptation Strategies, AB 617 implementation, the Housing Element development, and energy programs. We will work to ensure consistency regarding air quality goals among and between these processes. We will partner with community residents and other relevant stakeholders to ensure community needs regarding air quality improvements are met and alleviate public health issues and environmental injustices. | More details |
| Little Growers, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $1,000.00 | Florida | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Florida | https://www.littlegrowersinc.org/ | More details | ||
| Little Growers, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Florida | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | Florida | https://www.littlegrowersinc.org/ | To work in community gardens and help residents impacted by climate-related flooding participate in stormwater mitigation and green infrastructure projects. | More details | |
| Local Environmental Action Demanded Agency, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Oklahoma | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Oklahoma | https://www.leadagency.org/ | To protect human health and the environment by researching, educating, and engaging the public, tribal, legislative, and agency staff on flooding. | More details | |
| Los Angeles Waterkeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $30,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Los Angeles River Watershed Restoration | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.lawaterkeeper.org/ | Los Angeles Waterkeeper seeks funding from the Rose Foundation for our LA River Watershed Restoration work, which encompasses assessment, remediation efforts, and community engagement and education. In pursuit of a thriving LA River, we work to bridge gaps in knowledge related to the health of the River (via monitoring, assessment, data collection and research) to clarify for decision-makers the best path forward for a healthy River and communities. We also work directly to improve the health of the Watershed through cleanups and other remediation efforts. | More details |
| Los Angeles Waterkeeper | Los Angeles Community Water Justice Grants Program | 2022 | $90,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Watershed Outreach and Education Project | Los Angeles; Los Angeles County | California | https://www.lawaterkeeper.org/ | Our RAFT and Watershed Cleanup Programs aim to educate communities about the impact of human consumption on the planet, clean up and collect critical data on the river’s ecological health, as well as the plastic and other waste polluting the Watershed. Managing the overall project will be our Staff Scientist/Watershed Manager, who started early in Q1 2022 and replaced a staff member who left to get her PhD in freshwater ecology at UC Berkeley. Our new hire will be supported by our Development and Communications Director and Outreach and Communications Manager (active search), who oversee volunteer and community engagement. | More details | |
| Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $24,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Los Cerritos Wetlands Water Quality Monitoring Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Los Angeles County ; Orange County | California | https://lcwlandtrust.org/ | Zedler Marsh is a remnant tidal salt marsh within the Los Cerritos Wetlands (LCW) at the mouth of the San Gabriel River (SGR) on the boarder of Long Beach and Seal Beach, California. Zedler Marsh is one of two locations where the river supports tidal wetlands. Plantings of Pacific cordgrass were performed in 2012, 2018, 2020 and 2022 and have been key in trapping nutrients, pollutants and sediments from the watershed. A water quality monitoring program began in 2018 to measure this plant’s positive impacts on water quality in the SGR as well as Zedler Marsh. The program has since expanded to monitor water quality for reasons other than measuring the affects of cordgrass on water quality. The focus has shifted to understand 1) the impact of once-through-cooling by upstream power generating stations on this wetlands complex and the SGR and 2) the quality of the tidal water that will be used to restore the Southern Los Cerritos Wetlands. We propose to continue the water quality monitoring program at the 10 sampling stations in LCW and SGR and add monitoring of 5 new locations across the entire LCW complex and historical SGR watershed. The new locations will include at 4 stations in Alamitos Bay and 1 new station on the SGR near the outfall of the LADWP Haynes Generating Station. Furthermore, we intend to collect data at several existing piezometers located within the Southern Los Cerritos Wetlands Restoration Project area. | More details |
| Los Osos Sustainability Group | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $4,000.00 | Central Coast (incl. Monterey Bay and San Luis Obispo) | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | San Luis Obispo County | California | http://thelosg.com/ | To advocate for policies and decision making that ensure the long-term sustainability of the Los Osos Groundwater Basin, the sole source of water for the Los Osos community, area farms, and groundwater-dependent environmentally sensitive habitat. | More details |
| Marin City People's Plan | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area; California | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Marin County | California | https://marincitypeoplesplan.com/ | To address flooding and the impacts of climate driven extreme storm events by implementing Watershed Steward Training and the Watershed Steward Project. These programs will train community members to design and implement a model resiliency project to mitigate Marin City’s climate vulnerabilities via community-led, nature-based adaptation solutions. | More details |
| Mother Lode Land Trust | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Landowner Outreach | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security | Alpine County ; Amador County ; Calaveras County ; El Dorado County ; Tuolumne County | California | http://www.motherlodelandtrust.org/ | To conduct outreach to landowners in the Central Sierra to encourage voluntary conservation easements and protect open spaces with important wildland values and wildlife corridor linkages. | More details |
| Moving South Berkeley Forward | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Grassroots Fund Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Alameda County | California | https://movingsouthberkeleyforward.weebly.com/ | More details | |
| Moving South Berkeley Forward | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County | California | https://movingsouthberkeleyforward.weebly.com/ | To engage South Berkeley High School students of color in the creation of a youth-led community garden site, which will simultaneously improve air quality while providing local healthy food and a lush community greenspace for all. | More details |
| Mycelium Youth Network | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Grassroots Fund Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Alameda County | California | https://www.myceliumyouthnetwork.org/ | More details | |
| National Forest Foundation | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $25,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Angeles National Forest Junior Field Rangers | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.nationalforests.org/ | This grant will support the group’s Junior Field Rangers Program, which is conducted annually in partnership with Pacoima Beautiful, the University of California Extension, and the U.S. Forest Service. This Program is seeking to restore and protect an under-resourced watershed that is heavily used by recreationalists from historically marginalized communities. The goals of the program include conducting restoration work on four acres of riparian habitat and two river miles of Big Tujunga Creek (a major tributary of the Los Angeles River) through clean-up efforts and re-naturalizing of areas impacted by heavy recreational use. The group also expects to reach at least 100 Angeles National Forest visitors through multilingual communications and educate them about recreating responsibly to protect water resources and wildlife habitat. The student participants in the program include BIPOC and economically disadvantaged youth as well as young adult leaders from northeastern San Fernando Valley who will help conduct this restoration over several months. The youth who participate in the program are paid a stipend, and upon completion, they will also earn a California Naturalist certification and college credit through University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources extension. This provides participants with knowledge of local ecology and the issues facing their public lands. Additionally, participants learn about careers in natural resource management, all with the aim of creating a diverse next generation of public land managers and stewards. | More details |
| National Parks Conservation Association | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2022 | $17,000.00 | Southern Deserts | Colorado Desert Public Lands Project | Environmental Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Imperial County ; Riverside County ; San Bernardino County | California | https://www.npca.org/ | To inventory open space areas, assess community needs and viewpoints in local park-poor communities, and work to craft a proposed solution that protects natural and cultural resources, while increasing access to desperately park-poor communities in the East Coachella Valley and elsewhere in the California portion of the Colorado Desert. The Colorado Desert area, comprising the desert portions of Riverside County, as well as Imperial County and parts of southeastern San Bernardino County, has some of the most important wildlife habitat that would ensure California’s climate resilience. It is a critical landscape adjacent to the Colorado River encompassing all of California’s Sonoran Desert. Through the Colorado Desert Public Lands Project, NPCA will work in coalition to help protect these critical wildlands. | More details |
| Nisqually River Foundation | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $29,638.00 | South Puget Sound | Water Quality and Action with Nisqually Students II | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Lewis County ; Pierce County ; Thurston County | Washington | https://nisquallyriver.org | This project will involve 1,000+ students from schools in the Nisqually Watershed in hands-on water quality monitoring of their local streams, a Student GREEN Congress to share their results and recommendations for water pollution solutions, and a field investigation on Puget Sound beaches. Students and teachers will receive training, supplies, and field trip support from the Nisqually River Education Project to test their local watershed streams for 8 parameters affecting salmon health. Training will include opportunities to learn from local scientists and cultural experts. Students will participate in fall and winter monitoring and compare their data with 29 years of past student data to draw conclusions and make recommendations to improve their local water quality. A select group of 250 students will present their findings at the spring Student GREEN Congress, a student-led water quality conference, and work with peers to create action plans to improve water quality in their communities. 500 students will participate in nearshore field investigations to Puget Sound beaches to conduct inquiry-based studies of marine water quality and aquatic life. By collecting real-world data through outdoor field experiences and making connections to the important role of water quality in human and environmental health, students will gain experience as citizen scientists and as stewards of their waters and environment. | More details |
| Northeast Action Collective | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Texas | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Texas | https://www.weststreetrecovery.org/northeast-action-collective/ | To organize against flooding, disinvestment and inadequate drainage in northeast Houston. NAC has initiated campaigns to push government agencies to respond adequately to the disaster, environmental, and climate issues their neighborhoods face and demand real investment from the City for street drainage and maintenance infrastructure. | More details | |
| Northern Mendocino Ecosystem Recovery Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $4,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Sustainable Forestry ; Other | Mendocino County | California | http://nm-era.org/ | To foster fire resilience and responsible land stewardship in Northern Mendocino by hosting community outreach events and developing a local workforce to perform regenerative forest health and fire prevention work. | More details |
| Northwest Environmental Advocates | Orca Fund | 2022 | $6,720.00 | South Puget Sound | Data Support for Litigation Seeking Regulation of Discharges of Emerging Contaminants to Puget Sound | Pierce County | Washington | https://northwestenvironmentaladvocates.org/ | The purpose of this project is to obtain regulatory limits on otherwise completely unregulated toxic pollutants that have been demonstrated to cause significant harm to Chinook salmon—the primary prey of the Southern Resident killer whales—and are cause for concern for orcas themselves. These pollutants are the so-called contaminants of emerging concern (“CECâ€)—including pharmaceuticals and personal care products (“PPCPâ€) and industrial chemicals. Scientists have established that approximately 97,000 pounds of CECs are discharged annually to Puget Sound by roughly 100 sewage treatment plants and that these CECs are harming Chinook salmon. The scope of the project, insofar as the support being sought from the Orca Fund, is narrow: to supplement the data on CECs present in effluent discharged from the City of Tacoma’s Central sewage treatment plant to the Puyallup River Estuary/Commencement Bay of Puget Sound, previously studied in 2014–2018. The project as a whole is to use both these new and the original data in a Clean Water Act enforcement action against Tacoma. To our knowledge, this case would be the first in the country seeking to regulate CECs. | More details | |
| Oakland Climate Action Coalition | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Climate Change & Energy ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County | California | http://oaklandclimateaction.org/ | To unify Oakland community organizations in creating equitable climate solutions that advance racial, economic, environmental and climate justice by facilitating community-driven climate resilience planning and engagement in City of Oakland plans, such as the Equitable Climate Action Plan 2030, General Plan, and City budget. | More details |
| Oceans Initiative | Orca Fund | 2022 | $47,300.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | Assess Critical Habitat Use Throughout the Southern Resident Orca’s Range to Guide Recovery | King County | Washington | http://www.oceansinitiative.org | Oceans Initiative will advance the knowledge and conservation of endangered SROs as we assess critical habitat use throughout their range. Our team will interrogate decades' worth of spatially explicit SRO behavioral data and time series on inter-annual variability in salmon abundance. Using a new, larger sample size covering nearly 20 years, we will model and map how SROs use their Salish Sea habitat for feeding, resting, socializing, and traveling, and how these have changed over time. We will then build a predictive tool that links SRO behavior to salmon and guides enhanced protection measures (fishing closures, no-go zones, marine protected areas, ship slow-downs). Managers will have access to this dynamic tool that can help predict where key foraging areas will be in good and bad salmon years, so that enhanced protection measures can be implemented to benefit the whales at the least cost to other ocean users. | More details | |
| Office of Historic Preservation, Winnemem Wintu Tribe | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $20,300.00 | Sacramento Valley | Office of Historic Preservation/WWT AB52 consultation re DWR Delta Conveyance Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; Sacramento County ; San Joaquin County ; Shasta County ; Siskiyou County ; Solano County ; Yolo County | California | http://www.winnememwintu.us | The Delta Conveyance Project (DCP) involves a plan to build a canal or a tunnel to move water around the Sacramento Delta instead of through it more naturally. The Office of Historic Preservation of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe (Tribe) has been consulting for the past year with the California Department of Water Resources regarding the DCP and its potential effects on both water quality and the ecology of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Thus far, the Tribe’s consultation has led DWR to acknowledging that the entire Delta is a Traditional Cultural Resource and therefore the impacts to the whole system must be assessed when considering projects under the California Environmental Quality Act. The Tribe will use the funding to continue studying and engaging the Department of Water Resources on their concerns surrounding: (1) the water quality impacts of additional extraction of water for transport to Southern California, (2) the potential for saltwater intrusion, 3) the mortality of anadromous and endemic fish species that may be destroyed by transport pumps, and 4) potential introduction of nonnative fish species. The Tribe believes the Delta must be protected from further negative impacts to maintain and improve salmon populations while providing water to satisfy human needs in California’s future. Tribal representatives will engage in the public stakeholder process and advocate that adequate streamflow to the Delta and outflow is needed to improve water quality and reduce saltwater incursion. They will also press the State to include solutions to mitigate potential pump mortality of migrating salmonids and reduce predation on salmon by exotic predators. The funding will support the creation of a report which identifies additional Tribal Cultural Resources likely to be affected by the DCP as well as summarize water quality and ecosystem impacts of the current proposal. | More details |
| OneFam/Bikes 4 Life | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $3,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | On the Bricks | Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County | California | http://www.onefam.org | To support a three-month leadership development program for Oakland youth ages 16-21, which provides job training, political and social movement education, and a supportive community at the Bikes 4 Life Bicycle Shop in West Oakland. | More details |
| Orange County Coastkeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $29,800.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Santa Ana River Watershed Education and Cleanup Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Orange County ; Riverside County ; San Bernardino County | California | https://www.coastkeeper.org/ | The Santa Ana River Watershed Education and Cleanup Program will connect the Inland Empire community to their local Santa Ana River Watershed through a series of presentations, educational field trips, community outreach events, river cleanups, and advocacy work. The project goals include providing community members that have historically been excluded from outdoor spaces with hands-on environmental education and increased access to the outdoors. The project will also foster community involvement and increase environmental literacy by inviting participants to think critically and share their concerns. Students will conduct research in sensitive riparian habitats to monitor ecosystem health and restoration efforts to improve water quality. The project will have two main components: (1) educational activities such as presentations and field trips to restoration areas with students, and (2) trash cleanups and other restoration and education events for the public within the Santa Ana River Watershed. Key areas for field visits and restoration work include the Hidden Valley Nature Center, Chino Wetlands, Memory Lane Park, the mouth of the Santa Ana River at Huntington State Beach, as well as other areas within the Santa Ana River Watershed. | More details |
| Orange County Environmental Justice Education Fund | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $25,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Building Community Capacity with PhotoVoice (BCCP) | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice | Orange County | California | https://www.ocej.org/ | OCEJEF’s mission is to forge permanent lines of communication and collaboration between disadvantaged communities, local governments, and Indigenous nations while continuing to document water pollution across the region. Building Community Capacity with Photovoice is a project in which residents of disadvantaged communities throughout the Santa Ana River Watershed document point and nonpoint water pollution sources as well as advocate for improved water quality. OCEJEF previously completed a PhotoVoice pilot project which culminated in a report and policy brief identifying numerous water pollution concerns. With this grant, OCEJEF will continue to document water pollution across the region, while facilitating a resident-led coalition to engage with local officials and the Regional Water Board to ensure implementation of community-proposed water quality policies. Concurrently, OCEJEF will host focus group sessions with members of the Acjachemen and Tongva Nations to document their perspectives on the health and custodianship of the Santa Ana River Watershed. The findings will be presented to elected officials and Regional Water Board members with the goal of building co-governance of water systems with Indigenous nations. | More details |
| Orca Conservancy | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $23,500.00 | Central Puget Sound | Green-Duwamish River | Soos Creek Basin Stewardship Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | King County | Washington | https://www.orcaconservancy.org/ | Since 1996, Orca Conservancy (OC) has worked on behalf of Orcinus orca, by, in part, protecting and restoring the wild places on which it depends. We work to ensure that the critically endangered population of Southern Resident orcas has wild, healthy salmon throughout their entire range. OC looks to improve the ecological function of the Soos Creek basin - home to endangered Chinook salmon, the preferred salmon species which makes up 85% of SRKWs diet. The purpose of this proposed restoration project is to plant shade-producing native trees and shrubs adjacent to Soos Creek to provide shade which will eventually moderate overly-warm stream temperatures. These high stream temperatures consistently exceed State standards for salmon spawning and incubation, and for juvenile rearing. Salmon use is likely limited by these high-water temperatures. The native plants can also provide fish habitat within the riparian zone of the stream such as food (insect) production, and eventually, instream wood which improves rearing opportunities for Chinook salmon. Orca Conservancy will be closely coordinating this work in partnership with the Green River Coalition (GRC) who will provide in-depth training and support throughout the Program. Numerous volunteers will be provided from OC and GRC's volunteer databases, and from our long-standing partnership with the Seattle Seawolves. This project will be managed by our executive director, who will perform grant management, community outreach, and additional fundraising. | More details |
| People of the Confluence | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $40,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Planting Roots & 13 Moons of Medicine 2022-23 | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | King County ; Skagit County | Washington | https://peopleoftheconfluence.org/ | Planting Roots and 13 Moons of Medicine are two interconnected programs where we do ecological restoration among other important parts of the programs. Our students in Planting Roots are trained by indigenous elders and other teachers who are experts in traditional medicine and ecology, environmental policy/law, community organizing and cultural preservation/revitalization. Planting Roots brings students to healthy and very degraded ecosystems across Western Washington (especially in riparian zones) where we teach our students to note the characteristics of a thriving life-supporting ecosystem, and then we propagate plants and fungi from those healthy areas to plant into and restore the degraded ecosystems (again focusing on rivers). We have most heavily focused on the Skykomish and Snohomish watersheds in 2021, but we also do observations and restoration in the Duwamish watershed and Puyallup watershed. We're dedicated to improving habitat for all the wildlife and humans who rely on these ecosystems but especially on salmon since they are critical for the ecosystems and essential to indigenous culture and wellbeing. 13 Moons of Medicine focuses on urban indigenous youth and families and teaching traditional practices for cultivating and caring for indigenous plants, fungi and wildlife, as well as our practices for making medicines and foods from them. We focus on different species each month and build confidence in our students that they can identify, propagate, cultivate and rely on each species. We plan trips to very remote national or state parks as well as urban parks and our own gardens so that students can feel comfortable and rely on their sources of medicine in any situation regardless if they're in an urban environment or not. After we make medicines and food we instruct our students to give away almost all of it to elders and to homeless people so that we're nourishing communities and instilling a spirit of potlatch into our students. | More details |
| PLACE | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $4,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County | California | https://www.place.community/ | To support a community sustainability hub which showcases sustainable living practices, urban homesteading and affordable housing, and fosters community resiliency and preparedness. | More details |
| Point Molate Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Environmental Justice | Contra Costa County | California | https://ptmolatealliance.org/ | To advocate for the conservation of Point Molate, the last undeveloped native coastal prairie on San Francisco Bay, as a public resource and a regional park. | More details |
| Protect Wild Petaluma | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $4,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Sonoma County | California | https://www.facebook.com/SaveNorthPetalumaRiver/ | To support community engagement and litigation efforts to prevent development of the north end of the Petaluma River, which would increase flood risk, destroy critical fish and wildlife, and reduce an important site for wetland carbon sequestration. | More details |
| RE Sources for Sustainable Communities | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $35,000.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | Healthy Skagit Waterways: Skagit River Clean-Ups, Community Science, & Curbing Refinery Expansions | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | San Juan County ; Skagit County ; Whatcom County | Washington | http://re-sources.org | RE Sources is implementing three main strategies to protect Skagit County’s waterways from these ongoing threats: (1) Halting the expansion of fossil fuel transport infrastructure at the two Skagit refineries at March’s Point—HollyFrontier and Marathon through the enactment of game-changing ordinances; (2) Protecting and restoring ecosystem health and biodiversity by monitoring species health and strengthening environmental protections in and for the Fidalgo Bay Aquatic Reserve; and (3) Reducing plastic and other toxic contaminants from the Skagit River (from Marblemount to the mouth of the river) by organizing and conducting on-the-water pollution clean-ups. Our goals are to curtail dangerous threats to human well-being and safety in Skagit County and to safeguard the health of the Skagit River watershed, the area’s marine and fresh waters and shorelines, salmon populations, and vast eelgrass meadows. | More details |
| Regeneration/Regeneración | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $500.00 | Central Coast (incl. Monterey Bay and San Luis Obispo) | Grassroots Fund Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Santa Cruz County | California | https://www.regenerationpajarovalley.org/ | More details | |
| Resource Renewal Institute | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2022 | $7,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Restore Point Reyes Seashore: Seizing the moment for the park, the planet and the public | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Marin County, CA, where Point Reyes National Seashore is located. | California | https://www.rri.org/ | To build on growing local and national advocacy campaigns to oppose the recently approved management plan for Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS). Based on incomplete and inaccurate data, the approved plan locks in ranching operations on public lands in perpetuity, largely ignoring climate change, water quality impacts and extreme drought conditions. In revising the management plan for PRNS, the Park Service ignored 90% of public comments and the overwhelming opposition of over 60 environmental organizations representing millions of members. A successful outcome could provide a blueprint for other grassroots organizations to combat commercial resource extraction in National Parks. (Revised description based on grant award). | More details |
| Rich City Rays | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $3,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Climate Change & Energy ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County | California | To recruit, train and equip a flotilla of “kayaktivists†to challenge the oil and gas industry through on-water protests and disruptions in Richmond, CA. | More details | |
| River Otter Ecology Project | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Statewide | California | http://www.riverotterecology.org | To promote the restoration and conservation of Bay Area watersheds through citizen science monitoring, research, and educational programming about local river otter populations. | More details |
| Sacramento Climate Coalition | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Sacramento Valley | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | El Dorado County ; Placer County ; Sacramento County ; Yolo County | California | https://www.sacclimatecoalition.com/ | To promote environmental justice through advocacy, train BIPOC and grassroots leaders in climate emergency mitigation and adaptation policies, and mobilize support for these policies at the Sacramento city, county, and municipal utility. | More details |
| Safe Ag Safe Schools | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Central Coast (incl. Monterey Bay and San Luis Obispo) | General Support | Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Monterey County ; Santa Cruz County | California | http://www.safeagsafeschools.org/ | To push local and state decision makers to provide advance notification of hazardous pesticide applications in Monterey County, and build the power and knowledge of local communities to participate in decisions that impact their lives and health. | More details |
| Sama Sama Cooperative | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $4,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Justice | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; San Francisco County ; Santa Clara County | California | http://samasamacooperative.org/ | To support a 4-week cultural and environmental summer camp for Bay Area Filipinx youth with an emphasis on Filipino language, traditional arts, and community organizing through an environmental justice lens. | More details |
| San Francisco Baykeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $27,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Protecting the San Francisco Bay-Delta from Harmful Algal Blooms | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Contra Costa County ; San Joaquin County | California | https://baykeeper.org/ | Unsustainable diversion of fresh water from the San Francisco Bay-Delta has led to the decline of endangered species, fisheries, and water quality as well as the emergence of harmful algal blooms (HABs). Toxins in HABs can kill aquatic organisms, and they also threaten human health, both in the water and as airborne aerosols. Last year, Baykeeper initiated a project to research the blooms spatial extent, magnitude, and temporal occurrence. Baykeeper will use this grant to continue documenting the emergence and spread of algal blooms in the southern Delta by using remote-sensing technology that will capture how the blooms develop and spread during the year with greater spatial resolution. This year’s work will include synthesizing research that illustrates the biological response of Longfin Smelt and Chinook Salmon to river flows and algal blooms. Baykeeper will work closely with Restore the Delta and Little Manila Rising to mobilize and train a cohort of youth interns who will collect water quality samples in areas throughout the southern Delta to document the impact of HABs. Baykeeper will also coordinate with researchers from North Carolina State and update staff of the Central Valley Regional Water Board on their findings. When the research is completed, Baykeeper will use the results to advocate for the necessary flow releases and timing of those releases before the Central Valley Regional and State Water Resources Control Boards. | More details |
| Santa Barbara Channelkeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $15,500.00 | Central Coast (incl. Monterey Bay and San Luis Obispo) | Improving Regional Efforts to Reduce Agricultural Pollution for the Oxnard Area and Ventura County | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Ventura County | California | http://www.sbck.org | This project focuses on maintaining (and improving where possible) critical elements of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board’s (Regional Board) Conditional Waiver for Discharges from Irrigated Lands (Ag Order), which is critical to improving the water quality of streams, rivers, and lakes throughout Ventura County and the Oxnard area. The Ag Order is the sole set of regulations designed to minimize non-point source pollution from over 2000 agricultural operations spanning approximately 93,500 acres throughout Ventura County. The Ag Order was first adopted in 2005. Despite the program's existence a large number of agricultural operations continue to pollute waterways and water quality standards are not currently being met. In the first ten years of its existence the Ag Order program was largely ineffective because it lacked firm deadlines and enforcement mechanisms. Without these elements to provide accountability, there is little incentive for farmers to participate and adequately invest in farm improvements, resulting in continued pollution. In 2016, Santa Barbara Channelkeeper (SBCK) successfully advocated to improve the Ag Order to incorporate firm timelines and enforcement mechanisms. Many of the deadlines are now approaching and farmers throughout Ventura County will soon be required, for the first time in history, to test their runoff for pollutants and demonstrate that they are achieving water quality standards. The agricultural industry, however, is strongly opposed to these monitoring requirements, and the Los Angeles Regional Board is currently considering back-sliding to accommodate the industry through its upcoming update to the Ag Order program. The Regional Board plans to adopt an updated order by the end of 2023. This project supports SBCK’s advocacy capacity to serve as the key environmental NGO stakeholder engaging to ensure that the renewed Ag Order remains effective in curbing agricultural pollution to Oxnard’s waterways. | More details |
| Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Los Angeles Area (incl. Orange County) | Protect Corridor Connectivity for Mountian Lions and Communities from Wildfire | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Los Angeles County | California | http://www.scope.org | To oppose a 37-unit luxury housing development in Pico Canyon which threatens critical mountain lion habitat and movement corridors, and would create a serious fire evacuation risk for humans and wildlife. | More details |
| Save Del Puerto Canyon | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | Save Del Puerto Canyon Community Engagement | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Environmental Justice | Stanislaus County | California | https://www.savedelpuertocanyon.org/ | To engage, educate, and empower the local community to stand against the proposed Del Puerto Canyon Reservoir, which threatens the air, culture, history, wellbeing, and access to local recreation of the residents of Patterson. | More details |
| SeaDoc Society, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine | Orca Fund | 2022 | $74,996.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | Development and use of remotely assessed indicators of SRKW health | Clallam County ; Island County ; Jefferson County ; King County ; Kitsap County ; Mason County ; Pierce County ; San Juan County ; Skagit County ; Snohomish County ; Thurston County ; Whatcom County | Washington | https://www.seadocsociety.org/ | We propose to finalize a variety of tools for remotely assessing health that were piloted in 2019 and 2021. These quantitative and qualitative metrics are designed to reflect early changes in individual SRKW health (improvement or decline). All data will be uploaded in the existing Killer Whale Health Database for analysis and future shared use. These validated health parameters will enable us to evaluate not only the health of individual orca, but also cumulatively by matriline, pod, or population. These data will complement annual body condition, reproductive success and population count datasets by providing managers in Canada and the United States with data in real-time on the effectiveness of management actions for improving the health of southern residents. | More details | |
| Shared Spaces Foundation | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $30,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Heron's Nest Soil and Water Contamination Cleanup and Bioswale Construction | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | King County | Washington | http://www.sharedspacesfoundation.org/ | We are requesting funding to support the creation of a series of bioswales to bolster the existing native plant communities, and direct standing water through more of our site. Our project will improve the water quality of Puget Creek which is a small tributary to the Duwamish River. The bioswale and aquaponics we create will help keep water inputs more consistent in the summer by increasing some low shade, bolstering the fungal communities in the soil, and helping to rebuild some of the top soil that was scraped away for urban development and that now washes away off the top without as much of a diverse plant community to help retain the soil. In the winter the swale will help direct and disperse water and reduce the erosion of soil through the hydrological changes and because we will remove invasives and bolster the indigenous plant communities at the top of the hillsides. We will also use some of the money to conduct water and/or soil tests to ensure there is no lingering contamination from past land uses on site and to measure our impact. We had intended to include some money in the budget for this grant for removal of contaminants that were dumped in the soil in the 1970's, but we recently received documents that were submitted to the department of ecology in 2006 showing wider clean soil test results than we were previously aware of. If the tests we take now are consistent, we will proceed immediately with the hydrological and ecological restoration projects. | More details |
| Skagit County Public Works | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $40,000.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | Barrel Springs and Dry Creek Restoration | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Skagit County | Washington | In 2017, a dam on Barrel Springs began to fail. The dam was installed in the 1960s by the father of the current property owner with the intension of raising salmonids for fishing and for remote-control boating. Since the passing of Mr. Spore, the dam has gone mostly unmaintained and is no longer desired by the property owner. The dam has no fish passage. On the same property, two failing culverts exist, one on Dry Creek and one on Barrel Springs. A third culvert is located immediately upstream on Barrel Springs. This culvert routinely plugs and causes flooding while blocking fish passage. Skagit County will use this grant to restore stream habitat and fish passage at 3 barriers on Barrel Springs and 1 barrier on Dry Creek in the Samish watershed in Alger, WA. The project will remove a failing dam and replace three culverts with two bridges and one fish passable culvert; regrade the channel and install large woody material; replant native riparian vegetation to restore 2.4 acres of thermal refugia habitat; and reconnect over 3.5 miles of habitat. Barrel springs is Dry Creek's only source of water during the summer months, making access to this thermal refuge increasingly important with climate change threats. The primary species that will benefit from this project include ESA-listed Steelhead and Coho, Chum, and Rainbow and Cutthroat Trout. This project is a high priority for the County and American Rivers, who have worked closely with local Tribes, WDFW, Skagit Fisheries Enhancement group, and the landowners to complete design. Rose Foundation previously contributed $25,000 to the design effort. This project presents a rare opportunity to restore fish passage through four known barriers at one construction site, address an imminent water quality impairment, and directly address climate change impacts. Project completion would also improve Skagit County capacity and partnerships enabling similar barriers to be improved on private lands within the Skagit watershed. | More details | |
| Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $40,000.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | Skagit Community Based Riparian Restoration | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Skagit County | Washington | http://www.skagitfisheries.org/ | The Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group (SFEG) will restore eight acres of degraded riparian habitat at two locations: Riverfront Park and Parker Creek. These projects will provide the opportunity for community members of the Skagit Valley to engage in the conversion of 8 acres of invasive species and pasture into ecologically functional riparian habitat through invasive species control and planting of native trees and shrubs. Water quality issues at both sites will be addressed through the establishment of native plant species, which will aid in pollutant filtration, soil retention and erosion prevention. In addition to planting, this project would also fund the construction of a livestock exclusionary fence at Parker Creek and the replacement of an existing fish passage barrier at Riverfront Park. SFEG is committed to being a diverse and inclusive organization. We believe the outdoors should be for everyone and we know that has traditionally not been the case, with many people being left out of conservation opportunities. SFEG is actively working to create more avenues to engage students and interns from traditionally marginalized communities to participate in community based restoration activities. This grant would allow us to hire interns and provide education opportunities for schools that may not otherwise be able to be involved in such activities. | More details |
| Sonoma Safe Ag Safe Schools | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $3,000.00 | Russian River | Petaluma Non-Toxic Integrated Pesticide Management Plan | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Toxics & Environmental Health | Sonoma County | California | https://www.sonomasass.org/ | To help the City of Petaluma create and provide to city council a non-toxic Integrated Pesticide Management Plan (IPMP) that eliminates the use of pesticides in parks, playgrounds and public spaces. | More details |
| Soul Flower Farm | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security | Contra Costa County | California | http://soulflowerfarm.blogspot.com/ | To provide people of color and aligned organizations with hands-on lessons in growing food and medicine, taking care of our environment, and utilizing sustainable growing and living practices. | More details |
| Sound Salmon Solutions | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $28,500.00 | Central Puget Sound | YESS - Youth Exploring Stream Science | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | King County ; Snohomish County | Washington | https://www.soundsalmonsolutions.org/ | Sound Salmon Solutions (SSS) was recently approached by the Snohomish County Juvenile Court (SCJC) staff with a request to provide meaningful experiences with watershed science for youth who are a part of their diversion programs. Youth who qualify for diversion programs have been charged with a crime and sentenced for detention, however due to low risk of re-offense, have been given the option to complete community-based service learning with SSS. In order to remain eligible for these alternative programs, participants must maintain good behavior and show commitment to becoming a productive community member. The purpose of diversion programs such as Youth Exploring Stream Science (YESS) is to divert youth away from the criminal justice system and towards community-based integration and support options. SSS sees this as a more appropriate response than confinement, and a more productive way of addressing and preventing future delinquency. SSS staff very much believes in the transformative nature of environmental education to empower youth to make meaningful and impactful connections with their communities, learn team building skills, develop empathy through contact with the natural world, and provide inspiration to pursue careers in environmental sciences, education, and natural resource and water quality management. At the hatchery and Jones Creek, participants will be engaged in water quality sampling in order to analyze properties of the water such as amount of phosphates, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and temperature. Participants will learn how human actions contribute to the level of each in an aquatic habitat and how salmon and other aquatic life are impacted by each. Participants will then complete a bioassessment of water quality through the collection and identification of macroinvertebrates and compare these results with the more traditional water quality testing. | More details |
| South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $40,000.00 | South Puget Sound | Upper Deschutes River Restoration Package | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Thurston County | Washington | https://spsseg.org/ | The South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group (SPSSEG) is working on a restoration projects package in the high-priority upper Deschutes River on parcels that are owned by the Center of Natural Lands Management at river mile 21 and Weyerhaeuser Company at river mile 34. The projects are geared towards addressing limiting factors for salmonids and improving water quality of the Deschutes river and Budd Inlet. SPSSEG will take this opportunity to use the projects as demonstrations for restoration, tools for environmental education events/curriculums, and to support the Treaty of Medicine Creek with co-managers, the Squaxin Island Tribe. The projects will increase available habitat for juvenile and adult salmonids by installing large wood habitat structures and off-channel habitat. These projects will also contribute to reducing fine sediment inputs, temperature regimes, and polluted runoff that contribute to the river's current TMDL and water quality issues in Budd Inlet. These projects are designed to help "determine the fate" of the watersheds fine sediment by encouraging natural sediment processes and deposition as it has become apparent that large-scale land use changes are needed to stop the inputs at its source. Native trees and shrubs will be planted to help shade the river and filter pollutants from stormwater runoff, as well as add wildlife benefit. At project completion, a total of 1-miles of instream habit and 8-acres of riparian area will be restored within the Deschutes River. The projects have been 85% funded through the Salmon Recovery Funding Board and SPSSEG is in need of matching funds to implement the project. Designs have been finalized, necessary permits have been secured and construction is anticipated to take place across the 2023 fish construction work windows. The requested funds are necessary for implementation to occur in 2023 to fund items such as large wood, habitat structure installation and native floodplain plants and planting. | More details |
| South River Watershed Alliance | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Georgia | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Georgia | https://www.southriverga.org/ | To address environmental injustices that have contributed to decades of unabated pollution in the South River through a combination of legal and community advocacy, recreation, education and training, collaboration, and partnerships. | More details | |
| SR3 Sealife Response, Rehab and Research | Orca Fund | 2022 | $74,938.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | Quantitative health metrics for Southern Resident killer whales using non-invasive photogrammetry | San Juan County | Washington | https://www.sealifer3.org/ | Since 2008, we have used aerial photogrammetry to develop the only quantitative time series on the health of Southern Resident killer whales (SRKW). Measurements from high-resolution still images, in recent years collected non-invasively using drones (Durban et al. 2015), have provided annual and seasonal measurements of body condition (Fearnbach et al. 2018, 2020) and growth (Fearnbach et al. 2011) for the majority of the population. Notably, our recent publication (Stewart et al. 2021a) showed that individuals measured to be in poor body condition had an elevated risk of mortality, demonstrating that our quantitative identification of “whales of concern†can serve as an early warning system to facilitate enhanced conservation measures. | More details | |
| Sustainable Seattle | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $30,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Soil Health and Justice Initiative | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | King County | Washington | http://www.sustainableseattle.org | Sustainable Seattle and Basilica Bio seek support for our Soil Health and Justice Initiative (SHJI) - a community-driven, advocacy initiative harnessing grassroots groups expertise to transform our soil, water, and food systems. In 2022, we received multi-year King County funding to partially fund an advocacy position and education/awareness activities. Funding would support the expansion of this position and activities. The SHJI is a project of S2’s Soil Health and Justice Coalition, a collective of BIPOC researchers, urban farmers, and environmental justice workers who work to: Understand the extent of legacy and ongoing soil contamination in Seattle area urban gardens Inform communities about soil contamination watershed affects Implement regenerative farming practices to reverse soil contamination effects Change unjust soil quality policies for commercially available soil In Spring 2020, community groups reported contaminated compost was purchased from Cedar Grove - a King County contracted compost/soil company. Testing by community scientists, University of Washington researchers, and S2 revealed Cedar Grove compost contained nearly 4.5x the recommended level of petroleum products and the arsenic and lead levels exceeded EPA limits. Cedar Grove’s response was these tests were not required and testing is the customer’s responsibility. In response, SHJI was formed to build community understanding of contaminated soil, its waterway effects, and empower community action. Our aim is to change policies to include mandatory testing of landscaping products from vendors contracted by regional government agencies. SHJI is in alignment with Rose priorities as testing shows Cedar Grove and other providers distribute soils that create nonpoint pollution leading to polluted groundwater, wetland die off, and decreased fish reproduction. We will assess the impacts of local soil providers and support our community in addressing policy makers to create safer soil and water. | More details |
| Taxpayers for Common Sense | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2022 | $35,000.00 | Statewide | Wildfire Resilience Campaign | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change and Energy | Statewide | California | https://www.taxpayer.net/ | To provide analysis and educational outreach to agency and policymaker staff on the importance of prioritizing resilience and mitigation in wildfire planning and budgeting during a critical period of the wildfire debate. With the passage of significant new federal spending for wildfire and forest management, federal agencies and Congress are now tasked with deciding how this money will be spent. TCS will use their well-respected and trusted voice to inform and engage with the U.S. Forest Service on their wildfire crisis strategy; conduct rapid response analysis and educational outreach on congressional wildfire proposals and spending debates; and distribute their educational analysis to target audiences, including policymakers, the press, and national and local advocacy groups. | More details |
| The Environmental Center of San Diego | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2022 | $24,000.00 | San Diego Area | San Diego 30x30 Reboot | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change and Energy | San Diego County | California | https://sandiegoeco.org/ | To revitalize and expand the San Diego 30x30 Regional Working Group by increasing outreach, engaging more organizations, improving communication and collaboration, and increasing group effectiveness. This will allow the Environmental Center of San Diego to build a diverse, effective, and organized coalition ready to leverage state funding as it becomes available and steer it towards the most strategic regional conservation projects. The grant supports hiring a part-time organizer to revitalize the working group, increase the coalition’s effectiveness and collaboration, expand the group to include new and more diverse constituencies, and improve outreach and communication about 30x30 to key local officials and the general public. | More details |
| The Green Life | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; Marin County ; San Francisco County | California | http://www.earthisland.org/index.php/project/entry/green-life | To engage carceral system impacted leaders, youth, and Oakland residents in educational activities that foster a love of local waterways and the coastal East Bay, including healthy physical recreation, community service projects, and learning about habitat restoration, pollution prevention, and stream protection. | More details |
| The Plant Exchange | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $3,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County | California | http://theplantexchange.com | To promote waste reduction, sustainable gardening, urban farming and environmental justice through educational programming and the rescue, repair and redistribution of plants, pottery, and other gardening items that are headed to landfill. | More details |
| The Resilience Network | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $4,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County | California | https://norcalresilience.org/ | To support the Resilience Network's current leadership transition, which will shift power to frontline communities and elevate the voices of communities of color in the work towards a just transition. | More details |
| The Salish Sea School | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $40,000.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | Outdoor marine conservation programs | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Island County ; San Juan County ; Skagit County ; Snohomish County ; Whatcom County | Washington | https://www.thesalishseaschool.org/ | Rose funding will help with expenses in support of our outdoor marine conservation education for K-12th graders. Each program focuses on local water quality and empowers students to play a larger role in helping the marine ecosystem. A cornerstone of our mission is to provide programming to all students, especially those under-resourced, and we rely on grant funding to offer student scholarships and tuition waivers. Funding would also increase student reach, provide more free programs to underserved communities, and allow us to begin partnering with local schools. Each program is built upon three pillars: Adventure: hands-on, outdoor, placed-based education that spans the entire marine ecosystem from underwater drone explorations through listening to orca calls on a hydrophone, island hikes, and recognition of the stewardship of the Coast Salish tribes who have served as guardians of the Salish Sea for millennia. Field Research: unique exposure to career exploration, research equipment and scientific inquiry, collection of valuable research data by students for partner scientists, such as a tufted puffin survey, orca behavior survey, and marine density survey. Action: lessons on environmental advocacy, letter writing, engagement with elected officials, environmental service projects, and at-home actions such as ways to reduce stormwater contaminants, invasive plants. | More details |
| The Utility Reform Network | Consumer Products Fund | 2022 | $150,000.00 | Statewide; California | Broadband@Home Consumer Protection Campaign | Technology/Product/Service ; Education | Statewide ; Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; Fresno County ; Kern County ; Kings County ; Los Angeles County ; Merced County ; San Joaquin County ; Tulare County | California | https://www.turn.org/ | Broadband@Home is a statewide campaign to advance digital equity for California residents without broadband by promoting broadband discounts available through the federal Affordable Connectivity Plan (ACP). Broadband@Home protects and empowers consumers and direct service providers with eligibility and enrollment education about ACP broadband discounts. | More details |
| The Watershed Project | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $25,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Water Quality Monitoring and Capacity Building in Contra Costa County | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Contra Costa County | California | http://www.thewatershedproject.org/home.php | The Watershed Project began a Contra Costa County-wide creek monitoring program five years ago in partnership with several other local watershed groups. By using protocols and quality assurance measures from the California Waterboards’ Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program, they ensured that the data collected, which includes water temperature, pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, nitrate, and turbidity, would be useful to multiple agencies and other volunteer groups. The Watershed Project has since uploaded their data to a state database used by regulators and professionals. The Watershed Project will use this grant to continue their monthly water quality monitoring work at 36 creek sites within the San Pablo Bay watershed. The group will provide training, increased support, and quality control for the other local groups doing concurrent monitoring as well as maintain their educational and interactive database to share results with the public. The grant will also enable The Watershed Project to purchase an additional meter and calibration standards to share between groups. The availability of additional monitoring equipment is a critical step toward having more highly trained community scientists who can educate their neighbors and work towards improved water quality in the years to come. By using standardized methods, The Watershed Project and their partners can compare data across watersheds and learn valuable information about regional and local trends, with the goal of improving creek and watershed health. The group hopes that this unique community science program in Contra Costa County will serve as a model in other areas. | More details |
| Tolowa Dunes Stewards | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | North Coast | General Support | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Del Norte County | California | http://www.tolowacoasttrails.org | To engage youth, tribal members, and community volunteers in education, advocacy and hands-on restoration of Tolowa Dunes State Park and the Lake Earl Wildlife Area. | More details |
| Tolowa Dunes Stewards | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | North Coast | Restoring Biological Diversity for a Climate Resilient Future | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Del Norte County | California | http://www.tolowacoasttrails.org | To support ongoing volunteer programs that engage young people and the community in hands-on restoration of Tolowa Dunes State Park and the Lake Earl Wildlife Area. | More details |
| Toxic Free Future | Orca Fund | 2022 | $72,362.00 | Central Puget Sound | Understanding Preventable Toxic Threats to Southern Resident Orcas | Jefferson County ; King County ; Kitsap County ; Mason County ; Pierce County ; Snohomish County ; Thurston County ; Whatcom County | Washington | http://www.toxicfreefuture.org | Toxic-Free Future plans to test Chinook salmon, key orca prey, and potentially other food web elements to better understand Southern Resident orca exposure to PFAS and flame retardant chemicals that may be impacting their health. | More details | |
| Trees Foundation | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $4,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Sustainable Forestry | Del Norte County ; Humboldt County ; Marin County ; Mendocino County ; San Francisco County ; Santa Cruz County ; Sonoma County ; Trinity County | California | http://www.treesfoundation.org | To empower grassroots environmental efforts on California's North Coast by supporting regional community-based conservation, restoration and resiliency projects. | More details |
| Tuleyome | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2022 | $35,000.00 | Sacramento Valley | Save Condor (Walker) Ridge | Environmental Education ; Environmental Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change and Energy ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Economic Development | Statewide ; Colusa County ; Glenn County ; Lake County ; Mendocino County ; Napa County ; Sacramento County ; San Francisco County ; Siskiyou County ; Solano County ; Sonoma County ; Yolo County | California | https://www.tuleyome.org/ | To design and implement a multilingual communications, education and outreach plan and conduct an Objects of Interest study to support a campaign to protect Condor Ridge (also known as Molok Luyuk or Walker Ridge). Molok Luyuk is one of the most important areas of rare serpentine plant habitat in the state, and hosts over 30 rare species. The area is threatened by fragmented management under both BLM and the Forest Service, which makes it vulnerable to recurring proposals for industrial-scale wind energy installations, rampant illegal OHV use, and neglect. The ultimate goal is to include Molok Luyuk as part of the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, establish tribal co-management, and ensure effective stewardship of the Monument through a comprehensive management plan. The current campaign will educate the public and decision makers about Molok Luyuk, engage them with the area, and build urgency for protecting it. | More details |
| Twin Harbors Waterkeeper | Grays Harbor/Chehalis River Watershed Fund | 2022 | $80,000.00 | Grays Harbor/Chehalis River | The Chehalis River Watershed and Grays Harbor Estuary Clean Water Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice ; Environmental Health and Toxics | Washington | The Chehalis River Watershed, including the Grays Harbor Estuary, is important for five major reasons: 1) it is the largest watershed that is completely within the boundaries of Washington state; 2) it has no salmon species that are listed as threatened or endangered; 3) the main stem is free-flowing with no dams; 4) it provides Chinook salmon needed for endangered Orcas as they feed off of Grays Harbor; 5) it helps support a vibrant shellfish industry and tribal treaty fishing rights; and, 6) is an important source of food and habitat for over a million migratory birds. This project will benefit water quality. To achieve these benefits, Twin Harbors Waterkeeper (THW) has five goals: 1) stop illegal water pollution; 2) prevent new sources of water pollution; 3) stop toxic discharges to water from historically contaminated sites; 4) advocate for habitat protection in coastal estuaries and rivers; and 5) provide outreach and education to our most overburdened communities to reduce harm. THW will put the Chehalis River Watershed and Grays Harbor Estuary on the map to increase funding and awareness of the issues affecting marine and freshwater habitats, salmon and Orcas and water quality. It will position the SW Coast of Washington to compete more effectively for funding on par with the efforts to protect and preserve the Salish Sea. THW will strive to increase funding for critical scientific research, habitat protection, invasive species removal, and pollution permit enforcement. THW will use the highly efficient and effective Waterkeeper model to ensure water is protected as required by the federal Clean Water Act. THW will use all of the tools including litigation to stop egregious pollution. And, THW will expand its base of support and collaborators to include public health officials and vulnerable neighbors around our watershed that experience poverty and high environmental health disparities. | More details | ||
| Valley Improvement Projects | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Climate Change & Energy ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Merced County ; San Joaquin County ; Stanislaus County | California | http://www.valleyimprovementprojects.org | To inform, protect, and empower environmental justice communities in Stanislaus County and the Northern San Joaquin Valley by focusing on air quality, pesticide exposure, sustainable waste practices, safe drinking water access, climate justice, and youth outreach. | More details |
| Vashon Nature Center LLC | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $30,000.00 | South Puget Sound | Vashon Marine Stewardship Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | King County ; Kitsap County ; Pierce County | Washington | https://vashonnaturecenter.org/ | Vashon Island’s 54 miles of rural shoreline and adjacent marine waters provide an oasis for sea life in heavily urbanized central Puget Sound. Home to Maury Island State Aquatic Reserve and containing half of the undeveloped shoreline in King County, proper use and care of island habitats is extremely important for local well-being and for Puget Sound health. Yet, as an unincorporated area, the island has no central governance or decision-making authority. People here care about their home waters but sometimes disagree about uses or don’t know who to ask about best practices. In addition, sometimes regional values conflict with local values. Use of island marine areas and shorelines are increasing. More people are enjoying clamming, squidding and fishing here; entrepreneurs are putting forth applications for kelp farms and shellfish farms, and as waterfront house values increase and sell, new owners must learn how to be good shoreline stewards. In order to participate in sound decision-making, locals need timely information and connections to managing entities (like Washington Department of Natural Resources, Puyallup Tribe & King County). Vashon Nature Center is a community-based non-profit. We foster stewardship of nature through community science, research and education. For the past 10 years we have built agency connections, research projects, and rapport with our community. We now find ourselves in a unique position to significantly improve stewardship of marine and shoreline environments. We seek funding from Rose Foundation to help kick start a Marine Stewardship Project to engage community members in hands-on research about the state of shoreline and marine ecosystems, deliver education about marine topics, and foster connections between local residents and the plethora of managing agencies responsible for the health of these areas. Our goal is to promote richer, more efficient, place-based stewardship to ensure clean, healthy and thriving waters for all. | More details |
| Water Climate Trust | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $6,500.00 | North Central & East | Water for Nature Campaign | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Plumas County ; Sacramento County ; San Francisco County ; Shasta County ; Siskiyou County | California | https://www.waterclimate.org/ | To advocate for the restoration and protection of instream flows in rivers and streams in the upper Sacramento River watershed through policy advocacy and participation in key state and federal regulatory processes. | More details |
| Wholly H2O | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Grassroots Fund Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Alameda County | California | https://whollyh2o.org/ | More details | |
| Wholly H2O | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $7,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County | California | https://whollyh2o.org/ | To help communities of the San Francisco Bay Area connect with their watershed ecosystems through education programs, “Walking Waterhoods†tours, citizen science events, and an informational podcast. | More details |
| Wild Farm Alliance | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2022 | $25,000.00 | Central Valley | Protecting Water Quality with Field Edge Habitat on San Joaquin County Farms | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | San Joaquin County | California | http://www.wildfarmalliance.org | Wild Farm Alliance’s work is centered around helping farms thrive with nature, and the funding will be used support San Joaquin County growers to implement practices that protect water quality and build resilient farms. San Joaquin County is among the top four California counties for pesticide use and more than 13 million pounds are applied there annually. The group will work directly with growers to install hedgerows, windbreaks, and other climate friendly agriculture practices. These field edge plantings have numerous water quality benefits such as reducing nonpoint source pesticide pollution, improving infiltration, and increasing nutrient retention. The plantings also reduce erosion, noise levels, and improve air quality from fugitive dust, and these co-benefits resonate with many farmers’ interests. The grant funding will also support the creation of a digital map that identifies farms that have already implemented field edge habitat. The group will use the map to showcase the growing movement of farmers incorporating conservation practices to inspire other growers. The outreach component of the project will focus on building relationships with members of California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), the Almond Board of California, and the California Walnut Commission, since almonds and walnut are among the most common crops grown in San Joaquin County. Wild Farms Alliance’s extensive experience in agricultural biodiversity conservation and recent programmatic work creating videos and working directly with growers throughout the state puts the group in an ideal position to successfully accomplish these goals. | More details |
| Wild Orca | Orca Fund | 2022 | $74,456.00 | North Sound/Salish Sea | Wild Orca Southern Resident Killer Whale Health Monitoring Program | Clallam County ; Island County ; Jefferson County ; King County ; Kitsap County ; San Juan County ; Skagit County ; Snohomish County ; Whatcom County | Washington | http://www.wildorca.org | Wild Orca’s Southern Resident Killer Whale Health Monitoring Program will continue and build on the legacy of 15 years’ work at the University of Washington (UW), to link both the physiological health of the Southern Resident Orca (SRO) with the environmental health of the Salish Sea. Using scent detection dogs, we will non-invasively collect feces for analysis to measure stress levels, reproductive health—including pregnancy, miscarriage and male fertility—and nutritional health relating to diet. | More details | |
| Wolf Creek Community Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2022 | $6,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | General support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Toxics & Environmental Health | Nevada County | California | http://www.wolfcreekalliance.org/ | To protect, preserve, and restore the Wolf Creek Watershed through watershed stewardship, water quality testing, and public education and action on local issues such as pollution, climate resilience, threats to wildlife and injustices against local tribes. | More details |
| World Relief Seattle | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $30,000.00 | Central Puget Sound | Equity & Sustainability Internship Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | King County | Washington | https://worldreliefseattle.org/ | In recent years, World Relief Seattle (WRS) has been one of the leading non-profit organizations linking together stormwater management and food security in the Puget Sound: mitigating water pollution while providing opportunities for King County refugees and immigrants to grow culturally-relevant foods for themselves, their families, and their communities. WRS transformed over an acre of impermeable parking lot in the rapidly urbanizing city of Kent, WA into a thriving community garden—Paradise Parking Plots Community Garden—operating at the crossroads of race, environmental justice, and community development. Our diversity of green infrastructure features, which include 5 rain gardens, a 2,300 sqft bioswale and 16,000 gallons (soon to be 20,000 gallons) of rainwater catchment, are placed strategically on our stormwater-prone site. Paradise Parking Plots is an ideal place for communities to organically engage with and learn about water quality and stormwater management. Seeing this intersection of food sovereignty and environmental justice as an ideal learning opportunity, WRS has developed a place-based environmental education and leadership development program for refugee and immigrant youth in South King County: our Equity & Sustainability Internship program. This internship provides local refugee and immigrant youth with the opportunity to learn about and engage in local water quality and environmental issues in their own backyard using Paradise Parking Plots as their learning laboratory. These youth then apply their learning by creating a 5-week, culturally-relevant curriculum to engage K-8th grade refugee and immigrant youth at WRS’s Refugee Youth Summer Academy. World Relief Seattle is requesting funding from the Rose Foundation to increase the value of internship stipends and support all three tiers of our internship program in 2022. | More details |
| Zero Waste Washington | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2022 | $30,000.00 | South Puget Sound | Litter quantification and outreach to support reduction of plastic pollution, South Puget Sound | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Kitsap County ; Mason County ; Pierce County ; Thurston County | Washington | http://www.zerowastewashington.org | Plastic pollution, a critical water quality problem, has now gained scientific and public attention. Macro- and micro-plastics in our waters cause impacts to wildlife and potentially, as more data are now showing, health impacts to humans who consume fish and shellfish. It is estimated that about 80% of plastics in our oceans are from land-based sources, much of it litter that gets picked up in stormwater runoff. These land-based sources of litter are poorly quantified. To address this data gap, Zero Waste Washington worked with US EPA to develop a standardized litter assessment protocol called the Escaped Trash Assessment Protocol (which started in the PNW and has rolled out nationally). With important support from The Rose Foundation, we worked with partners over the past grant cycle to pilot and refine this protocol by collecting data at cleanup events. These data are designed to inform/inspire action and to provide feedback to community members and volunteers. In this proposal we seek to ramp up the effort by supporting local volunteer groups to quantify litter at a minimum of 10 events and developing customized messaging and outreach about potential solutions. We will build up the database to demonstrate that these waterbodies should be listed as impaired on the state’s 303(d) list, which in turn will trigger regulatory and voluntary responses. The objectives are: Work with existing volunteer groups to quantify litter at a minimum of 10 events in the South Sound Create local factsheets and messaging to highlight sources of and local solutions for plastics pollution and waste reduction and assist local groups in outreach and education about changes at local scale and statewide Compile data and create a regional data report to support 303(d) listing pathway and stronger pollution prevention language in NPDES permits Provide information that can lead to the adoption of Water Quality Standards by the state and, potentially, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians | More details |
| 350 Sacramento | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | Sacramento Valley | Student Environmental Activist Training (SEAT) | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Sacramento County | California | http://www.350sacramento.org | To hire five youth interns in the Sacramento area to expand their knowledge and skills around climate justice and movement building and work on a 6-month climate justice activism project to benefit the community. | More details |
| A Community Voice | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Louisiana | http://www.acommunityvoice.org/ | The Blight to Bioswales project works with the lowest income residents who are most vulnerable to flooding due to blight and increased rainfall, as they are the least able to migrate or rebuild post-disaster, to develop strategic plans to install bioswales/raingardens to mitigate mass blight. This project improves resiliency through education and knowledge that will foster ready engagement with city officials and stakeholders and find long-term solutions that will prepare communities for impending disasters. | More details | ||
| A Community Voice | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | http://www.acommunityvoice.org/ | More details | ||||
| A Community Voice | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | General Support | Louisiana | http://www.acommunityvoice.org/ | General support | More details | |||
| American Rivers | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $21,600.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Water Quality and Biodiversity Monitoring in the Marsh Creek Watershed | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Contra Costa County | California | https://www.americanrivers.org/ | The goal of the Water Quality and Biodiversity Monitoring in the Marsh Creek Watershed Project is to establish a healthy riparian corridor along the lower Marsh Creek flood control channel that provides habitat for fish and wildlife and improves water quality flowing into the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta. Marsh Creek provides an important ecological corridor in a rapidly urbanizing area. Despite the pace of urbanization over the last two decades, there is still an opportunity to restore a riparian corridor and improve water quality in the communities of Brentwood and Oakley. Our vision for Marsh Creek is a stream of clean, cool water, surrounded by stands of native trees and a spread of grasses and wildflowers that serves as a community asset and a vital, healthy habitat corridor between protected conservation areas on the Delta shoreline and Mount Diablo State Park. Over the past decade, American Rivers and our project partners have been working to achieve this vision, organizing community residents, building a fish ladder, and advancing restoration of riparian areas and floodplains along the creek to improve habitat and water quality for fish, wildlife, and people. Funding from the Rose Foundation through the California Watershed Protection Fund will allow American Rivers to support local community and agency partners in managing the newly restored healthy riparian corridor along the Marsh Creek flood control channel to provide habitat for fish and wildlife and to improve water quality. | More details |
| American Rivers | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $30,000.00 | Central Sound | Roxhill Bog and Longfellow Creek Network | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | https://www.americanrivers.org/ | Longfellow Creek is one of the most racially diverse, urbanized sub-basins of the Green-Duwamish River, but the impacts of urbanization have diminished the quantity and quality of water entering the neighboring Roxhill Bog and Longfellow Creek, leading to degraded aquatic habitat and unsafe conditions for residents. At the end of 2018, American Rivers collaborated with trusted local partners, the Delridge Neighborhood Development Association (DNDA) and Duwamish Alive Coalition (DAC), to undertake efforts to restore hydrologic function to Roxhill Bog and advance restoration throughout Longfellow Creek. Generous funding provided by the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment supported the development of a hydrologic study to understand why the bog was degrading and develop a conceptual design to fix it. To complete the third phase of the project, partners will develop shovel-ready construction plans for a pilot project that will retain water in a section of the bog to recharge groundwater levels, improve site lines by restoring native wetland vegetation, lay the groundwork for education programs and provide data for future phases of the project. American Rivers requests a $30,000 grant from the Rose Foundation to advance the restoration design of the pilot groundwater block and provide support for partners to lead meaningful public engagement with the community of color surrounding the bog, which include Latinx, Somali and Vietnamese populations, to ensure community needs are met in the project design and residents are informed of project progress. We will also provide guidance, technical support and funding to our local partners to ensure they have the resources and tools needed to meet their long-term water quality goals in Longfellow Creek. We will support DNDA in leading the Longfellow Creek Network into the future and fostering collaboration between community members, NGOs and local agencies that will inform future projects across the watershed. | More details | |
| Ascend Wilderness Experience | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $330.00 | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | California | http://ascendwilderness.org/ | More details | ||||
| Ascend Wilderness Experience | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $100.00 | Share your story video project | California | http://ascendwilderness.org/ | More details | ||||
| Ascend Wilderness Experience | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,500.00 | North Coast | 2021 Boots on the Ground Stewardship Trips | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Humboldt County ; Shasta County ; Siskiyou County ; Tehama County ; Trinity County | California | http://ascendwilderness.org/ | To conduct youth and adult backpacking excursions and backcountry trail restoration in the Trinity Alps Wilderness Area during summer 2021, achieving the twin goals of restoring impacted habitat and building the conservation community in Trinity County. | More details |
| AsianWeek Foundation/Florence Fang Community Farm | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $100.00 | Share your story video project | California | https://ffcommunityfarm.org/ | More details | ||||
| Backcountry Horsemen of California | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $3,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | Back Country Horsemen of California Intern Project | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Inyo County ; Mono County | California | http://bchcalifornia.org/ | To sponsor a 3-month internship to teach youth the skills of backcountry packing and stock management, support trail work in the Eastern Sierra, and inspire the next generation of skilled packers and wilderness managers. | More details |
| Battle Creek Alliance | Anthony Grassroots Prize | 2021 | $1,000.00 | Marily Woodhouse/ Battle Creek Alliance | California | http://www.thebattlecreekalliance.org | More details | ||||
| Battle Creek Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | North Central & East | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy | Shasta County ; Tehama County | California | http://www.thebattlecreekalliance.org | To collect long-term, year-round data regarding the diminished water quality downstream from clearcut and salvage-logged land in the Sierra and Cascade mountain ranges, and pursue litigation to promote resource conservation and protect the water supply from further degradation. | More details |
| Battle Creek Alliance | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $6,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | Battle Creek Watershed Protection Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Shasta County ; Tehama County | California | http://www.thebattlecreekalliance.org | Battle Creek Alliance is continuing its Citizen’s Water Monitoring Project in the rural Battle Creek watershed in eastern Shasta and Tehama counties, northeastern California. This project has collected data since 2009 to track the effects occurring from major landscape-level changes downstream of Lassen National Forest and upstream of the Sacramento River. Over 14,000 water and habitat quality samples have already been collected, which continue to be analyzed to identify ongoing cumulative effects. The project provides education to broaden community knowledge and evidence to promote resource conservation, and to protect the water supply from degradation for the local low-income rural community, as well as the larger downstream communities in the Sacramento River watershed. Battle Creek is also the site of one of the largest salmon restoration projects in the country, due to it being one of the most important fish spawning streams in the Sacramento Valley. Along with the benefits to water quality, intact forests are a crucial piece of nature that protect air quality and store carbon. Funding is additionally needed for a new lawsuit (filed in July 2021) which challenges the ongoing approval of logging plans which consistently state the multitude of logging plans have no significant effects. These effects include non-point source water pollution from the permanently deforested miles of logging roads as well as the hundreds of thousands of cutover acres from clearcutting and salvage logging. This is the 2nd suit where we have real evidence from our water quality sampling and our research paper. These suits contain a second claim regarding the overall "Patterns and Practices" that the regulatory agency has used for so long to avoid honestly analyzing cumulative impacts, as required by CEQA. | More details |
| Battle Creek Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | North Central & East | Battle Creek Alliance Watershed Protection | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy | Shasta County ; Tehama County | California | http://www.thebattlecreekalliance.org | To collect long-term, year-round data regarding the diminished water quality downstream from clearcut and salvage-logged land in the Sierra and Cascade mountain ranges and pursue litigation to promote resource conservation and protect the climate, water supply, forest, watershed, and wildlife habitat from further degradation. | More details |
| Black Women for Wellness | Consumer Products Fund | 2021 | $75,000.00 | Los Angeles County | "Clean Beauty": Community Right to Know About Product Ingredients | Technology/Product/Service ; Education | California | http://www.bwwla.org | Our Taking Stock Study over the past 3 years documented 600 products, their labels, and ingredients used by Black women in Los Angeles. As women seek to reduce exposures, they often turn to the unregulated “clean beauty†market. These products can also contain toxic chemicals. Through this next project phase, we aim to increase transparency about clean beauty products. From our data, we will 1) identify labels of the products with “clean†or “natural†claims 2) create a database of ingredients, product labeling claims, and missing information for “Clean Beauty†products, and 3) develop educational materials such as handouts, short videos, and social media posts and a module in Detox Me app to help navigate “clean beauty†purchasing. | More details | |
| Breast Cancer Prevention Partners | Consumer Products Fund | 2021 | $150,000.00 | California - statewide | California Black Beauty Project | Advocacy ; Technology/Product/Service ; Education | California | http://www.bcpp.org | BCPP will work with Clearya and leading NGOs to improve Black women’s health by developing and disseminating a list of “safer†Black-owned beauty brands that make & sell beauty and personal care products to Black women and girls. Clearya will screen thousands of Black beauty brand product ingredient lists for hazardous chemicals, notify Californians of unsafe products while they’re shopping online on major retail websites, and automatically suggest safer alternatives. Together, we will raise Californians’ awareness about the toxic chemicals in Black beauty products, equip Black women with resources they can trust and that empower them to make safer choices, and educate retailers & companies on how to make & sell safer Black beauty products. | More details | |
| Bring Back the Kern | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | Environmental Justice for Bakersfield | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Kern County | California | https://www.bringbackthekern.org/ | To advocate for the return of water to the Kern River for the benefit of communities and wildlife. | More details |
| Brinnon Group | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $10,000.00 | Central Sound | Monitoring Impacts of Pleasant Harbor Master Planned Resort Development on Hood Canal | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Washington | http://www.brinnongroup.org/ | Goal: To establish a system to monitor water quality in Hood Canal and the Duckabush River related to the Pleasant Harbor Master Planned Resort (MPR) development. **An MPR is an exception to the state Growth Management Act, which allows urban density development in rural areas. The MPR would have 890 residential units on 253 acres, plus commercial and recreational facilities and a golf course. *The MPR is located on the Duckabush estuary near vulnerable shellfish beds and extensive salmon recovery planning **MPRs have a high rate of failure, with resulting environmental damage **The 2019 Land Use Petition Act (LUPA) decision won by the Brinnon Group established regulatory parameters for the development, but to reduce cost it appears the developer is trying to develop outside the regulations. **No one is monitoring the water quality or other environmental effects of the MPR (these include impacts on wetlands). **A baseline of environmental conditions must be established so that if the MPR development fails, we can identify what must be done to mitigate or prevent further impacts to the Duckabush estuary, Hood Canal, and the shoreline and to hold the county (and any bonds) responsible for restoring the area. **The ordinance establishing the MPR specifies local participation in monitoring water quality, but allocates no funds for this. **Using donations, the Brinnon Group has begun to monitor the MPR with a drone and with public documents on the permitting process. The county has few resources, if any, committed to monitoring the MPR development. **This proposal is to contract for water quality and legal expertise to develop a system of monitoring environmental impacts, including water quality *Monitoring would include using Lidar maps, additional drone flights, and water quality testing and analysis *Monitoring is key in requiring compliance by the developer and to report non compliance to the county and state agencies. | More details | |
| Building Youth Through Music/WayOut Kids | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $10,000.00 | South Sound | Steam Gone Digital | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Washington | http://www.rodneyraccoon.com | STEAM GONE DIGITAL is a fun digital interactive environmental education program. The program consist of a series of educational videos which utilize science-based curriculum and the great outdoors to teach students about the impact our interactions have on the Puget Sound. If Covid has taught us all anything, we could strongly assume digital learning is here to stay. Our STEAM GONE DIGITAL program addresses these new changes and will deliver environmental education lesson directly into the homes and personal devices of families in the Puget Sound. | More details | |
| Butte Environmental Council | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $11,500.00 | Sacramento Valley | Northern Sacramento Valley Water Protection Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy | Butte County | California | https://www.becnet.org/ | Butte Environmental Council is seeking Rose Foundation funding for the Northern Sacramento Valley Water Protection Project, a community- and volunteer-based program that promotes clean up, outreach, and advocacy surrounding water quality issues within the Big Chico Creek and Butte Creek Watersheds, located within the Sacramento Valley Subregion. Many of the streams in these watersheds flow through disadvantaged and low-income neighborhoods and have been subject to illegal dumping of hazardous chemicals, used syringes, makeshift latrines, and used car parts. Vandalism also occurs frequently at these sites; healthy riparian trees have been cut, areas have been covered in graffiti, and small fires have been started. As part of its efforts to address these problems, the proposed Water Protection Project will sponsor “Block Parties With A Purpose.†These block parties will promote neighborhood efforts to clean up these areas by removing overgrown invasive species, which will minimize the potential for vandalism and other environmental harm while making the sites more accessible to recreational use by local residents. Opening up these areas will allow for more walking, running, biking, hiking, photography, bird watching, wildflower viewing, and create a more inviting recreational environment for families in disadvantaged and low-income communities. Having clean waterways and wetlands promotes wildlife activity, creating homes for birds, beavers, frogs, and other animal species. Local wetlands are also a frequent stop for migratory birds along the Pacific Flyway. Protected wetlands filter pollutants from stormwater runoff, enhancing local water quality for recreation and wildlife. In all of its efforts, the proposed Water Protection Project will also provide educational opportunities for neighborhoods about the benefits of responsible water stewardship, recycling, invasive species management, environmental justice, advocacy, and ongoing water quality assessment. | More details |
| California Coastkeeper Alliance | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $11,500.00 | Sacramento Valley | Improving Sanitary Sewer Overflows in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice | Contra Costa County ; Sacramento County ; San Joaquin County ; Solano County ; Yolo County | California | http://www.cacoastkeeper.org | California Coastkeeper Alliance (CCKA)’s Sanitary Sewer Overflow (SSO) project will aim to reduce SSOs statewide while focusing on SSO enforcement in the Sacramento region in order to reduce nutrient and bacteria pollution that flows into the Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta (Delta). CCKA will target the State Water Board’s reissuance of the statewide Sanitary Sewer System General Order to improve the management and accountability of sanitary sewer systems to prevent SSOs, improve the health of communities near failing systems, and improve access to swimmable waters for all. CCKA’s project will develop strategic communications centered around the lack of community access – particularly underserved community access – to fishable and swimmable waters in the Delta. CCKA will place media articles, op-eds, blogs, and social media detailing how SSOs cause harmful algal blooms, eutrophication, and unsafe swimming holes in the Delta. CCKA will also use the 50-year anniversary of the Clean Water Act to generate media attention on the lack of progress to restore California's waters and to advocate for the state to re-energize its commitment to achieve fishable, swimmable, and drinkable waters for all Californians. | More details |
| California Environmental Technology Education Network | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $3,500.00 | North Coast | WebGIS Training for Teacher Credential Students | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Del Norte County ; Humboldt County | California | http://environmentalteched.net/index.html | To provide professional development workshops for teacher credential students in the use of WebGIS and GPS units as an instructional tool for environmental education and stewardship fieldwork. | More details |
| California Field School | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $2,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Freewheel: A Bike Club for Girls & Gender Nonconforming Young People | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County ; Marin County ; San Francisco County ; San Mateo County | California | https://www.californiafieldschool.org/ | To help Bay Area girls and gender nonconforming youth develop skills, familiarity, and connection with traveling by bicycle, and learn about the social and ecological histories of the land they live on through Freewheel, a monthly bike-riding club. | More details |
| California Reinvestment Coalition | Consumer Products Fund | 2021 | $150,000.00 | California - statewide | CRC Economic Wellness Promotoras | Advocacy ; Education | California | http://www.calreinvest.org | CRC's Economic Wellness Promotoras will educate very low income BIPOC consumers in California on their rights regarding financial products and services, connect them with resources to file consumer complaints, seek restitution for financial harm done by unscrupulous or harmful business practices, and avoid scams and predatory financial products. | More details | |
| California Sportfishing Protection Alliance | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $15,000.00 | Central Valley | Drought Emergency Response | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; Sacramento County ; San Joaquin County ; Solano County ; Stanislaus County ; Yolo County | California | https://calsport.org/ | California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) seeks to fundamentally change the way California addresses recurrent droughts. We can no longer allow state and federal water managers to blindly assume that they can make full water allocations during drought years on the assumption that next year may rain. Hope for rain is NOT an adequate water management plan in our current era where climate change is fundamentally altering our weather, and changing snowfall, snowmelt and rainfall patterns. Our efforts to modernize California and federal water management policies are critical to the future of the fisheries, wildlife, beneficial uses and those who dependent upon them in the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta Estuary and its tributary waterways. The funds will help cover legal and technical representation in myriad proceedings before state and federal agencies. | More details |
| Californians for Alternatives to Toxics | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $22,000.00 | North Coast | Pesticides in the Russian River Watershed | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Lake County ; Mendocino County ; Sonoma County | California | http://www.alt2tox.org | We will revisit and expand on a section of our 1997 report “Time for a Change: Pesticides and Wine Grapes in Sonoma and Napa Counties,†focused on premium wine grapes that also included a map and chart describing pesticides used within a half mile of the Russian River, which we found to be intensive. Since then, wine grape and other agricultural acreage has increased in the watershed. It’s time to take a hard look at what is known of the potential for pollution and impacts of pesticide use to further community awareness and efforts to restore and reinvigorate the Russian River. We will focus on all reported agricultural applications in the watershed and cover creeks and streams. We will build on our long history of revealing industrial pesticide use at the field level and naming places and owners specifically. With our broad experience and extensive use of California's Pesticide Use Reporting data, we will shine light on the Russian River watershed, using scientific literature and agency information to reveal the potential for harm from these toxic chemicals in order to spur further study. We will also seek anecdotal information on unreported pesticide use from good sources to fill out the picture. A key component will be to move the information into the general and agricultural communities to become owned by people in the industry and those in the local community who desire to realize a clean and healthy Russian River. Our goal is to develop and integrate specific information to stir the interested public to demand--and pesticide-using agriculturalists to embrace--changes that haven't been adequately considered or used previously, thus moving to better stewardship of, and a much healthier water quality for the Russian River. | More details |
| Cannabis for Conservation | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $6,500.00 | North Coast | Wildlife Conscious Certification | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Humboldt County | California | https://www.cannabisforconservation.org/ | To increase habitat connectivity and encourage wildlife-friendly land management practices on cannabis farms in Humboldt County through the Wildlife Conscious Certification program. | More details |
| Center for Digital Democracy | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $75,000.00 | California - statewide | Protecting Privacy for California Consumers in the Data-driven Streaming Video Marketplace | Advocacy ; Education | California | https://www.democraticmedia.org | Millions of Californians are disconnecting their cable and subscription TV services and turning to the growing number of ad-supported streaming video networks (often called “over-the-top†or “OTTâ€). But in exchange for access to free or affordable programming, consumers are subject to a powerful new data collection and digital marketing apparatus, which uses AI, machine learning and other advanced technologies to monitor what people watch, and subject them to discriminatory and manipulative techniques. Children and communities of color are particularly at risk. This project is designed to educate California consumers and other stakeholders about their rights and responsibilities as viewers of ad-supported streaming channels, to ensure greater transparency and accountability by California-based OTT companies, and to maximize industry compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the forthcoming Consumer Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), and other privacy laws. | More details | |
| Center for Environmental Health | Consumer Products Fund | 2021 | $150,000.00 | Nation-Wide | California Consumer Right-to-Know Campaign | Education | Nationwide | http://www.ceh.org | Through the California Consumer Right-to-Know Campaign, our goal is to help consumers know the difference between what is being marketed to them and what they are actually purchasing. CEH is here to uncover the truth about illegally undisclosed toxic chemicals and educate consumers about the threats these undisclosed substances pose to their health. Our approach will: 1) ascertain which products have amounts of chemicals that trigger a right-to-know under California law, and 2) educate consumers about these products, chemicals, and their rights under the law. These strategies will arm consumers, especially those in underserved communities, with the knowledge to spot false claims and/or better understand the warnings on products. | More details | |
| Center for Farmworker Families | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $100.00 | Share your story video project | California | http://www.farmworkerfamily.org/ | More details | ||||
| Centreville Citizens for Change | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Illinois | https://floodedandforgotten.com/ | More details | ||||
| Centreville Citizens for Change | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Illinois | https://floodedandforgotten.com/ | More details | ||||
| Citizens' Committee for Flood Relief | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Toxics & Environmental Health | Missouri | https://www.facebook.com/groups | The Committee is made up of concerned individuals that represent the residents, businesses, and families of De Soto affected by urban flooding. They work at finding effective ways to protect De Soto from flooding and also work to revitalize the town, in conjunction with city, county, state and federal agencies. This project will support their ongoing work of mobilizing local residents, partnering with organizations such as the USGS and US Army Corps of Engineers to conduct studies, generating political will around urban flooding, future planning around buildings now located in flood plains, and emergency planning. | More details | ||
| Citizens' Committee for Flood Relief | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Missouri | https://www.facebook.com/groups/609613372545223/ | More details | ||||
| Clean Water Fund | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $22,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Addressing the PFAS Crisis in San Francisco Bay: Part 2 | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; San Francisco County ; San Mateo County ; Santa Clara County | California | http://www.cleanwaterfund.org | Clean Water Fund (CWF) will combine its 20 years of expertise working to address San Francisco Bay’s pollution in protection of subsistence fishers and other vulnerable populations, with its leadership on PFAS water pollution, to advance the study of the effects of these chemicals on water quality, wildlife, and humans; the development of policies to prevent PFAS from entering the watershed; as well as possible remediation actions. The program is a next step after 2020's successful effort to phase out PFAS containing firefighting foam (a major contributor of PFAS into the environment) through coalition building and public education that built demand for strict restrictions. In 2021-22, CWF will facilitate collaboration with local scientists, wastewater agency personnel, residents, regulators, and advocates to address PFAS specifically in the Bay. Key activities will include policy development meetings with water regulators and local advocates, regular convenings of our successful California PFAS workgroup, and possibly a remote conference. In addition, we will continue our grassroots and decision maker education efforts about the human and environmental dangers of PFAS, and the need to eradicate their production and use for non-essential uses. | More details |
| Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Del Norte County ; Humboldt County | California | https://transportationpriorities.org/ | To educate and advocate for policies and infrastructure that support low-carbon, healthy transportation in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties. | More details |
| Coalition for Wetlands and Forests | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | New York | http://www.sicwf.org/ | This project seeks to preserve the Graniteville Wetland and Forest through the courts, and protect it from infill development, by finding a purchaser who will turn it over to the State or City Parks Department or to do so by way of eminent domain. By preserving these freshwater and tidal wetlands, this project aims to ameliorate the effects of climate change flooding and to buffer the effects of intensive air pollution. The Coalition seeks to educate and empower those who will be most affected by climate change. | More details | ||
| Coalition for Wetlands and Forests | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | New York | http://www.sicwf.org/ | More details | ||||
| Coalition for Wetlands and Forests | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $1,200.00 | General Support | New York | http://www.sicwf.org/ | General support and hurricane relief. | More details | |||
| Comite Progreso de Lamont | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $100.00 | Share your story video project | California | More details | |||||
| Committee for a Better Arvin | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $100.00 | Share your story video project | California | More details | |||||
| Committee for a Better Shafter | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Kern County | California | To participate in the ongoing AB 617 process to reduce air pollution in Shafter, and continue to advocate for environmental health and justice. | More details | |
| Community Action Project | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Calaveras County | California | http://calaverascap.com | To protect open space and promote sustainable development through citizen engagement and litigation of the Calaveras County General Plan. | More details |
| Community Action Project | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $7,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Calaveras County | California | http://calaverascap.com | To protect open space and promote sustainable development through citizen engagement and litigation of the Calaveras County General Plan. | More details |
| Community Environmental Advocates Foundation | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $4,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change & Energy | Nevada County | California | http://www.cea-nc.org/ | To oppose the reopening of the Idaho-Maryland gold mine though citizen advocacy, public outreach and education. | More details |
| Community Governance Partnership | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2021 | $25,000.00 | North Coast | Cannabis Removal On Public Lands (CROP) | Sustainable Forestry | Humboldt, Mendocino, Trinity, Shasta, Lassen, Siskiyou, Tehama | California | https://www.cgovpartnership.org/ | The Cannabis Removal On Public Lands (CROP) Project is a diverse, bipartisan partnership of stakeholders seeking to remove toxic, trespass cannabis grows from wild, public spaces. Our goals are to increase state and federal resources for reclamation, increase Forest Service law enforcement presence in National Forests, and increase criminal penalties for bringing toxicants onto public lands. | More details |
| Community Hiking Club | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $2,000.00 | Southern Coast | Piru Creek Wild and Scenic River Stewardship Program | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County | California | http://communityhikingclub.org/ | To promote stewardship, and remove trash, graffiti and user-created swimming holes that threaten steelhead trout populations along Los Angeles County’s much used, Wild and Scenic designated, Piru Creek. | More details |
| Community In-Power and Development Association Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Environmental Justice | Texas | https://www.cidainc.org/ | This project seeks to continue Community In-Power’s work of combating urban flooding via community-led home repairs and federal buyout assistance, strengthening flood management infrastructure, convening the community and educate the broader public on what is happening in Port Arthur, and combating climate change by challenging big polluters. | More details | ||
| Community In-Power and Development Association Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Texas | https://www.cidainc.org/ | More details | ||||
| Community In-Power and Development Association Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | General Support | Texas | https://www.cidainc.org/ | General support | More details | |||
| Conservation Northwest | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $10,000.00 | Central Sound | Riparian restoration and community engagement in the Upper White River watershed | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Washington | https://www.conservationnw.org/ | Located on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, the Upper White River watershed drains to Puget Sound. This watershed provides habitat for threatened Puget Sound Chinook salmon, Puget Sound steelhead, and bull trout, but it has been rated by the Forest Service for its “poor†watershed function. Since 2015, we have been collaborating with staff at Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and other partners to develop a holistic restoration strategy for westside watersheds while piloting project-level planning in the Upper Green and White River watersheds. A key success of this work is the Forest Service’s 2020 Decision on the Snoquera project, which authorizes restoration actions on 190,000 acres of the Upper Green and White River watersheds. Now, we are coordinating with the Forest Service to help implement the Snoquera Decision and to ensure public support for sustainable recreation in this landscape. As part of Snoquera, the Forest Service is relocating 14 dispersed campsites away from the Greenwater River in 2022 to better protect aquatic resources. In partnership with the Forest Service and community groups, we will lead dispersed campsite surveys to characterize the most damaging campsites, engage in planning to prioritize which sites to relocate (and which to simply close and restore), and implement restoration of 4 dispersed campsites and associated motorized routes during the grant period. We will also engage user groups to help with trash cleanup, native plantings, sign installation, and wildlife monitoring. Restoring dispersed riparian campsites, and the unauthorized motorized routes that access them, in the Greenwater area of the Upper White River watershed will directly reduce one of the greatest threats to water quality on national forest lands in this part of the Puget Sound, while advancing long-term stewardship of this landscape by building public understanding of the importance of watershed health. | More details | |
| Consumer Action | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $100,000.00 | California - statewide | California Privacy Education Project | Education | California | http://www.consumer-action.org/ | This project will educate Californians about their rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (and the new California Privacy Rights Act which takes effect in 2023), surveillance and common data practices such as the use of artificial intelligence work and encourage them to exercise their rights, and inform them about how to take action if their rights are violated. Consumer Federation of America (CFA) will survey Californians to identify impediments to exercising their privacy rights and seek their views on how to limit what companies do with their data. This information will inform education efforts to further strengthen Californians’ privacy protections. Consumer Action (CA) will create tools for CBOs and individual consumers (multilingual media interviews, multilingual fact sheets, consumer education video, training and program evaluation).CFA will provide survey results and fact sheets to members of the CA advocacy coalition to help their advocacy efforts. | More details | |
| Consumer Action | Consumer Products Fund | 2021 | $50,000.00 | California - statewide | California Consumer Products Fund Project | Education | California | http://www.consumer-action.org/ | Consumer Action will conduct an opinion poll to determine whether Californians read and understood smartphone warranties before purchase; assess device satisfaction; gauge performance after updates; and measure knowledge of how to make a claim. The goal is to gauge understanding of smartphone warranties and consumer protections. We will use the findings to create stakeholder education (hotline advice, a fact sheet and webinar). We will educate on telecom rights, how to make a claim under a warranty or service agreement, and where to file a complaint. | More details | |
| Consumer Watchdog | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $70,000.00 | California - statewide | Securing Privacy In Connected Cars | Advocacy ; Education | California | https://www.consumerwatchdog.org | Top 2021 car models sold in America have Internet connections to safety critical systems that track the movements of the cars and the drivers. The auto industry and insurance industry is banking on huge profits for surveilling consumers' movements. Consumer Watchdog will work with industry technologists to expose the dangers of automobile surveillance through research, published reports and a high profile media campaign and work to stop the practice through the powers of the new California Privacy Commission. Under new law enacted through Prop 24, companies cannot collect data about precise geolocation against consumer objections. Consumer Watchdog will petition and lobby the Commission for a rule prohibiting the collection and use of driver's precise geolocation data for those who opt-out and seeking a simple universal opt-out mechanism to facilitate that opt-out. We will also work to stop the use of "telematic" tracking by California auto insurance companies that seek to use it. | More details | |
| Defenders of Wildlife/California | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2021 | $20,000.00 | Communications Support for Proposed Desert Conservation Program | Environmental Education ; Environmental Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Inyo, San Bernardino, Riverside, Los Angeles, Imperial and San Diego counties | California | http://www.defenders.org | To support communications efforts to increase conservation investment in the California deserts region, home to the largest still-intact ecosystem in the lower 48 states. Unfortunately, California funding initiatives, including past bonds, have invested far less conservation funding into the deserts region than other areas of the state. This project will build support within the deserts region for increased funding for projects that address the impacts of climate change; protect, enhance or restore desert habitat and sacred ancestral lands of local indigenous peoples; provide public access and recreational amenities; or reduce the threats of wildfire, drought, flood and other catastrophic events. | More details | |
| Don't Dump on San Benito | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | Central Coast | Fight the Fivefold Expansion of San Benito County's Landfill | Environmental Education ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | San Benito County | California | https://sites.google.com/view/dont-dump-on-san-benito/home | To stop the tenfold expansion of San Benito County’s landfill (from 95 to 483 acres) to accommodate garbage which would be shipped in to this lower-income, majority Latinx community from Silicon Valley. | More details |
| Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition/TAG | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | General Support | Washington | http://www.duwamishcleanup.org | DRCC's mission is to advocate, empower, promote and transform. Beyond monitoring the cleanup of Seattle’s Duwamish River, DRCC id guided by the voice of the community, which is negatively affected by the environmental, social, and economic impacts of pollution and climate. | More details | |||
| Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $20,000.00 | Central Sound | Juntos Si Podemos Cuidar Nuestro Rio Duwamish | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Washington | https://www.seattleparksfoundation.org/ | Population projections for Washington state by 2040 are expected to be around 8.8 million. This leads to an increase in water consumption, which is why it is necessary for our population to be directly involved with the correct administration of this important resource. We will select 6 youth from the Duwamish Valley that will be train in: 1) How the source control of the Lower Duwamish Waterway works. 2) What are the main physicochemical variables (pH, turbidity, conductivity, total solids, etc.) of the runoff water that can be measure using a portable instrument. 3) How to export the information collected from the samplings to generate statistical tables and graphs using Excel. Three monitoring groups will be formed that will monitor 12 rainwater drainage points located in South Park and Georgetown over a 4-month period. SDVA will coordinate with Department of Ecology, DRCC, Seattle Public Utilities to choose the monitoring sites. At the end of the project, the youth will be able to evaluate how our source control system behaves in rainy and dry seasons and how it affects our system. All this will be recorded in a final report where we will inform our community of the conclusions and recommendations on the monitoring carried out. | More details | |
| Earth Ministry | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $10,000.00 | South Sound | Standing up to Oil in Puget Sound | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy | Washington | https://earthministry.org/ | Earth Ministry’s Standing up to Oil in Puget Sound project educates, inspires, and mobilizes people of faith to take action on oil projects, proposals, and policies that directly impact water quality in Tacoma’s Commencement Bay. Over the last five years, we have built a strong constituency that sees how protecting watersheds and water quality is a core tenet of their faith and understands the danger that unchecked oil expansion poses to Puget Sound. We will continue to expand capacity in Puget Sound congregations and bring the full force of the faith community to participate in strategic decision points in the year ahead. Earth Ministry is uniquely positioned to engage religious leaders to stand up to oil. We will mobilize people of faith to prevent the expansion of two oil facilities in Tacoma, call for a long-term moratorium on new and expanded fossil fuel projects on the Tacoma Tideflats, and weigh in on the Washington Department of Ecology's new statewide rule for evaluating fossil fuel projects, which will apply to any future oil facility proposals. There is a need for clean water advocacy that is not only innovative and scientifically sound, but also hopeful and morally articulate. Earth Ministry brings a unique voice that adds depth to coalition efforts to protect our shared waters. With the support of the Rose Foundation, we will use a values-based framework to educate, train, empower, and provide opportunities for people of faith to take action for the health of Puget Sound and the diverse life it supports. | More details | |
| Earthrise Law Center at Lewis & Clark College | Columbia River Fund | 2021 | $22,418.00 | Columbia River | Legal Advocacy for a Cleaner Columbia | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Oregon | http://law.lclark.edu/centers/earthrise/ | Through this grant application, Earthrise seeks to improve two fundamental programs in Washington that impact the Columbia. Earthrise is taking aim at the state’s woeful TMDL program. Additionally, Earthrise seeks to address the fundamental inadequacies of Washington’s and EPA’s control over toxic pollution, and accordingly, the impact that pollution has on aquatic life in the Columbia and other waters. This grant application is somewhat more targeted, and thus has a slightly smaller project scope and budget than Earthrise’s past applications. First, Earthrise seeks funding to support its ongoing litigation against EPA and the State of Washington over EPA’s failure to properly implement the Clean Water Act’s “total maximum daily load†(TMDL) program within Washington. Under the act, states are required to identify all surface waters that fail to meet applicable water quality standards; and then prepare a TMDL for each of those waters in a timely fashion. A TMDL serves as a pollution “diet†for surface waters, identifying the various sources of pollution to the watershed and imposing a required pollution load reduction for each source—the theory being that compliance with those load reductions will eventually enable the water to achieve water quality standards. EPA plays a crucial oversight role for the TMDL program. Although the Clean Water Act requires states to develop TMDLs themselves, all such TMDLs must be submitted to EPA for review and approval. If EPA disapproves a TMDL—where, for example, it finds that the TMDL’s load reductions are insufficient to ensure compliance with water quality standards—it must promptly issue its own replacement TMDL for that waterbody. Unfortunately, although Washington has identified more than 4,000 impaired surface water segments that still need a TMDL, Washington’s rate of actually preparing those TMDLs has flatlined—meaning it will take decades if not centuries to develop clean-up plans for each of Washington’s impaired waters unless the program is overhauled. EPA, for its part, has failed to step in to issue TMDLs in the face of Washington’s recalcitrance. Earthrise, on behalf of our client Northwest Environmental Advocates (NWEA), has filed and is presently litigating a lawsuit intended to greatly accelerate that pace of TMDL development. Our suit contains a somewhat novel legal claim based upon the “constructive submission†theory: we allege that, by failing to develop a schedule and a plan for completing its remaining TMDLs, Washington has constructively submitted to EPA a number of TMDLs that EPA is bound to disapprove, which then triggers EPA’s obligation to prepare those TMDLs itself. If successful, our litigation will get the Washington TMDL program back on track; and by establishing the required TMDLs, the litigation will help other groups ensure that the Columbia and its tributaries meet their “pollution diets.†[Continued in overflow] | More details | |
| EarthTeam | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $5,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Marsh Creek Restoration Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Contra Costa County | California | http://www.earthteam.net | Fourteen low-income students from Antioch High School will be recruited as research interns for one year to work with the Friends of Marsh Creek Watershed, and Contra Costa Flood Control District to restore native habitat, assess litter contamination, and survey water quality in the Upper Sand Creek Basin. Interns will study the correlation between the restoration of native vegetation and water quality. They will also address litter concentration issues and waterway blockage at the urban drool inflow at the Upper Sand Creek Basin. The Upper Sand Creek Basin is an excellent site for restoration efforts and WQ monitoring because it was constructed recently and revegetated using native plants collected from the basin before excavation. Despite restoration efforts, the basin requires study and maintenance to ensure the effective filtration of water through stream-side willows and the thorough re-installation of diverse native plant species throughout open spaces. The research team will use scientific methods and GLOBE instrumentation to perform WQ surveying, invasive species removal, litter mapping and clean-up, and native plant installations in the Upper Sand Creek Basin for one year, with in-class training and a minimum of 10 field days. Interns will implement an outreach campaign to community members with a series of on-campus presentations and one to two community events at the basin, including the fourth annual Earth Day event. The project has essential long-term ecological restoration objectives that include the viability of the stream for endangered species, including the red-legged frog and California tiger salamander. Other species that call the basin home include red-winged blackbirds, bobcats, owls, and more. | More details |
| Ecological Rights Foundation | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $25,000.00 | Central Coast | Plastics and Toxic Metals Free Ormond Beach and Wetlands | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Ventura County | California | https://www.ecorights.org/ | Ecological Rights Foundation (“EcoRightsâ€) requests financial support to stop an industrial polluter in the City of Oxnard from discharging expanded polystyrene plastic and toxic metals into our community, including specifically to Ormond Beach and the renowned Ormond Beach Wetlands. The polluting company, Diversified Panels Systems (“Diversifiedâ€), produces industrial scale refrigeration and freezer systems, as well as grow rooms, using expanded polystyrene cores for insulation. Diversified stores vast quantities of expanded polystyrene outdoors without any effort to control the dispersal of plastics into our community. Storm water sampling/analysis conducted by EcoRights has also found elevated levels of aluminum, iron and zinc in discharges from the Diversified Facility. EcoRights’ investigation has determined that Diversified operates without a Clean Water Act permit. EcoRights’ strategy is to initiate a Clean Water Act citizen suit to force the company to acquire and comply with California’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (“NPDESâ€) storm water permit. The NPDES permit would require the company to take substantial measures to prevent the discharge of plastics to our community and Ormond Beach and Wetlands—including entirely eliminating all discharges of plastics--including microplastics. | More details |
| Education, Economics, Environmental, Climate and Health Organization | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Mississippi | EEECHO’s mission is to support the efforts of communities seeking a better quality of life, through equity based, holistic approaches. This project will continue and expand educational and training outreach and build EECHO's organizational and community capacity to bolster understanding of flooding, environmental pollution, and climate change. Their continued activities will include challenging development of wetlands, activating community members and local politicians, and conducting workforce training for a variety of environmental careers. | More details | |||
| Education, Economics, Environmental, Climate and Health Organization | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $1,000.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Mississippi | https://www.facebook.com/EEECHO-391349767730212/ | More details | ||||
| Electronic Frontier Foundation | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $50,000.00 | California - statewide | Tracking and Combating Location Data Brokers | Advocacy ; Education ; Research | California | https://www.eff.org/ | Location data brokers—companies that collect, aggregate, process, and sell personal geolocation data to advertisers and governments—are perhaps the most egregious example of the harms of the private surveillance industry today. This research project is a deep-dive investigation of the flow of location data from internet-connected electronic devices to data brokers and ultimately to advertisers and the government. Our findings will be used to educate the public on these harmful practices, frame this issue for the press, and spur awareness among regulators. Ultimately, we aim to catalyze a movement against location data collection that can help end this invasive form of surveillance. Our work will include an in-depth literature review, an experiment involving mobile phones, and CCPA data requests to determine how location data is being mined from and deployed against consumers as well as whether and how that data will end up in government databases. | More details | |
| Enumclaw Plateau Community Association | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $10,000.00 | South Sound | Boise Creek Trail Natural Area | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | This is a continuation of the same project funded with a $5,000 grant from Rose Foundation in 2019. Phase one is installed and we have continued to monitor the native plant installations through volunteer efforts while weeding and watering the native plants. This phase two funding would allow us to double our footprint further south along the trail. The next section includes invasive blackberry and some reed canary that needs to be managed. We expect this project is very visible and usable to all and it will bring many partners to become more active in this and extending projects on more of a very degraded waterway: Boise Creek, White River, Stuck River, Puyallup River, Commencement Bay, Puget Sound. The community is more interested than ever before and we have actually had a great deal of interest from the city administrators to help us in these efforts. They also want to be educated in the benefits of Native Habitats. We are setting up this scenario through the Washington Native Plant Society. WNPS.org -- The Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, The Puyallup Tribe of Indians, The Enumclaw School District, King Conservation District, Pierce Conservation District, South Sound Fisheries, Tacoma Water, and others will be partners. It is important to receive this grant so we can afford to move forward with our outreach and solidifying these partnerships. This area is in a critical crossroads as it is located in King County but drains into Pierce County. Therefore it has been ignored in previous attempts to start restoration and education of the community. It is in the perfect location to involve everyone as an all inclusive with equity and inclusion community commons. It can be used to educate or meditate. This project will demo stream-side mitigation, filtration from the highway, improved habitat for people and creatures. We will be sensitive to cultural issues and history of this site. It will be used by everyone in the community. It is a priority for water quality improvement. | More details | ||
| Environmental Coalition of South Seattle | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $30,000.00 | South Sound | Using Water Quality Testing Results to Promote the Multiple Benefits of GSI to Industrial Businesses | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Washington | http://www.ecoss.org | The Green-Duwamish Watershed is Seattle’s only river. Designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as a Superfund site in 2001, it is one of the nation’s most toxic hazardous waste sites. The Duwamish River flows into Elliot Bay and is a significant contributor to Puget Sound water quality, as well as salmon and orca health. Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) has emerged as a practical solution to reduce both water volume and contaminants from industrial sites that flow into stormwater drains and into the Duwamish River. Many local manufacturing and industrial businesses produce significant zinc and heavy metal runoff from their roofs and downspouts, yet GSI educational materials and outreach in this area are limited. In areas not connected to the sewer system, GSI solutions help decrease water volume during heavy rainfall and help prevent additional pollution from entering the Duwamish. In 2018, ECOSS and Equinox Studios joined forces to develop a first-of-its-kind, large-scale industrial GSI demonstration site. The Equinox “Industrial Strength†GSI demonstration site showcases stormwater solutions that can be adopted by any industrial or manufacturing business to improve water quality from rainwater pollution. Funds from this grant will help ECOSS continue the partnership with Equinox Studios and continue water quality testing through 2022. We will collect a data set spanning 3+ years to illustrate and promote the effectiveness of GSI system. Building on the successful demonstration site, it is time to take these results to the broader industrial community. ECOSS will engage up to 5 new businesses then plan, implement and track results on a wide range of GSI technologies. ECOSS staff will be fully trained in water sampling and work to train business maintenance staff on Best Management Practices. We will develop a series of case studies for distribution to media, trade publications and at conferences. | More details | |
| Erotic Service Provider Legal, Educational and Research Project | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $75,000.00 | California - statewide | Investigating and Regulating Consumer Surveillance, Tracking, and Monitoring in California | Advocacy ; Education ; Investigative Study | California | https://esplerp.org | ESPLER proposes a two-year research, education, and advocacy project. Project staff will submit 100 FOIA requests to district attorneys, probation, and health departments as well as city police and county sheriffs departments statewide for documentation on surveillance-involved arrests of people associated with the sex trade, to investigate: - tech-based surveillance and monitoring, and collection and sale of consumer data by law enforcement and - resistance to FOIA requests by law enforcement We will undertake legal advocacy as needed to enforce FOIA requests denied by law enforcement. In Year 2, we will educate policy makers, using the information from our research to advocate for policies regulating the use of tech surveillance, tracking, and monitoring. Through media outreach, we will also educate the general public and erotic service community. | More details | |
| Eureka Bike Kitchen | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $4,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Climate Change & Energy | Humboldt County | California | https://eurekabikekitchen.org/ | To provide low and no-cost bicycles and bicycle repair, along with the sources and skills necessary to maintain them, to members of the community in west Eureka. | More details |
| Feather River Land Trust | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $19,750.00 | Sierra Nevada | Climate-resilient and Indigenous-inclusive conservation in the North Fork Feather River Watershed | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Lassen County ; Plumas County | California | https://www.frlt.org/ | Feather River Land Trust (FRLT) protects and improves water quality by conserving privately owned meadows, wetlands, waterways and reservoirs in the Feather River Watershed—the Sierra Nevada’s largest watershed, which provides water for 27 million Californians. We request funds to i) start implementing a data-driven conservation strategy to protect ecologically important tributary watershed lands in the North Fork Feather River region, and ii) deepen engagement with Indigenous Maidu partners to ensure their voices and knowledge inform this strategy. In summer 2021, the Dixie and Beckwourth Complex fires ravaged communities and watershed lands in the Upper Feather River region. Please see overflow section for more on impacts to conservation efforts, and our Fire Response & Recovery initiative to address it. FRLT’s strategy identifies ~20 priority parcels (20,000 acres) for conservation in the North Fork Feather River region, through GIS analysis, scientific review, and collaborating with local partners including tribal organizations. The water resources of these lands flow into the North Fork, which drains into Lake Almanor, the northernmost reservoir of the CA State Water project. Conservation easements—which permanently restrict land use changes and development—are the most effective tool for preserving hydrological function of these privately-owned ecosystems and the quality of water they store and convey. Once private lands are converted to other uses and degraded, it is nearly impossible to restore their ecological function. These lands targeted for climate resilience hold water resources, including creeks and streams, volcanic groundwater discharge areas (springs and seeps) that are critical to regional ecosystem function, and wet meadows that support snowpack retention, water filtration, and groundwater recharge for long-term water security and quality. This project kickstarts an initiative to permanently protect 10,000+ acres with conservation easements. | More details |
| Fight for the Future Education Fund | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $50,000.00 | California - statewide | Building California grassroots capacity to fight surveillance | Advocacy ; Technology/Product/Service ; Education | California | https://www.fftfef.org/ | Fight seeks to help California grassroots groups amplify their impact and digital capacity as they mount their own anti-surveillance campaigns. Given California’s size, its role as a tech hub, and its concentration of immigrant communities and other marginalized groups, the state stands at the forefront for setting the national tone on surveillance policy. Making these groups more effective advocates is not only good for California, but also moves the goalposts for what is possible for the country. Given our extensive experience working on privacy issues, Fight is well-positioned to help these groups: - Develop strategy to implement actions, target specific audiences, employ compelling messaging, etc. - Use the Internet and efficient tech-based tools to increase consumer participation; - Gain national and local attention; - Produce educational resources like videos, infographics, and viral content; and - Build connections with other state and national groups doing similar work. | More details | |
| Foothills Water Network | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $4,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | Protect the Yuba and Bear Rivers and Stop Centennial Dam Campaign | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy | Nevada County ; Placer County ; Sutter County ; Yuba County | California | http://www.foothillswaternetwork.org | To protect and restore the Yuba, Bear and American rivers through active engagement in hydro-power re-licensing efforts and Nevada Irrigation District’s Raw Water Master Plan, and to lead the coalition challenging the proposed Centennial Dam. | More details |
| Friends of Pinole Creek Watershed | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $100.00 | Share your story video project | California | http://www.friendsofpinolecreek.org | More details | ||||
| Friends of Plumas Wilderness | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2021 | $25,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Building 30x30 Capacity in the Sierra-Cascade Region | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Plumas, Butte, Sierra, Lassen, Tehama, Shasta | California | https://plumaswilderness.org/ | To develop a multi-pronged lands designation campaign—including a local National Monument effort and a state-wide effort —to protect federal lands in Plumas County as a critical part of California meeting its 30x30 climate, biodiversity, and equity goals. The landscape where the Sierra Nevada and Cascades meet, often called the “Lost Sierraâ€, is largely unprotected yet biologically diverse, geologically stunning, and brimming with nationally significant cultural, historical, and recreational values. While 65% of this landscape is federal land, only 10% is protected. This makes it a key area for conservation under CA’s 30x30 initiative. Friends of Plumas Wilderness will take a leadership role for the Northern Sierra region in the Sierra Nevada 30x30 coalition and help build new partnerships around 30x30. | More details |
| Friends of the Amargosa | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | Southern Desert | Friends of the Amargosa Basin National Monument Campaign | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Inyo County ; San Bernardino County | California | https://www.friendsoftheamargosabasin.org | To build community support for the creation of an Amargosa Basin National Monument which will offer protection for this vital ecosystem currently threatened by water depletion, unmanaged recreation, habitat fragmentation, and development. | More details |
| Friends of the Inyo | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2021 | $25,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Conglomerate Mesa Defense | Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Inyo County | California | http://www.friendsoftheinyo.org | In response to the recent escalation of efforts by a mining exploration company to facilitate the development of a cyanide heap leach gold mine on Conglomerate Mesa, the coalition working to defend and protect Conglomerate Mesa seeks funding to intensify defense and protection efforts. These efforts include on the ground marketing, press release services, consultants, and travel expenses to spread the word and get key decision makers on the ground. Conglomerate Mesa is a special place for many reasons, and its values would be destroyed by industrial cyanide heap leach mining. The Mesa is designated CDNCL, and is protected by the DRECP. It is ecologically important as a home to a thriving population of Joshua Trees and a handful of species of rare and endemic plants. Conglomerate Mesa is culturally significant, indeed sacred, to two local area tribes, both of which are steadfastly opposed to exploration or mining activities of any kind. | More details |
| Friends of the Los Angeles River | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $22,500.00 | Southern Coast | Rewilding the LA River through Education and Community Engagement | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.folar.org | Our mission is to ensure an equitable, publicly accessible, and ecologically sustainable Los Angeles River by inspiring River stewardship through community engagement, education, advocacy, and thought leadership. It is essential to provide opportunities that link Angelinos with the natural environment for the benefit of wildlife, people, and the natural areas that remain. Promoting green infrastructure as a means to return wildlife habitat, clean runoff, and recharge aquifers, while also improving public health and community wellness are key to this effort. Now more than ever FoLAR is committed to inspire and involve diverse community members - especially those in the disadvantaged communities proximal to the 100 acres - through the Great LA River CleanUp, Source to Sea watershed education, and Crack the Concrete Community Engagement programs. Friends of Los Angeles River (FoLAR) is focused on a future for the LA River where equitable public access and ecological restoration are prioritized – removing concrete from the River where appropriate is the best way to accomplish this. We support concrete removal and meaningful ecological restoration at the Taylor Yard G2 River Park project, which will reconnect people with nature, and we oppose exclusive private riverfront developments that threaten public access to and restoration of the river habitat. | More details |
| Friends of the Petaluma River | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $15,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Equity in Environmental Education | Environmental Education | Marin County ; Sonoma County | California | http://www.friendsofthepetalumariver.org | Friends of the Petaluma River (FOPR) is seeking funding to bring the Watershed Classroom program to a more diverse group of students. The Watershed Classroom is a hands-on, standards-based, outdoor, environmental literacy program founded by Friends of the Petaluma River (FOPR). Now in its eighth year of implementation, the program provides curriculum and instruction about the Petaluma Watershed to educate students on how they are connected to their local environment, how their decisions affect their local environment and inspire stewardship of the Petaluma Watershed. To date, over 7,600 students have participated, learning about the Petaluma Watershed and increasing student-driven stewardship. As part of the program, high school and middle school students are invited to create and submit Public Service Announcements (PSAs) regarding a topic affecting local water quality. Last year over 200 students submitted 1-minute videos educating the community about micro plastics in local waterways and solutions to improve the problem. FOPR is seeking funding to expand our reach into underserved schools and populations. There are three components to this project: - Conduct coordinated outreach and develop teacher relationships to expand Watershed Classroom into schools with higher rates of disadvantaged students - Develop and implement culturally relevant curriculum based on the Petaluma Watershed - Promote bilingual water quality PSA contest in middle and high schools and bilingual water quality poster contest in elementary schools This project will increase access to outdoor, environmental education with a focus on the Petaluma Watershed. Students participating will gain an appreciation of the Petaluma River and attain the skills to protect it. Students will attain a deeper understanding of the Petaluma Watershed as a system, how their lives are interconnected with the local environment and learn about issues affecting the health of the Watershed through outdoor learning. | More details |
| Friends of the Shasta River | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,500.00 | North Central & East | Restoring Instream Flows for the Shasta River | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Siskiyou County | California | https://www.shastariver.org/ | To advocate for the restoration of instream flow requirements in the Shasta River for the benefit of endangered salmon populations, other wildlife and people. | More details |
| Futurewise | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $30,000.00 | Central Sound | Community Stewardship Cultivation for the Algona Wetland Preserve | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | https://www.futurewise.org/ | The goal of this project is to cultivate a community stewardship group that will participate in the design and planning of the Algona Wetland Preserve, and will gradually take on stewardship responsibilities as the project progresses. Futurewise will foster increased understanding of the water quality improvement benefits and traditional cultural uses of wetlands in Algona, through education and outreach with local students and community members. The proposed project leverages grant dollars previously invested in the Algona wetland preserve which have accomplished initial public outreach, conceptual design, and wetland delineation to support project permitting. Main activities will include wetland lessons for Alpac Elementary’s 4th and 5th grade classes, outreach to residents and property owners in the vicinity of the Wetland Preserve and community engagement through partnership with the City of Algona’s Community Center programming. | More details | |
| Georgetown Open Space Committee | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change & Energy ; Other | Washington | https://www.seattleparksfoundation.org | This group advances parks and open space improvements in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle. They will host a block party to kick off a series of five coordinated neighborhood discussions about climate induced flooding and emergency planning. From these discussions, they will create a coordinated neighborhood response team and plan to address flooding and other emergencies, including how they involve the most vulnerable such as the elderly and disabled. This organization is also conducting community mobilizations around green infrastructure as part of a separate Rose Foundation grant. | More details | ||
| Gill Tract Farm Coalition | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Monarch Protection and Education Project | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County | California | https://www.gilltractfarm.org/ | To protect, restore and improve the redwood grove which hosts the largest number of overwintering monarchs in the East Bay through community-driven stewardship and restoration. | More details |
| Greater Treme Consortium, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change & Energy | Louisiana | http://greatertreme.org/ | This project will pursue the development of an environmental education/renewable clean energy/cultural arts site, on a vacant lot which the group owns. Funding will be used to match other potential resources to further their goal to combine an outdoor environmental education component with cultural aspects of the Treme community. They will continue to use artwork to draw in community members to then be able to explain how these small green infrastructure projects that they have already installed help reduce flooding and why increasing green infrastructure is important to the environment and health. The artwork is a link to the community and opens doors to have conversations about green infrastructure, climate change, and what we all can do to combat its effects. | More details | ||
| Greater Treme Consortium, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | https://greatertreme.org/ | More details | ||||
| Greater Treme Consortium, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | General Support | Louisiana | https://greatertreme.org/ | General support | More details | |||
| Green River Coalition | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $30,000.00 | Central Sound | Expansion Soos Creek Basin, City of Kent/Tukwila/Green River Collaboration, and Operations Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | https://www.greenrivercoalition.org/ | Grant project funding will support our new and ongoing projects including our multi-awarded CWM ReGreen 2020 grants based on restoration work within the Soos Creek Basin, City of Kent, and the lower Green River, Tukwila. This project will also help fund work at our Hess site that is upstream from the Soos Creek Hatchery and is a critical parcel of the confluence between Soos and Soosette Creek. We have been awarded an additional 2 CWM ReGreen 2021 grants continuing the work initiated in our CWM 2020 Grants, and last Rose Foundation Grant into 2022/23. We also recently received preliminary approval for a WaterWorks grant, which is King County Council member directed funding. The funds will support work on two of our largest sites in the Soos Creek basin, the Hess Site and Cascade Water Alliance (CWA) site. Work within our CWM ReGreen 2020 Grants are well underway where we have doubled our restoration work site at Riverview Park and a small planting event at our Tukwila sites. Funding from the Puget Sound Stewardship & Mitigation Fund will help move these efforts further to their goals and create more opportunity to engage the community and perspective stewards. This project will also help to support employment for our part-time operations manager and oversight functions for our Green River College intern team. The retainment of an operations manager has been a pivotal asset in increasing the overall capacity of our organization. We have secured additional funding from other sources to support this staff position. | More details | |
| Greenfield Walking Group | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $100.00 | Share your story video project | California | More details | |||||
| Harbor WildWatch | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $27,090.00 | South Sound | Expanding Community Science Best Practices through Collaboration in Puget Sound | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Washington | https://harborwildwatch.org/ | Harbor WildWatch’s (HWW) Community Science program mobilizes residents to collect meaningful data at select south Puget Sound locations. Founded in 2013, activities include biodiversity monitoring, salmon observation, water quality testing, beach clean-up events, habitat restoration, and surveys of sea stars, rockfish, sea birds, and eelgrass. Each year, this program has developed improved procedures, implemented new techniques, and grown in volunteer participation. Each year, this program conducts 75-100 community science monitoring events with 750-1,000 individual volunteers. In 2022, our goal is to expand these efforts throughout the Puget Sound region by training other small marine organizations to conduct similar events in their watersheds. These efforts will be facilitated through HWW's participation in the Community Marine Science Centers of the Salish Sea – a group of similarly sized organizations whose mission is to share evidence-based practices, resources, and capacity building strategies to strengthen education, stewardship, and advocacy within our local waters. There are eight active partners located from Olympia to Port Angeles. HWW’s community science activities are the most robust among the partners - making us the ideal organization to lead this collaborative effort. HWW requests funding from the Puget Sound Stewardship & Mitigation Fund to support the operation of our existing community science activities in 2022, as well as the development and implementation of a training program for our partners. This project will greatly expand the breadth of biodiversity data available to inform conservation efforts and policy changes that benefit the Puget Sound. | More details | |
| Healthy Community Resources and Advocacy | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security | Louisiana | https://www.hcsnola.org/ | This group will continue to build and advance green infrastructure through community education. They will establish an Urban Agricultural Green Infrastructure site that satisfies the dual purpose of addressing repetitive flooding via green infrastructure techniques, and helping increase access to healthy food choices for residents. In a pilot program based on a community needs assessment, residents were interested in learning home-based growing techniques in order to increase food security while applying green infrastructure interventions. | More details | ||
| Healthy Community Resources and Advocacy | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | https://www.hcsnola.org/ | More details | ||||
| Healthy Community Resources and Advocacy | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | General Support | Louisiana | https://www.hcsnola.org/ | General support | More details | |||
| Hollygrove Neighbors Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy | Louisiana | https://www.facebook.com/hollygroveNOLA/ | Hollygrove Neighbors is an association of dedicated residents working to promote a safe, clean, and proud Hollygrove community. This project will continue their work installing and maintaining green infrastructure, convening community members, repurposing vacant lots, and spreading their message to to build a more sustainable future. | More details | ||
| Hollygrove Neighbors Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | https://www.facebook.com/hollygroveNOLA/ | More details | ||||
| Hollygrove Neighbors Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | General Support | Louisiana | https://www.facebook.com/hollygroveNOLA/ | General support | More details | |||
| Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. | Environmental Health and Toxics Fund | 2021 | $6,050.00 | Nationwide; Northeast | Coeymans Wetland Mapping Project | Environmental Health and Toxics ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Nationwide | https://www.clearwater.org/ | The proposed project would investigate whether there has been wetland in-filling due to the development activities at the Port of Coeymans and Coeymans Industrial Park over the last 15 years. Coeymans Creek is a tributary of the Hudson River in Albany County, New York. In 2006, Carver Laraway opened the Port of Coeymans and in 2012 founded the Coeymans Industrial Park. Previously, the Rose Foundation has generously funded Clearwater’s investigation into stormwater pollution and its impacts in the lower Coeymans Creek; the results of which have been assembled into a published report for the community and are posted on the Clearwater website. While completing Clearwater’s Coeymans Creek Project, information emerged that suggested that may have been significant topographical changes to the area without proper authorization and analysis of the water quality impacts. This proposed project would supplement Clearwater’s previous work and create a more thorough understanding of the environmental and water impacts in that area. This proposed project may yield information that could facilitate Clearwater and its partners’ efforts to secure remediation for the environmental damages that have occurred in the area. Clearwater has developed the attached scope of work with Ricardo López-Torrijos, a stormwater mapping professional, who would be contracted to complete the proposed project if funding is secured. A detailed outline of the project and its costs can be found in the attached scope of work. | More details | |
| Humboldt State University Sponsored Programs Foundation | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $18,000.00 | North Coast | Interactions between toxic cyanobacteria and invasive New Zealand mud snails in the Mad River | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Humboldt County | California | https://research.humboldt.edu/ | The Mad River watershed provides drinking water and recreational opportunities for over 100,000 Humboldt County residents and critical habitat for 5 listed fish species. In 2018, two potential threats were documented in the Mad River ecosystem for the first time: toxic blue green algae (BGA) and non-native New Zealand mud snails (NZMS). Although there is no formal monitoring for BGA or NZMS in the Mad River, observations indicate that both were more abundant in 2020 than 2018. Increased populations of these species are problematic. The toxic BGA observed in the Mad River include taxa that produce both hepatotoxic microcystin and neurotoxic anatoxin. NZMS are a concern because they can reach enormously high abundance, co-opting most of the algae produced at a site and reducing the abundance of prey for endangered fish. Both BGA and NZMS thrive in areas in the lower watershed with slow flow, warm temperature, and elevated nutrient concentrations. Beyond co-occurrence in the same habitats, we hypothesize that NZMS affect the growth of BGA. NZMS consume a wide variety of food, including BGA. In other rivers in CA, dense NZMS aggregations alter the species composition of algal primary producers. Because of their similar habitat requirements and potential interaction, a data collection effort that targets both BGA and NZMS can provide useful information on the distribution and spread of both organisms and their potential effects on each other. We propose a study with two objectives: 1) Design a survey to evaluate the distribution and abundance of toxic BGA and NZMS, using low-cost visual methods for identifying potential hotspots. We will implement this protocol for two summers and document the methods for ongoing use. 2) Implement experiments to evaluate the interaction between NZMS and toxic BGA species, to determine if NZMS might increase or decrease toxic BGA production. | More details |
| Indian Cultural Organization | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $25,000.00 | Sacramento Valley | Run4Salmon Campaign | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Other | Alameda County ; Butte County ; Glenn County ; Sacramento County ; San Francisco County ; Solano County ; Yolo County | California | http://www.winnememwintu.us/ | The United Nations recognizes that Indigenous peoples represent less than 5% of the population yet we steward over 80% of the world's biodiversity. In the face of climate change, ecological collapse and pandemics, indigenous-led species restoration is key to building a resilient future that can withstand and thrive as climate change continues to unravel. Coupled with advocacy, campaigns and indigenous curriculum, the Run4Salmon prayerful journey for the past 5 years has engaged government officials, lawyers, advocates and everyday people on the 300-mile journey that the endangered Chinook salmon make along the waters of California’s largest watershed to inspire, educate and engage people in restoring this endangered keystone species essential to the health of California lands and waters. As we work to make this life-changing journey accessible for all in the times of COVID-19, we are working to make this tour accessible to anyone anywhere through the creation of a virtual reality video. We’ve found that there are two major challenges in our work to restore endangered salmon runs and protect our rivers; They are misinformation and disconnection from the natural world. Misinformation is dangerous in the face of ecological collapse and one powerful solution for that is to create accessible media to disseminate amongst our networks and the people in power who manage the natural resources we rely on. With the support of the Rose Foundation, in 2019 we led our first boat tour with 10 government officials and were shocked to learn that the large majority of government officials with decision-making power had never been on the river and didn't have accurate information about the impacts that massive water projects have on fish, water quality and riparian habitats. Another challenge to having more officials joining us was their busy schedules. A VR film would bring the video to government officials’ offices and to children and youth in k-12 and folks with disabilities. | More details |
| International Digital Accountability Council | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $75,000.00 | Nation-Wide | A Privacy Investigation into Health/Wellness Apps | Advocacy | Nationwide | https://digitalwatchdog.org/ | IDAC is seeking support for a detailed technical and policy investigation into the privacy practices of 125 health/wellness apps in order to provide a large scale data set on the sector’s sensitive personal health information. IDAC will present the results of its investigation in the rulemaking for the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) to inform the development of regulations for entities that collect sensitive personal information. IDAC will also draft a public report presenting the results of the investigation and recommendations that will be used to advocate for increased protections for sensitive health information in federal privacy legislation. The report will be shared directly with the FTC, state Attorneys General, and consumer privacy and healthcare organizations. We will also host a webinar to educate key stakeholders. | More details | |
| International Rescue Committee Turlock | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $80,000.00 | California | Privacy Protection Rights for Refugees (PPRR) | Advocacy ; Education ; Will include 1:1 support and remediation assistance for victims of privacy abuse | California | https://www.rescue.org/united-states/turlock-ca | The PPRR is a blended model of education, 1:1 support, and advocacy for IRC clients who have been victims of fraud. IRC will hire a part-time Education and Program Specialist (EPS) to devise a linguistically and culturally responsive curriculum from trusted sources of consumer privacy education such as Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and Consumer Action, and implement trainings, all in coordination with IRC’s national technical advisors. The EPS will inform clients of their rights and protections under California law, with a focus on safeguarding personal data. The EPS will develop printed and digital reference materials in relevant client languages. Staff will provide 1:1 assistance for clients whose privacy rights have been violated. The project will serve 375 clients per year from casework referrals across IRC’s resettlement, immigration, employment, and anti-trafficking programs. IRC’s partner, the American Assyrian Civic Club in Turlock, will likewise refer clients to the IRC. | More details | |
| Just Health Action | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $30,000.00 | Central Sound | Duwamish Valley Clean Air Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice | Washington | http://www.justhealthaction.org | The Duwamish Valley (DV) is an Environmental Justice community with disproportionate exposures to air pollution including diesel particulate matter and metals compared to other parts of Seattle. Childhood asthma hospitalization rates are some of the highest in the city of Seattle and life expectancy is 13 years lower than wealthier parts of Seattle. The DV Clean Air Program was re-launched in 2019 to reduce air pollution and health disparities in the DV. The Program’s goal is for Low-income residents, POC, AI/AN, refugees, and immigrants in South Park and Georgetown breathe clean air.The Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition (DRCC) has assembled over 25 partners consisting of government agencies, non-profit organizations, and community members to collaboratively address this goal. Through a Results Based Accountability process, the indicator chosen to measure progress toward the goal is reducing asthma prevalence. Three strategies with associated actions and performance measures were developed in 2020 through 15 virtual workshops and several community events. The actions are funded by several of the partner organizations. | More details | |
| Killer Whale Tales | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $11,000.00 | South Sound ; Central Sound | Killer Whale Tales: Deep Dive/Kids Making a Difference, Now! | Environmental Education | Washington | https://killerwhaletales.org/ | KWT’s overarching goal is to promote the conservation of the Puget Sound/Salish Sea waters and the Southern Resident killer whale (SRkw) population that depends upon it. We do this by providing high quality and multiple award winning environmental education programming, using science and storytelling, to kindergarten through 6th grade students and their families. Our program comes at no-cost to the participating schools, as long as the classroom teachers and participants commit to reducing their environmental footprint by completing and return our "Kids Making a Difference, Now!" conservation activities. Our innovative curriculum, offered both in-person and on-line, uses the endangered SRkw population, a species with complex individual and social behaviors, to capture children’s attention and imaginations and inspire them to become stewards of the Puget Sound. Students are fascinated by orcas’ complex communication systems and matriarchal pods. When they learn about the species, they naturally begin to care about it and are eager to learn what they and their families can do to reduce their impact on the regions habitat. | More details | |
| Klamath Forest Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $4,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Sustainable Forestry | Del Norte County ; Glenn County ; Humboldt County ; Lake County ; Shasta County ; Tehama County ; Trinity County | California | http://klamathforestalliance.org | To protect over 5 million acres of mature forests, watersheds and wildlife on public land in the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion by actively commenting and litigating timber sales, stopping post-fire logging, participating in Forest Plan revisions, and collaborating with Native tribes, local communities and US Forest Service in landscape scale fire planning. | More details |
| Klamath Forest Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $6,500.00 | North Coast | Stop Post-fire Logging on Public Lands in Northwest California | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Sustainable Forestry | Colusa County ; Del Norte County ; Glenn County ; Humboldt County ; Lake County ; Mendocino County ; Shasta County ; Siskiyou County ; Tehama County ; Trinity County | California | http://klamathforestalliance.org | To limit the scope of post-fire timber sale plans in the Klamath, Six Rivers, Shasta-Trinity and Mendocino National Forests which threaten sensitive watershed ecosystems and imperiled salmon and wildlife. | More details |
| La Asociacion de Gente Unida por el Agua | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Fresno County ; Kern County ; Kings County ; Madera County ; Merced County ; Monterey County ; Tulare County | California | https://www.communitywatercenter.org/agua | To secure safe, clean and affordable drinking water in California's San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast through water justice movement building and community-led campaigns for safe and affordable drinking water, groundwater protection; and PFAS and 1,2,3-TCP regulation. | More details |
| Landpaths | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $25,000.00 | North Coast | Crane Creek Watershed Stewardship & Inclusion of Underrepresented Youth in Conservation | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Sonoma County | California | https://www.landpaths.org/ | The proposed project will connect the need to restore wildfire-related ecosystem damage threatening water quality and watershed health in the Dry Creek watershed within the Russian River Valley, with the need for greater access for youth historically underrepresented in environmental education or meaningful, career-oriented employment in the field of conservation. The proposed project will address creek, riparian corridor, and up-slope damage created by a dozer line on LandPaths’ Riddell Preserve, which was formed to combat the fast-moving Wallbridge Fire in August 2020, and will enable LandPaths to implement other critical watershed stewardship on the Riddell Preserve. The Riddell Preserve is a 400-acre ecological preserve within the Russian River Watershed, owned and stewarded by LandPaths, with a conservation easement held by the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation & Open Space District. Of particular concern is to protect water quality through erosion control and restoring the site’s hydrology and native flora. The Young Stewards project, being piloted spring 2021, engages young people in land stewardship while contributing to a more diverse green workforce. The grant would allow at least 5 of 8 positions to be paid position for young people historically underrepresented in conservation fields. The grant will be accomplished by: 1) Contracting Pacific Watersheds Associates to conduct an assessment and develop a hydro-geologic plan to re-contour and restore the hillside cut by dozers during the Walbridge Fire. 2) Hire a “Young Stewards†crew of 8 youth/young adults during summer 2021 to implement invasive species removal, trail restoration and maintenance, and address erosion which threatens the Crane and Kelly Creeks. 3) Train and teach Young Stewards about the field of watershed science, fire fuel reduction, traditional ecological knowledge and other natural history and resources topics including macroinvertebrates, pollinators, botany, and hydrology. | More details |
| Little Growers, Inc | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | Florida | https://www.ccfei.org/partners/little-growers-inc/ | Little Growers seeks to prepare the community to fight the adverse effects of climate change, including flooding, heat and pollutants. They seek to build a localized green economy that provides jobs and ownership opportunities to local residents that restore the environment, while investing in building the health, wealth and resilience of communities most impacted by climate change. Working with the cities of Palm Bay and Melbourne, they are focusing their work on the role of green infrastructure, including tees and gardens, in climate mitigation and adaptation. This project includes continuing their work in community gardens and helping residents impacted by climate-related flooding become active participants in stormwater mitigation solutions through sustainable landscaping. | More details | ||
| Little Growers, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Peer Learning Session Honorarium | Florida | https://www.littlegrowersinc.org/ | To lead a Peer Learning Webinar on Fundraising Strategies for Grassroots Groups. | More details | |||
| Little Growers, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Florida | https://www.littlegrowersinc.org/ | More details | ||||
| Local Environmental Action Demanded Agency, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Toxics & Environmental Health | Oklahoma | http://www.leadagency.org/ | LEAD Agency is a non-profit environmental justice organization devoted to the protection of human health and the environment. They educate and empower their communities, advocate for the interests of area residents, and act as a liason between the public and tribal and governmental agencies. This year, LEAD Agency's work on flooding will focus on education and engagement of the public and legislative/agency staff and research. | More details | ||
| Local Environmental Action Demanded Agency, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $1,000.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Oklahoma | https://www.leadagency.org/ | More details | ||||
| Los Angeles Waterkeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $31,500.00 | Southern Coast | Los Angeles River Watershed Restoration | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.lawaterkeeper.org/ | Los Angeles Waterkeeper seeks funding from the Rose Foundation for our LA River Watershed Restoration work, which encompasses pollution response fieldwork, research and education. In pursuit of a thriving LA River, we work to engage community members in stewarding the Watershed by activating volunteers to clean up plastic and other waste polluting the River, gathering and publishing critical data to make a measurable impact on Watershed health, and promoting education and awareness about the importance of protecting the River’s biological health. | More details |
| Los Osos Sustainability Group | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | Central Coast | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | San Luis Obispo County | California | http://thelosg.com/ | To advocate for policies and decision making that ensure the long-term sustainability of the Los Osos Groundwater Basin, the sole source of water for the Los Osos Community, area farms, and groundwater-dependent environmentally sensitive habitat. | More details |
| Lost Sierra Food Project | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security | Plumas County | California | https://www.lostsierrafoodproject.org/ | To increase access to locally grown produce for low-income Plumas County residents, and provide local workforce development programs and ecological farming educational opportunities for the community. | More details |
| Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Environmental Justice | Louisiana | http://www.sustainthenine.org | This group has succeeded in communicating this urgent issue of ecosystem restoration to members of New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward and residents have increasingly embraced the importance of ecosystem restoration as well as the implementation of other non-structural measures of flood protection. With this project, they would continue building knowledge among key stakeholders, incorporating resident voice into master planning, leading multiple lines of defense tours of the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle, and conducting resiliency-training workshops designed to serve participants related to hurricane preparedness and wetland restoration. | More details | ||
| Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Peer Learning Session Honorarium | Louisiana | http://www.sustainthenine.org | To lead a Peer Learning Webinar on Building Equity and Inclusion in Grassroots Groups. | More details | |||
| Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | http://www.sustainthenine.org | More details | ||||
| Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | General Support | Louisiana | http://www.sustainthenine.org | General support and hurricane relief. | More details | |||
| Marin City People's Plan | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | California | https://marincitypeoplesplan.org/ | With this project, Marin City People's Plan aims to put their community at the head of planning and implementation processes and to activate and raise the awareness of community members, home owners, youth and community groups to design and implement nature-based adaptation solutions to address flooding problems related to climate change driven extreme storm events. Funds will be used towards the implementation of their Watershed Steward Training and Watershed Steward Project, which will train community members in designing and subsequently implementing a model resiliency project to help mitigate Marin City’s climate vulnerabilities. | More details | ||
| Marin City People's Plan | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | California | https://marincitypeoplesplan.com/ | More details | ||||
| Methow Valley Citizens Council | Columbia River Fund | 2021 | $40,000.00 | Columbia River | Creating a Climate-Smart Strategy for Water in The Methow and Okanogan Watersheds | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Environmental Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change & Energy | Washington | https://methowcitizens.org | In the face of threats from climate change, corporate commodification of water, and exponential growth in the region, Methow Valley Citizens Council is leading an initiative to secure watershed protection for the Methow and Okanogan tributaries of the Upper Columbia Basin. Through advocacy, legal action, and community partnerships and outreach, MVCC is advocating for a system of policies that recognize the impacts of climate change on our water supply and prioritize the protection of rivers, shorelines, fish and wildlife habitat, and rural and indigenous cultures. MVCC is focused on two specific interrelated policy processes: 1. Okanogan County comprehensive planning, and subsequent creation of critical area ordinances and zoning laws; and 2. The development of a collaborative stakeholder negotiation process to resolve longstanding water conflicts in the Okanogan and Methow, including the acquisition, sale and distribution of water rights in the Upper Columbia and the interpretation and development of local and state water law as it relates to the Methow watershed. Working together with local, regional and statewide partners, stakeholders and representatives of tribal nations, MVCC is providing leadership to ensure that county and state regulatory approaches to water quantity and quality, and other issues affecting water resources and riparian ecosystems in the Methow and Okanogan Watersheds, are consistent with current law, reflective of best available science, respectful of indigenous history and tribal treaty rights, and inclusive of the expressed long-term vision of the communities currently living within the watershed. Targeted outreach conducted through this project will play a key role to facilitate critical thinking and momentum to affect policy change. We will build on our strong track record of community engagement to dig deeper into the complexity of issues facing our watersheds through widely accessible visual storytelling. A series of short, inspiring films will raise awareness about the importance of clean, cold water and healthy riparian ecosystems, and their relationship with rural livelihoods, indigenous cultures, natural ecosystems, and wildlife. MVCC’s mission to raise a strong community voice for protection of the Methow valley’s natural environment and rural character depends on an educated and informed community, who can grasp complex issues and persevere through lengthy public processes to advocate strongly for just and equitable solutions to shared problems. | More details | |
| Mother Lode Land Trust | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Landowner Outreach | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security | Alpine County ; Amador County ; Calaveras County ; El Dorado County ; Tuolumne County | California | http://www.motherlodelandtrust.org/ | To conduct outreach to landowners in the Central Sierra to encourage voluntary conservation easements and protect open spaces with important wildland values and wildlife corridor linkages. | More details |
| Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | North Central & East | Medicine Lake Highlands and Aquifer Protection Campaign | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Modoc County ; Shasta County ; Siskiyou County | California | http://www.mountshastaecology.org/ | To build regional partnerships, support ongoing litigation, and develop an advocacy strategy for the long-term protection of the Medicine Lake Highlands and its aquifer. | More details |
| Moving South Berkeley Forward | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County | California | https://movingsouthberkeleyforward.weebly.com/ | To engage Berkeley High students of color in the creation of an urban greenway and community garden on the previous Santa Fe Right of Way railroad site in South Berkeley. | More details |
| Mycelium Youth Network | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $330.00 | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | California | https://www.myceliumyouthnetwork.org/ | More details | ||||
| Mycelium Youth Network | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $2,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Water is Life: Healing Our Water-hood | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Alameda County ; San Francisco County | California | https://www.myceliumyouthnetwork.org/ | To empower young people in Oakland and San Francisco to proactively respond to the realities of climate change and water justice, this project employs our scalable curriculum Water is Life to engage local youth on issues related to environmental justice, climate change, and sea level rise mitigation efforts to respond to climate change impacts on infrastructure and frontline communities. Working with Title 1 schools (in which at least 40% of students meet federal poverty limits), youth will explore the following larger questions: (1) What is the role of water on earth? In our local communities? (2) Why is water important in the context of our indigenous and ancestral identities? (3) What does the future hold if we continue to interfere with water processes? (4) What is our role in the belief of “water is life� Our Water is Life curriculum is unique and innovative because it is the only NGSS-aligned approach that reaches youth where they are while preparing them with the tools to lead change in their homes and wider communities: (1) At a Social-Emotional Level: Building long-term change through cultural shifting via this culturally responsive, ancestrally-grounded curriculum. Youth learn which watershed they are a part of, see themselves as part of a watershed and water community, and see how their small and large actions impact their water and the water of their plant and animal relatives; (2) At a Local/Home level: Youth learn to measure water quality in their homes, how toxic pollutants affect their watershed, and about actions they can take to immediately improve their home water quality; (3) At a Community level: Youth learn to read water quality data for their neighborhood, identify their local watersheds, read Adapting to Rising Tides (app that tracks sea-level and ground level rise), and build out water catchment and purification systems. | More details |
| Native American Land Conservancy | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2021 | $24,543.00 | Southern Desert | Coyote Hole Visitation Threat Relief Project | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | San Bernardino | California | https://www.nativeamericanland.org/ | The influx of visitors to Joshua Tree National Park and surrounding areas is creating negative impacts on the Coyote Hole Preserve. The slot canyon of the property is lined with dozens of rock art panels and the entirety of the property is rich in cultural artefacts. Climbing and increased visitation since the pandemic has resulted in damage to the rock art and unauthorized removal of cultural heritage items, now held by the National Park visitor center. This project will launch an urgently-needed volunteer site monitor corps to provide well-trained and equipped people to ensure there is no further unauthorized or harmful access to and/or use of the site. This corps will continue after the rapid response funding as it will require minimal funding from there as a volunteer program and the corps will have time to secure its funding stream. It will also enable us to consult with tribes and tribal elders to ensure the cultural heritage items are dealt with in the most appropriate manner. | More details |
| Nature For All | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2021 | $23,000.00 | Southern Coast | Importance of Public Lands and the California Citizens Redistricting Commission | Environmental Education ; Environmental Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties. | California | http://www.lanatureforall.org | To advocate for public land enhancements and protections for the Angeles and Western San Bernardino National Forests as part of the congressional redistricting process. Nature for All will educate the nonpartisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission about the importance of these landscapes, and urge the commission to recognize that communities adjacent to public lands have a special interest in how they are managed and should be placed in the same congressional districts as the public lands. If Nature for All is not there to make this case, the welfare of the national forests may be ignored by the commission and hundreds of thousands of people could be disenfranchised and placed into different congressional districts than their neighboring public lands in which they hold a special interest. | More details |
| New Media Rights | Consumer Products Fund | 2021 | $150,000.00 | California - statewide | New Media Rights - Legal services to support California consumer education and rights | Advocacy ; Education | California | https://www.newmediarights.org/ | We will: (1) Provide direct legal assistance to 100 individual Californians on laws governing consumer products and technology; (2) Review, update, and improve at least 3 existing consumer technology public educational resources. Create 3 new continuing legal education video courses. Provide 3 consumer technology education workshops for high school students; (3) Educate over 50 future lawyers on public-interest consumer tech law issues through our legal clinic which will expand the universe of lawyers with this expertise and shrink the justice gap. | More details | |
| Nisqually Land Trust | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $30,000.00 | South Sound | Engaging Community Volunteers in Nisqually Watershed Riparian Reforestation | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Washington | http://www.NisquallyLandTrust.org | The Nisqually Land Trust seeks funding from the Rose Foundation Puget Sound Stewardship & Mitigation Fund to expand our community engagement in restoring forests in floodplain and riparian habitats along the Nisqually River mainstem and its tributaries, including Lackamas Creek, Ohop Creek and the Mashel River. Project activities will include coordination with community groups, youth groups, and volunteers from throughout south and central Puget Sound; and hosting in-the-field volunteer events, service projects, and service learning activities. These events will take place in riparian and floodplain habitats on Land Trust properties throughout the watershed and will focus on control of invasive weed species in established forests; site and plant maintenance at sites where native trees and shrubs have been planted during the last six years; and planting on properties recently protected by the Land Trust. | More details | |
| Nisqually Reach Nature Center | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $30,000.00 | South Sound | Nisqually Reach Aquatic Reserve | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | http://nisquallyestuary.org/ | Nisqually Reach Nature Center (Center) proposes to engage community stewards in research and education outreach in South Puget Sound communities. This outreach is particularly important after a year of limited volunteer opportunities due to the global pandemic. Community citizen scientists will collect data on active seabird breeding sites and forage fish spawning beaches in South Puget Sound and report that information to both state and federal agencies, and the public. Center staff will motivate and organize volunteers to accomplish this effort. Citizens will be engaged in the long-term stewardship of these aquatic resources. During this next two-year period, we will continue working with the Nisqually Reach Aquatic Reserve Implementation Committee (the governing body) on a proposed Aquatic Reserve expansion to encompass all of McNeil Island and extend to Key Peninsula. We are also currently working on a partnership with state agencies to include our volunteers in restoration projects on McNeil Island. We will also continue partnering with the Pacific Northwest Crab Research Group on a regional study of Dungeness crab populations. | More details | |
| Nisqually River Foundation | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $29,375.00 | South Sound | Water Quality and Action with Nisqually Students | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Washington | https://nisquallyriver.org | This project will involve 1,000+ students from schools in the Nisqually Watershed in hands-on water quality monitoring of their local streams, a Student GREEN Congress to share their results, and a field investigation on Puget Sound beaches. Students and teachers will receive training, supplies, and field trip support from the Nisqually River Education Project to test their local watershed streams for 8 parameters affecting salmon health. Trainings will include opportunities to learn from local scientists and cultural experts. Students will participate in fall and winter monitoring and compare their data with over 25 years of past student data to draw conclusions and make recommendations to improve their local water quality. 250 students will present their findings at the spring Student GREEN Congress, a student-led water quality conference, and work with peers to create action plans to improve water quality in their communities. 500 students will participate in nearshore field investigations to Puget Sound beaches to conduct inquiry-based studies of marine water quality and aquatic life. By collecting real-world data through outdoor field experiences and making connections to the important role of water quality in human and environmental health, students will gain experience as citizen scientists and as stewards of their waters and environment. | More details | |
| North Coast Resource Conservation & Development Council | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $25,050.00 | North Coast | Kids Creek Care: Russian River Watershed | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Sonoma County | California | http://www.ncrcanddc.org | Our Kids Creek Care Russian River program engages underserved youth in southwest Santa Rosa from within the watershed in which they live. Two important Russian River tributaries flow through the diverse, economically disadvantaged southwest area neighborhoods, Colgan Creek and Roseland Creek. Our proposed environmental educational and “take action†project is designed to improve water quality protection within the two watersheds, and establish “youth action groups†for continued water quality protection advocacy and stewardship activities. The southwest area of Santa Rosa is the most culturally diverse area of Sonoma County with some neighborhoods within the watershed being over 60% Latinx. Many of the neighborhoods are classed as disadvantaged or severely disadvantaged, and the southwest area is on the edge of the city/county interface with jurisdictional infrastructure presenting challenges. We have worked in the area for several years. Our established youth programs already include bilingual Spanish support, and we are recruiting other language support services from students at Sonoma State University. We have networked on earlier projects with other groups working in the area and within these watersheds; our existing partnerships with the Laguna Foundation, Russian River Watershed Association, Russian River Confluence, and others enhance our environmental education work as well as often provide direct project support through in-kind donations of native plants, trash cleanup support, etc. This project starts with engaging youth in watershed discovery with a recognition of the important role people play in protecting fish and other wildlife in their watershed. Tracing the flow of a drop of water from their residence downstream through the Russian River to the Pacific Ocean starts the discovery of “what is a watershed†and is combined with several “take action†days to address invasive species, riparian zone enhancement plantings, and more. | More details |
| Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides | Columbia River Fund | 2021 | $23,000.00 | Columbia River | Protecting Columbia River Basin Water Quality and Aquatic Habitat from Pesticide Pollution | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Environmental Health and Toxics ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Oregon | https://www.pesticide.org/ | The Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP) aims to reduce pesticide pollution and enhance aquatic ecosystem health and resiliency in the Columbia River Basin. We will achieve this by building on our currently funded work with Clackamas Water Environment Services. We look to use this grant for funding a series of Latino/a/x landscaper focus groups so we can assess needs and expand our Spanish-language resources. We will create and distribute four new bilingual resource documents and one article in English and Spanish, including a toolkit with messaging around least-toxic practices that landscapers can provide to customers when choosing services safe for waterways. The other resource documents and article will detail how systemic insecticides are especially detrimental to endangered aquatic species and insect biodiversity. The proposed project will provide the Latino/a/x community an opportunity to share needs, knowledge, and barriers to reducing pesticide use. The information gathered will be used to create accessible, multilingual resources intended to support businesses on their path to becoming less reliant on chemical pesticides. | More details | |
| Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $26,000.00 | Central Sound | Water Stewards Central Puget Sound: Promoting Chemical Free Pest Management to Improve Water Quality | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://www.pesticide.org/ | Urban pesticide use has been found to be a significant contributor to water pollution due to increased population densities and the expansion of impermeable surfaces. Stormwater runoff carries pesticides from the landscape into the Central Puget Sound, posing detrimental risks to the ecosystem and human health. The Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP) aims to reduce pesticide pollution in the Central Puget Sound by enhancing ecosystem and human health resiliency. We will achieve this through partnership with the Washington State Nursery and Landscape Association (WSNLA) and Garden Green to collaboratively provide pesticide alternative education, targeted outreach and technical assistance to English and Spanish nursery professionals and community residents. We will focus on communities in Vashon-Maury Islands, Seattle, Bremerton and Poulsbo with an aim to increase individuals’ knowledge around urban pesticide pollution and to improve water quality in the Central Puget Sound. A resource guide and educational workshops will be developed in English and Spanish, focused on new growing techniques and alternative pesticide solutions in the nursery industry to reduce pesticide use and pollution. We will launch a “Water Stewards†Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM) Campaign to educate community residents and groups regarding pesticide literacy and reduction methods to improve Central Puget Sound water quality. CBSM is an active learning method used to raise social awareness, stimulate critical thinking, and lead to action for social change. Traditional approaches of using ads, brochures or websites to encourage behavior change isn’t often enough to achieve lasting success. CBSM is being used effectively in numerous programs across the globe. | More details | |
| Northwest Maritime Center | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $30,500.00 | South Sound | Maritime High School: Duwamish Water Quality and Community Action Program (DWQ-CAP) | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Washington | https://nwmaritime.org | Northwest Maritime Center (NWMC) and Highline Public Schools have partnered to launch the new Maritime High School (MHS) that started classes September 2021. MHS is centered around principles of access, equity, and environmental justice, and anchored in a maritime focus. DWQ-CAP will be a signature learning experience, building upon the premise that students who help shape their own learning are more invested in outcomes, are better able to identify and work toward learning goals, and are more likely to believe they can succeed. Small project teams of MHS 10th graders, under the guidance of MHS teachers, NWMC educators, maritime professionals and environmental scientists, will design and conduct inquiry-based water quality studies and research and will use their findings to develop community action plans for water quality improvement. Project design criteria will include alignment and adherence with the goals of the Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund. At the MHS we are engaging the next generation of environmental and community leaders, using Project Based Learning (PBL), a dynamic approach in which students actively explore problems and challenges important to them and acquire deeper knowledge. Through DWQ-CAP, students will engage their diverse communities of the lower Duwamish in achieving community-centered outcomes. Because the projects will be student-driven, their own relevant community knowledge and expertise will inform culturally responsive outreach, interactions, and solutions. Under guidance, student teams will design and develop community action plans and stewardship projects that present relevant solutions for their communities. As a result, water quality improves through student-inspired changes that drive understanding and behavior, and long term water quality is positively and sustainably influenced. As important, a new generation of potential environmental leaders are engaged. | More details | |
| Oakland Climate Action Coalition | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice ; Other | Alameda County | California | http://oaklandclimateaction.org/ | To unify Oakland community organizations in creating equitable climate solutions that advance racial, economic, environmental and climate justice through leading and facilitating community-driven climate resilience planning and engagement in City of Oakland plans, such as the Equitable Climate Action Plan 2030, General Plan, and the 2021-2023 City budget. | More details |
| Oakland Privacy | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $40,000.00 | Northern California | Building Regional Privacy Rights Infrastructure - Privacy Rights Fellowships 2021-2022, 2022-2023 | Advocacy | California | https://oaklandprivacy.org | Oakland Privacy has achieved historic gains in privacy rights in California with zero funding aside from small amounts of grassroot donations. We draw upon the expertise of our volunteers, as well as their generous contributions of time and resources. We also contribute our expertise to numerous coalition efforts in the Bay Area. We are asking the Privacy Rights Fund for nominal funding to create additional infrastructure to support ongoing work and allow us to better execute on three organizational priorities: global privacy controls i.e. the universal opt out, public records transparency enforcement, and what we call "agenda-watching" which is an alert and notification service for upcoming privacy-related agenda items to enable proactive and timely interventions. Our Privacy Rights Fellowships would be two annual compensated fellowships at $12K with some supervision funds to build out our capacity on these crucial fronts. | More details | |
| Orange County Coastkeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $35,000.00 | Southern Coast | Watershed Explorers: Santa Ana River | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Orange County ; Riverside County ; San Bernardino County | California | https://www.coastkeeper.org/ | Orange County Coastkeeper and Inland Empire Waterkeeper request funding to expand upon environmental education efforts centering the Santa Ana River watershed. In the highly developed, inland areas of our region, students tend to associate the term "environment" with somewhere far removed from the paved streets of their neighborhood, such as a rain forest or a coral reef. The Watershed Heroes: Santa Ana River program turns the Santa Ana River Watershed into a living laboratory for students located within its reaches allowing them to make personal connections to their environment and encouraging them to take action to help protect it. Field trips have been all but obliterated from schools’ curriculums even with studies showing that they re-engage students in STEM fields. To incorporate these findings, our education programs include hands-on research, field experience, and group projects. Our ultimate vision is to preserve the integrity of our communities by ensuring clean waterways, harbors, and coastal waters, along with a healthy water supply for generations to come. Through a series of in-class activities and field experiences, either in-person or through a virtual platform if in-person is unsafe, students explore the watershed and ecological concepts in their own community. | More details |
| Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility | Columbia River Fund | 2021 | $25,000.00 | Columbia River | A Healthy Climate for the Columbia River | Environmental Justice ; Environmental Health and Toxics ; Climate Change & Energy | Oregon | https://www.oregonpsr.org/ | Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) seeks funding to support organizing health professionals to protect the health of the Columbia River and the communities who make their homes along it from harmful energy projects including: - The Zenith crude oil terminal in Northwest Portland, less than ten miles upriver from where the Willamette drains into the Columbia - Proposals to cite new "small modular" nuclear reactors at the Hanford site, where radioactive waste plumes already threaten to contaminate the Columbia - Pumped hydroelectric storage projects opposed by the Yakama Nation that would disrupt and destroy sacred cultural and archeological sites on the banks of the Columbia - Any future proposals to use recently re-zoned industrial land at Port Westward, Oregon to build a fracked gas-to-methanol refinery akin to the defeated Kalama Methanol refinery proposal issued by Northwest Innovation Works Since 2012, Oregon PSR has mobilized alongside coalition partners in Oregon and Southwest Washington to call attention to the health impacts of coal export terminals, oil-by-rail facilities, and other fossil fuel infrastructure that threatens the drinking water, air quality, recreation, and way of life for communities living along the Columbia River. Together we have successfully stopped all of the proposed coal export terminals in the region, the Tesoro-Savage oil-by-rail facility slated for Vancouver, Washington, and the Kalama fracked gas-to-methanol refinery. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we also took group tours to the Hanford site to tour and discuss the toxic legacy of the United States' nuclear arms race and nuclear power industry. Over time we also began involvement in efforts to enact a just transition to a renewable energy economy by supporting the successful Portland Clean Energy Fund ballot measure in 2018, the successful Oregon Clean Energy Opportunity campaign in 2021, and a range of other environmental and climate justice campaigns led by rural, BIPOC, and low-income communities on the front lines of climate change. We seek to bring our health expertise and credibility as doctors, nurses, epidemiologists, and more to articulate the health impacts of climate change and the harmful energy projects listed above while also advancing environmental and climate justice measures. We would also lend support to other campaigns to reduce pollution in the Columbia River basin such as the Stand Up To Factory Farms Coalition's efforts to stop new or expanded megadairies from being able to pollute the air, water, and climate with consolidated animal feeding operations. | More details | |
| Pacific Shellfish Institute | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $15,500.00 | South Sound | Community Education, Engagement, and Action to Protect Budd Inlet Water Quality | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Washington | https://pacshell.org/ | Our programs are designed to bring the public and scientists together in research, protection, and conservation efforts. These activities will provide community members and students from a variety of backgrounds the opportunity to explore their curiosities about the marine ecosystems; increasing accessibility to science happening in their backyard. For this project, PSI will be collaborating with School District science coordinators, LOTT Alliance, the Deschutes Estuary Restoration Team (DERT), Puget Sound Estuarium, City of Tumwater, ESD 113's Adjudicated Youth program and Olympia Surfriders to increase student and community involvement. | More details | |
| Point Blue Conservation Science | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $22,750.00 | Sierra Nevada | Sierra Meadow Restoration Partnership with the Northern Maidu Tribe | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy | Plumas County | California | https://www.pointblue.org/ | Point Blue Conservation Science will collaborate with the Maidu Summit Consortium (MSC) to incorporate traditional ecological knowledge and indigenous history and language into our community-based K-12 Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed (STRAW) Program and restore a meadow in the Feather River watershed. We have an established partnership with the MSC, representing multiple Maidu bands, and STRAW partnerships with public schools in the Upper Feather River Watershed. Tasman Koyom (also known as Humbug Valley) is a large meadow complex with outstanding ecological attributes, including breeding habitat for species such as the greater sandhill crane and endangered willow flycatcher, stream habitat for trout, and fawning grounds for the migratory deer herd. Previously, more than a century of poor management degraded the meadow, resulting in water quality impacts to the North Fork Feather River; reduction in groundwater recharge; loss of habitat for fish, wildlife, and culturally important plants; and decreased carbon storage. Tasman Koyom is culturally significant to the Maidu people. The MSC re-acquired this ancestral land from PG&E in 2019, creating an opportunity to restore repatriated sacred land. The MSC initiated meadow restoration in 2020, adopting a process-based approach—building structures that mimic beaver dams to restore hydrologic function in the meadow to improve water quality and timing, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity while also increasing the abundance of culturally important plants. We propose to begin work with the MSC in 2021 to build these structures and complete revegetation of restored areas. We will restore 50 acres of wet meadow and streams in Tasman Koyom in a collaboration including students, families, teachers, the Maidu people, and restoration practitioners. Maidu partners will co-create restoration curriculum and participate in lessons to increase youth’s understanding of indigenous culture and land management practices. | More details |
| Point Molate Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $100.00 | Share your story video project | California | https://ptmolatealliance.org/ | More details | ||||
| Point Molate Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; Marin County ; San Francisco County | California | https://ptmolatealliance.org/ | To advocate for the conservation of Point Molate, the last undeveloped natural headland on the San Francisco Bay, as a public resource and regional park. | More details |
| Point Molate Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; Marin County ; San Francisco County | California | https://ptmolatealliance.org/ | To advocate for the conservation of Point Molate, the last undeveloped natural headland/native coastal prairie on San Francisco Bay, as a public resource and a regional park. | More details |
| Pope Creek Weed Project | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $6,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Pope Creek Weed Project | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Napa County | California | To remove invasive plants and return a 2.7 mile stretch of Pope Creek to native wildlife habitat; improving the accessibility and value of the creek as a wildlife riparian corridor, and protecting the connective links between public open spaces. | More details | |
| Privacy Rights Clearinghouse | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $100,000.00 | California - statewide | Privacy Today | Advocacy | California | https://privacyrights.org/ | We seek funding to advance and defend privacy protections for all Californians through a year of support for our advocacy program. With a focus on making privacy rights and the policy discussion surrounding them more accessible, during the grant period, we will expand our role coordinating California privacy advocates to promote more efficient, effective, and inclusive advocacy; advocate to advance policies that reduce unnecessary personal data collection and provide meaningful choices and enforceable protections with a focus on: health data not protected under the law (in light of the pandemic and emerging technology); data collection and use that disparately impacts historically marginalized populations (including public/private partnerships perpetuating surveillance, facial recognition, algorithmic decision making, student monitoring); and improving and defending the new California Privacy Rights Act. | More details | |
| Privacy Rights Clearinghouse | Consumer Products Fund | 2021 | $75,000.00 | Nation-Wide | Privacy Research Tools - Data Breach Database | Technology/Product/Service | Nationwide | https://privacyrights.org/ | Whether in a privacy statement or marketing materials, most internet-connected consumer services and products make claims about their data security and privacy practices. Unfortunately, the statements do not help people understand rights and choices, and the claims can be deceptive without people ever knowing. Those working to change this and hold businesses accountable need access to high-quality data but often have limited capacity. We seek funding to launch Privacy Research Tools—a set of accessible tools based on data relevant to those advancing consumer interests. Phase one of this project expands on our past work tracking data breaches and leverages strategic collaboration to improve, sustain, and scale the project. | More details | |
| Proyecto Pastoral | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $24,500.00 | Southern Coast | Promesa Boyle Heights - Intergenerational Watershed Health Community Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.proyectopastoral.org/ | This project will build off of the work Promesa Boyle Heights (Promesa) accomplished through its “Green Infrastructure & Surface Water Quality Leadership Training Series†project funded by the Rose Foundation last year, through which resident leaders deepened their knowledge and understanding of watershed health, surface water quality issues, and green infrastructure projects in Boyle Heights; co-developed an interactive watershed health curriculum; facilitated eight workshops for Boyle Heights residents; and began the process of conducting an asset map of existing green infrastructure projects in Boyle Heights. Environmental health community outreach workers (Promotoras de Salud Ambiental, hereafter promotoras) will expand their outreach to students and parents from Boyle Heights community schools by creating a lesson plan for use by educators in the community; coordinating a career panel to introduce students to careers in the watershed health, science, and environmental justice fields; and involving students and their families in a watershed health education and restoration project in the Boyle Heights community, with a focus on the Upper Los Angeles River Watershed. Ultimately, Promesa seeks to build an intergenerational movement of environmental stewards, empowered to act when funding decisions affect them and the environment around them. | More details |
| Public Health Institute | Consumer Products Fund | 2021 | $150,000.00 | California - statewide | Residential Air Purifiers: Product Performance and Safety (RAPPPS) | Advocacy ; Education | California | https://www.phi.org/ | Portable air purifiers marketed to protect against wildfire smoke vary widely in cost, performance and safety. Some are safe and effective; others have little effect; still others emit toxic ozone into indoor air. While there are regulations to keep ozone-generating machines from being sold in California, and there are some existing consumer resources, our needs survey has identified major gaps. PHI proposes to: (1) Prepare and disseminate educational materials to guide organizations serving low-income consumers and non-English speakers toward effective and affordable portable air purifiers, and (2) Support regulatory agencies in identifying and taking action against companies selling hazardous ozone-generating air purifiers in California. | More details | |
| Safe Ag Safe Schools | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $4,000.00 | Central Coast | General Support | Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Monterey County ; Santa Cruz County | California | http://www.safeagsafeschools.org/ | To engage residents in efforts to reduce pesticide threats in Monterey County, push local and state decision makers to provide advance notification of hazardous pesticide applications, and continue to build the power and knowledge of the community to participate in decisions that impact their lives and health. | More details |
| Sama Sama Cooperative | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; San Francisco County | California | http://samasamacooperative.org/ | To support a 4-week cultural and environmental summer camp for Bay Area Filipinx youth with an emphasis on Filipino language, traditional arts, and community organizing through an environmental justice lens. | More details |
| Sama Sama Cooperative | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $198.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Grassroots Fund Grow Your Roots Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | Alameda County | California | http://samasamacooperative.org/ | More details | |
| San Francisco Baykeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $40,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Protecting Water Quality in San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; Marin County ; Napa County ; San Francisco County ; San Joaquin County ; San Mateo County ; Santa Clara County ; Solano County ; Sonoma County | California | https://baykeeper.org/ | Baykeeper will defend the water quality of San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to protect its wildlife and local communities from stormwater and wastewater pollution. There are 86 cities and more than 1,600 industrial facilities around San Francisco Bay that threaten the ecosystem with pollution. Baykeeper has been working for decades to reduce polluted storm water runoff from industrial facilities and Bay Area cities, which is a major source of toxic chemicals, trash, bacteria, oil, pesticides, and other contaminants in the Bay. In the coming year we will conduct targeted advocacy initiatives to prevent runoff pollution from Bay Area cities and industrial facilities. In the southern Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, harmful algal blooms (HABs) are rapidly emerging as a threat to ecosystem and community health in the southern Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Toxins in HABs can kill aquatic organisms and threaten human health, both in the water and as airborne aerosols. HABs are fed by excessive nutrient inputs such as from waste water treatment plants and agricultural waste, by inadequate or restricted flow of water, and by increasing water temperatures. The lower San Joaquin River and Delta are plagued by each of these problems, and as a result, the frequency and diversity of HABs has increased dramatically in the southern Delta over the past decade. Baykeeper will document the emergence and spread of HABs in the southern Delta using a variety of remote-sensing technologies that will allow proper spatial resolution of the problem, and show how the HABS develop and spread as temperatures warm during the spring, summer, and fall. We will work closely with our partners at Restore the Delta, as they mobilize and train a cohort of youth interns to conduct water quality samples in areas throughout the southern Delta. We will use the conclusions of this research to advocate for targeted actions to limit the spread and toxicity of HABs in the Delta. | More details |
| San Francisco Baykeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $2,700.00 | Clean Bay Challenge | California | https://baykeeper.org/ | For Earth Month 2021, Baykeeper is asking the Bay Area to join them in the Clean Bay Challenge, which helps clean up trash before it hurts San Francisco Bay and gives 1,000 volunteer hours to protect the Bay. Clean Bay Challenge volunteers conduct their own individual or household cleanups close to home, to remove trash from local shorelines and neighborhoods all across the Bay Area. It's great for kids and getting outdoors safely! Baykeeper will provide an easy-to-use app for volunteers to log activities and share with the virtual community -- post photos, comment, and give virtual high fives!It’s a fun way to get active, stay connected, and protect the Bay all at the same time. | More details | |||
| Santa Barbara Channelkeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $9,850.00 | Southern Coast | Tackling Plastic Pollution in the Santa Barbara Channel and its Watersheds | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Santa Barbara County ; Ventura County | California | http://www.sbck.org | Santa Barbara Channelkeeper will conduct a coordinated suite of monitoring, outreach and education, community engagement, and advocacy activities in 2021 to stem the tide of plastics polluting the beaches and marine waters of the Santa Barbara Channel and the streams and watersheds that empty into it. We will broaden the scope of our efforts with a targeted focus on the increased litter at creeks, rivers, beaches, and trailheads as a result of the pandemic and our community-based efforts to address this. We will also continue to reduce other forms of single use plastic including plastic bags, Styrofoam, and plastic straws and cutlery, and also to address additional forms of plastic that we know are particularly problematic, including microplastics and balloons. | More details |
| Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | Southern Coast | Stop the Block! Campaign to Ensure Safe Passage for Animals in the Rim of the Valley Corridor | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Los Angeles County | California | http://www.scope.org | To raise public awareness and support for the protection of the Los Pinetos wildlife undercrossing- the only safe wildlife passage under Highway 14 in the Newhall Pass area. | More details |
| Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition | Columbia River Fund | 2021 | $40,000.00 | Columbia River | Modernizing the Columbia River Treaty for water quality, salmon recovery, and justice - 2022 | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Environmental Justice ; Environmental Health and Toxics ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Washington | https://www.wildsalmon.org/ | The 1964 Columbia River Treaty manages water flows exclusively for hydropower production and flood risk management with no consideration for ecosystems. The U.S. and Canada began negotiations to “modernize†this agreement in 2018. Prior to this, adding “ecosystem function†(i.e. the health of the river) into the treaty was identified as a goal of the U.S. Government following extensive work by our organization and other NGOs in support of the 15 tribes with management authorities in the basin. Unfortunately, under the Trump Administration, the State Department and other key federal agencies distanced themselves from this objective. They also chose to facilitate almost zero engagement with the public and neglected to involve tribes in a way that is commensurate with their status as sovereign nations and co-managers. The Biden Administration brings a much improved set of environmental priorities and a much stronger commitment to justice. However, work is needed to raise the public prominence of the treaty such that it becomes a greater priority for the Biden Administration to intervene. Without this attention, the inertia of the Trump Administration may continue and cause the Northwest to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We propose a multi-pronged portfolio of work engaging with the modernization process to ensure the new treaty prioritizes ecosystems as a primary purpose, co-equal with hydropower and flood risk management. Doing so will be crucial to safeguard water quality in the lower main stem of the Columbia so that it continues to serve as a viable migratory corridor for the basin’s salmon and other aquatic species as climate change intensifies. Environmental justice for the basin’s Indigenous people is another key dimension of this work. Tribes (in this U.S.) and Indigenous Nations (in Canada) were excluded from the original treaty. Canada has chosen to include Indigenous Nations on its negotiating team and is clearly respecting their rights and interests. In contrast, the United States State Department has so far chosen to exclude tribes from negotiations. Our work will be done in coordination with tribes and will support their efforts to secure meaningful roles on the negotiating team and in the treaty’s new governance structure. Much of the urgency to modernize the treaty is being driven by a provision that will cause the flood risk management portion of the treaty to change in September 2024. For the U.S., this date is the effective deadline for a new agreement. We’ve learned from Canada (given lack of public engagement in the U.S.), negotiations since 2018 have focused on building familiarity between negotiators and establishing background information. 2022 will be the year in which negotiators begin work toward specific terms for the future of the treaty. Given the tight timeline, the direction established this coming year will be difficult to change later. With adequate resources, we intend to seize this critical window. | More details | |
| Save the Sound | Environmental Health and Toxics Fund | 2021 | $30,000.00 | Nationwide | Sewage Free Long Island Sound | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Nationwide | https://www.savethesound.org/ | For decades, inadequately maintained sewer lines that run under municipal streets have been leaking raw sewage into Long Island Sound and its tributaries, causing low oxygen, bacterial contamination, and long-term harm to the Sound. Poorly maintained sewer pipes are illegal and a main reason that beaches are closed after rain and harvesting of clams or oysters is prohibited. We would use the resources of this grant to retain experts that are necessary to participate meaningfully in discussions, litigation, and negotiations with municipalities to compel them to take actions that will stop sanitary sewer and combined sewer overflows. | More details | |
| Secure Justice | Consumer Products Fund | 2021 | $50,000.00 | California - statewide | Challenges to Exercising California Consumer Privacy Rights for Smart Home Surveillance Devices | Advocacy ; Education | California | https://secure-justice.org/ | Secure Justice will conduct a study of popular smart home devices and evaluate the ability for California consumers to exercise their privacy rights with the device vendors as required by California Consumer Privacy Act, California Privacy Rights Act, and California Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act. Identifying challenges to accessing, deleting, correcting, or porting data including literacy, language, documentation requirements, technology access, and additional privacy concerns, we will seek to educate vendors and policymakers to enable more meaningful compliance with the CCPA, CPRA, and the IoT Security Law, and provide resources for consumers to control their privacy and seek justice for violations of those rights. | More details | |
| Sequoia Chapter, California Native Plant Society | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $100.00 | Share your story video project | California | https://www.cnps.org/ | More details | ||||
| Seventh Generation Advisors | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $25,000.00 | Southern Coast | Protecting our Waters for Environmental Justice | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Los Angeles County | California | https://7thgenerationadvisors.org/ | 7th Generation Advisors’ (7GA) Protecting our Waters for Environmental Justice campaign is a hands on educational project that activates middle and high school students in three underserved Los Angeles communities, the cities of Inglewood, Gardena and Lawndale. The campaign will take place at two locations; Edward Vincent Jr. Park in Inglewood, and Gardena Willows Wetland Preserve. These sites have been selected for stormwater renovation and wetland restoration, respectively. 7GA, Environmental Charter School (ECS) and Friends of Gardena Willows Wetland Preserve will teach and students will participate in, hands-on, real-time stormwater renovation/wetland restoration practices. Empowering students to take action in their own communities will enhance the human and environmental health of their communities, and grow strong leadership skills for life. Specifically, students will engage in the following learning/skill building activities: Design cost-effective, multi-benefit stormwater management systems taken from 7GA’s Multi-Benefit Stormwater Database (7thgenerationadvisors.org/protecting-our-water/); Design/create a “living stream†filled with fish and filtration plants, which will then serve as a hands-on science class for all grades; Research and identify an aquaponics system that creates pesticide-free, nutrient-rich water by using plants as natural filtration; Provide input on the green space plans within their school grounds, utilizing chemical-free, companion growing techniques to support an abundance of wildlife, both plants and animals; Learn about and plant native, drought tolerant plants to minimize water needs; Learn about “smart irrigation systems†that adjust watering based upon weather conditions; and host Community Engagement Days where they will demonstrate how rainwater harvesting and pesticide-free systems protect water quality and supply and can be utilized cost-effectively throughout the community. | More details |
| Shasta Environmental Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $100.00 | Share your story video project | California | https://www.ecoshasta.org/ | More details | ||||
| Sonoma Ecology Center | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $13,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Fire Recovery Community Science and Stewardship Program | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy | Sonoma County | California | https://sonomaecologycenter.org/ | Sonoma Ecology Center's research, education, restoration, and outreach efforts focus on the health of the Sonoma Creek Watershed, which drains into San Pablo Bay. We monitor water quality and erosion, study the wildlife and ecosystems that rely on the creek, educate children and the public about the importance of watershed protection, help landowners reduce erosion and runoff from their properties, and inform policymakers and public agencies. We also contribute to protecting the headwaters of Sonoma Creek by operating Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in agreement with the State and other local non-profits. Sugarloaf, like much of our watershed, burned in 2017 and again in 2020. More than 98% of the park burned between these two fires, and half of the park burned twice. We expect frequent fire like this to increase as the climate continues to change. This presents a significant risk to the quality of the water in Sonoma Creek. Mountainous terrain denuded of ground cover can deliver large amounts of soil and ash to the creek when the rains finally come. In response to this threat, Sonoma Ecology Center has created a Community Science Program, which, through research and public education, will inform the management of Sugarloaf and surrounding areas. Our research focuses on understanding the fire ecology of the park, documenting concerns that affect water quality such as the recovery of vegetative ground cover and duff, fire fuel reloading, and changes in plant communities after the fire, particularly invasive grasses that increase fire risk and increase surface runoff. This research is aided by bringing students and members of the public into our research team, asking them not only to help us gather data but to take on the challenge of studying those ecological questions that most interest them. | More details |
| Stop LAPD Spying Coalition | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $100,000.00 | Los Angeles County | Dismantling Police Surveillance and Defending Privacy | Advocacy ; Education ; Community Organizing | California | https://stoplapdspying.org/ | Over the next two years, we will expand our community organizing work building on the foundation we have developed over the past decade primarily using volunteer work. While we are committed to keeping our work community-driven, the growing scale requires full-time organizers to facilitate the work, as well as to take on more aspects of data-gathering and state surveillance. This expanded capacity will allow us to: Advance existing organizing campaigns and helping build new organizing campaigns; Facilitate community-based research, collective study, and community analysis, including focus groups on surveillance programs and privacy; Build grassroot leadership among community members who are directly impacted by and targeted for policing and surveillance; Expand our coalition-building and community outreach to grow our base, accountability, and mobilizations; Develop more community education and self-advocacy materials and programs. | More details | |
| Sugar Pine Foundation | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $7,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Seed Collection for Fire Restoration | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Alpine County ; El Dorado County ; Nevada County ; Placer County ; Sierra County | California | http://www.sugarpinefoundation.org | To collect 75,000 seeds from sugar pines and other native conifers for forest restoration in the Tahoe area. | More details |
| Surveillance Technology Oversight Project | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $50,000.00 | Nation-Wide | S.T.O.P. California Class Action Practice | Advocacy ; Legal advocacy including case development and litigation | Nationwide | https://www.stopspying.org/ | The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) respectfully requests a grant of $50,000 from the Rose Foundation’s Consumer Privacy Rights Fund to expand our California class action practice, pursuing cases against commercial vendors who fuel mass surveillance. Building on momentum from our ongoing putative class action on behalf of Californians against Thomson Reuters, S.T.O.P. will then bring similar claims against additional data brokers who are selling Californians’ data to law enforcement and immigration officials. | More details | |
| The Bay Institute | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $17,550.00 | Central Valley | Advancing Key Water Quality Protections for the Central Valley and Delta | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Contra Costa County ; Fresno County ; Madera County ; Merced County ; San Joaquin County ; Stanislaus County | California | http://www.thebayinstitute.org/ | Despite delays caused by the pandemic, major decisions affecting Delta and Central Valley water quality are pending. The Bay Institute’s (TBI’s) highest water quality priorities are reducing the most pernicious and/or prevalent ingredients in agricultural and stormwater runoff – selenium, bioaccumulating in the food chain and causing death and deformities in fish and wildlife of the San Joaquin Valley and downstream in the Delta, and salt, degrading downstream water quality for millions of people. The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board allows 5 parts per billion (ppb) selenium in water, even though US Environmental Protection Agency guidance is 3 ppb for running waters, 1.5 ppb for wetlands, and 0.5 ppb for San Francisco Bay and the Delta. Building on TBI’s past success in eliminating the worst selenium-laden agricultural discharges and improving fish and wildlife impact monitoring, TBI proposes to use the Board’s upcoming Clean Water Act-mandated review of water quality standards to secure adoption of safer selenium standards to protect fish and wildlife – and the people who consume them – and downstream water quality. Also upcoming is the two-year review of stormwater permits for discharges from selenium-rich areas – required by the Board at TBI’s request – creating a chance to close loopholes in protection based on recent monitoring. Finally, a side effect of pandemic delays is more time to remedy defects identified by the State Water Board when it remanded the new salt and nitrate management plan back to the Central Valley Board, especially environmental justice concerns, fish and wildlife impacts, and downstream water quality. As the long-standing leader of a coalition of environmental and drinking water interests, TBI seeks the continued assistance of the Rose Foundation to tackle these closely related challenges of selenium and salinity protection. | More details |
| The Friends of the Snoqualmie Trail and River | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $30,000.00 | Central Sound | Snoqualmie River Defense Fund | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Washington | https://fosvtr.org/ | The City of North Bend, located on the Snoqualmie River, is on track to double its 2031 Growth Management target a decade early. Issuance of water certificates by North Bend’s water purveyors and a lack of an adequate mitigation plan endangers the Snoqualmie River. Funding is needed for expert legal assistance to protect the quality of the Snoqualmie River and its downstream resources. On March 5, 2021, the WA State Department of Health approved a Water System Plan (WSP) that allows the City of North Bend to expand its water service area and continue issuing water certificates for new development without adequate mitigation of the Snoqualmie River. Inadequate mitigation leads to reduced flow and increased water temperature which threaten the survival of important local and downstream species including the endangered Chinook salmon. Chinook Salmon are the primary food source of a second species, the Southern Resident Puget Sound Orca. The impact of inadequate mitigation goes significantly beyond a local stretch of river. For the past 4 years, Friends of Snoqualmie Valley Trail and River (Friends) have been communicating their concerns regarding the lack of adequate mitigation water in the event of a dry year to the City and state agencies to no avail. In 2015, the last dry year, the City was unable to adequately mitigate the river. According to King County, the Snoqualmie River’s 2015 water temperatures were consistently above state standards for designated uses and resulted in stressful and potentially lethal conditions for salmonids and other fish species. No additional mitigation sources have been added since then, but the City continues to issue water certificates. Even the City’s WSP acknowledges that in the event of a dry year that the City may not be able to properly mitigate the river. Friends have retained a water rights attorney and a land use attorney to assist with filing objections to the ruling. | More details | |
| The Green Life | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | The Green Life Reentry and Youth Leadership Watershed Steward Project | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County | California | http://www.earthisland.org/index.php/project/entry/green-life | To engage carceral system impacted leaders, youth, and Oakland residents in educational activities that foster a love of local waterways and the coastal East Bay, including healthy physical recreation, team-building activities, community service projects, and learning about habitat restoration, pollution prevention, stream protection. | More details |
| The Methow Salmon Recovery Foundation | Columbia River Fund | 2021 | $39,909.00 | Columbia River | Combining Two ways of Knowing; Western Science and Indigenous Knowledge | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://www.methowsalmon.org/ | The Methow Beaver Project (MBP), a program of the Methow Salmon Recovery Foundation (MSRF), is developing a collaborative environmental education project with teaching staff at the Paschal Sherman Indian School (PSIS) of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Omak, Washington. The proposed project would integrate PSIS’s innovative Nature Immersion program with MBP’s environmental education programs and create a year-long holistic environmental education experience for students by incorporating Indigenous knowledge and Western Science as they participate in the restoration of Omak Creek. Omak Creek will become a working classroom in which students actively apply grade appropriate Washington Common Core Standards and Washington State’s Since Time Immemorial curriculum while simultaneously incorporating Indigenous knowledge, language, and culture. Western science has historically focused on understanding the natural world by compartmentalizing and linear thinking. In contrast, Indigenous knowledge systems are holistic, relational, place-based, and intergenerational as these systems are dependent on knowledge of the elders. These two ways of knowing represent different but often complementary epistemologies, histories, and knowledges of the world, thus, providing a unique learning opportunity for students. As part of this collaborative team, MBP will provide the western science concepts through environmental education pedagogy and contextualize the complex interdependent ecological relationships in Omak Creek and the greater watershed. These experiences will range from acquiring necessary science background content including water and nutrient cycles, food webs, and climate change impacts in the classroom to actual hands-on stream restoration, monitoring and evaluation of restoration actions, and presentation of results of actions implemented in Omak Creek. The MBP staff will need to create new interdisciplinary curriculum to correlate watershed and stream restoration actions with current core science standards, practical field science skills acquisition, place & culture-based application while supporting PSIS’s Nature Immersion curriculum. The latter focus’ on connecting students and tribal elders in the traditional development of indigenous holistic experiences to increase student knowledge of the land and watershed, and the honor and responsibility of living in harmony with nature and the spiritual world. We are applying for a 24-month grant. Year one focuses on piloting and assessing the innovative and collaborative 7th grade curriculum. Year two will include evaluation of year one outcomes as well as adaptation of the curriculum for the incoming combined class of 6-7graders who will receive the updated version in the 2022-2023 school year. | More details | |
| The Nature Conservancy | Los Angeles Community Water Justice Grants Program | 2021 | $178,200.00 | Los Angeles River Stormwater Capture and Habitat Enhancement Project | Los Angeles | California | http://www.nature.org | For more than 100 years of urban development, L.A. has turned to engineered solutions and gray infrastructure to manage water. Rivers were channelized, and drinking water was delivered from lakes and rivers hundreds of miles away. As the cost of maintaining this gray infrastructure skyrockets and the services it provides fall short of meeting environmental standards, L.A. is evaluating the use of nature-based solutions to capture and clean rain water and allow it to infiltrate the soil into aquifers beneath the city. Voters have shown support for natural infrastructure projects at the ballot box, especially where parks and open space needs can be addressed as co-benefits. And nature-based solutions can provide a greater suite of environmental benefits, often at lower costs than traditional alternatives. | More details | ||
| The Plant Exchange | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County | California | http://theplantexchange.com | To promote waste reduction, sustainable gardening, urban farming and environmental justice through educational programming and the rescue, repair and redistribution of plants, pottery, and other gardening items that are headed to landfill. With the help of The Rose Foundation mini-grant, and the help of our volunteers, The Plant Exchange expanded its collection, triage, and redistribution of plant materials and supplies. | More details |
| The Progressive Club of Johns Island | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $1,000.00 | South Carolina | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Capacity Building | South Carolina | http://progressiveclub.org/ | More details | ||
| The Progressive Club of Johns Island | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Environmental Justice ; Other | South Carolina | http://progressiveclub.org/ | Johns Island residents have been collecting data on Johns Island for two years related to Fill and Build development practices and the consequent urban flooding and runoff. The runoff and flooding adversely affect Johns Island, both in the urban and rural areas, and the surrounding waterways. The Progressive Club proposes to continue and expand this work by continuing data collection, drawing more detailed conclusions, and presenting results in civic and political venues. They will affect ongoing development practices, the development of City ordinances, and decisions made at all levels of the development process. | More details | ||
| The Regents of the University of California - UC Berkeley Center for Economic Justice | Consumer Products Fund | 2021 | $148,500.00 | California - statewide | Building the CLASS Network | Advocacy ; Education | California | The CLASS Network development project will fund a Fellow to expand consumer law programs and engage law students in advocacy projects that directly serve consumers in California and around the nation. The CLASS Network is a nascent nationwide collaboration of law school student organizations and faculty advisers dedicated to consumer law. This project will increase the number of consumer protection law school courses, foster consumer law student organizations, organize statewide and nationwide events, and help students file regulatory comments, write amicus briefs, and develop policy. The Fellow will be based in California and focus on the California legislature and courts while fostering a nationwide movement toward economic justice. | More details | ||
| The Regents of the University of California - UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $65,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Generating Participatory Understandings of Privacy for Always-On Surveillance Devices | Education | California | Laws like CCPA protect the data privacy rights of individual consumers, but don’t protect from risks caused by privately-owned always-on surveillance devices (such as smart cameras) that collect data from many people at once. For instance, there is no opt-out mechanism for someone subject to video surveillance from a neighbor’s smart camera. This project will improve understanding of privacy harms posed by always-on surveillance devices, and the limits of current privacy laws. Through participatory workshops with diverse local community members in Alameda County, we will learn about their concerns about always-on surveillance devices and we will educate them about important privacy risks. We will co-create materials that help convey community members’ perspectives and experiences in ways they find useful, such as participant stories, drawings, and first-hand accounts. We will disseminate these stories and findings to technologists, policymakers, researchers, and the broader public. | More details | ||
| The Sierra Fund | Central Valley Disadvantaged Community Water Quality Fund | 2021 | $50,000.00 | Capacity Building in the Sierra Nevada: Tribal and DAC Project Development and Support | California | https://sierrafund.org/ | CABY is the Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) planning group that serves communities living in the watersheds of the Cosumnes, American, Bear, and Yuba rivers. The Sierra Fund (TSF) has prioritized equitable inclusion of Tribes and underestimated communities in CABY’s decision-making processes, ensuring that the regional Plan includes the priority projects of underrepresented populations. TSF has collaborated with Tribal leaders to make sure that these stewards of regional water bodies are awarded funding to meet their water quality and access needs. TSF is working to make sure underrepresented people know about the variety and types of projects that qualify for inclusion in the 2021 CABY IRWM Plan Update. Projects listed in the Plan are eligible for specialized funding from the Department of Water Resources (DWR) under Proposition 1. Three objectives of TSF’s work in this area will be: - Develop and Sponsor Tribally-led Projects in the CABY Region - Develop and Sponsor Projects that serve Disadvantaged Communities (DACs) and Small Water Providers in the CABY Region. - Integrate Projects into the Larger CABY Grant Bundle to DWR and Build Capacity of Priority Populations to Administer these Projects. | More details | |||
| The Utility Reform Network | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $75,000.00 | California - statewide | Smart Grid Privacy | Advocacy | California | https://www.turn.org/ | Smart Grid Privacy is a policy advocacy campaign to ensure utility companies and public officials effectively implement new policies that minimize the release of data from thousands of private resident smart meters to law enforcement agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). TURN discovered that private energy usage data of thousands of California residents was released each year by the investor-owned utilities with inconsistent application of rules for data request protocols and by exploiting a loophole in California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) customer privacy rules. TURN proposes to monitor the implementation of new rules that close the loophole that allowed ICE to issue internal administrative subpoenas in order to access utility customer smart meter data for surveillance purposes and protect California residents’ privacy rights. None of TURN’s work supported by this grant will be included in any requests to receive intervenor compensation from the CPUC. | More details | |
| The Watershed Project | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $15,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Monitoring Creek Health and Bioswales and Increasing Partnerships in Contra Costa County | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice | Contra Costa County | California | http://www.thewatershedproject.org/home.php | The Watershed Project (TWP) seeks funding for our overall monthly water quality monitoring work in Contra Costa County (CCC) creeks. We carry out our own monitoring at numerous creeks and bioswales throughout west CCC; provide training, support, and quality control for local groups planning to do their own monitoring; and lend equipment and staff expertise in the field. The key piece of this project will be re-engaging our volunteer network as we begin working with them again in a post-pandemic world. All of our nonprofit and community partnerships in Richmond and vicinity are crucial to advancing our work to determine creek health throughout the county, and we can provide the training, support, and quality control to ensure they collect comparable data. These local grassroots partners, in turn, provide important local knowledge of topography, tributaries, and land history so that we can choose our water quality monitoring sites wisely. As another part, we need to replace an important water quality meter, a $7,500 YSI multiparameter meter, that we rely on for our work monitoring bioswales in Richmond. The meter was stolen in early 2021, and it’s a crucial piece of equipment that’s required for us to continue our work cleaning stormwater in urban city centers before the water flows into the San Francisco Bay. Our Greening Urban Watersheds team builds these stormwater filter swales in the areas that need it most, some of which also suffer high incidents of crime. We depend on this type of equipment for our work, and moving forward we will ensure we always have at least two staff working together with it for safety. | More details |
| The Watershed Research and Training Center | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2021 | $23,000.00 | Statewide | Completing CA's First 5-year Prescribed Fire Strategic Plan | Sustainable Forestry | Statewide | California | https://www.thewatershedcenter.com/ | This project seeks to complete a 5-year strategic plan for advancing the use of prescribed fire in CA with proposed funding to support critical tasks including legal review and revisions, overall content editing, integration of state and federal land, air and fire management agency priorities, and final layout and formatting for publication. This plan will become the guiding framework for policy and cooperative investments on behalf of the CA state agencies (CAL FIRE, CA Air Resources Board, etc.), the federal land management agencies (US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service) and their partners in the conservation sector, tribes and other allies over the years to come, providing a shared platform to align energy and resources towards more good fire in CA. | More details |
| The Wild Oyster Project | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $100.00 | Share your Story video project | California | https://wildoysters.org/ | More details | ||||
| Tolowa Dunes Stewards | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $7,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Del Norte County ; Humboldt County | California | http://www.tolowacoasttrails.org | To support on-going volunteer programs that engage young people and the community in hands-on restoration of Tolowa Dunes State Park and the Lake Earl Wildlife Area. | More details |
| Trees Foundation | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $100.00 | Share your story video project | California | http://www.treesfoundation.org | More details | ||||
| Trees Foundation | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,500.00 | North Coast | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Del Norte County ; Humboldt County ; Marin County ; Mendocino County ; San Francisco County ; Santa Cruz County ; Siskiyou County ; Sonoma County ; Trinity County | California | http://www.treesfoundation.org | To bring together grassroots environmental groups across the North Coast for a peer networking conference this Fall, amplify the prescribed fire movement through Trees’ quarterly magazine Forest and River News, and engage in coalition building with partner organizations to improve the fire resiliency and forest health of North Coast watersheds. | More details |
| University of Southern California/Information Sciences Institute | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $45,000.00 | Southern California, Los Angeles | Auditing for Discrimination in On-Line Advertisements (ADOLA) | Research into new technology | California | https://www.isi.edu | We seek to define methods to support for privacy-sensitive, third-party auditing of on-line ad platforms for fairness. We have previously shown that queries demonstrate the presence of discrimination in job ad delivery by some ad platforms such as Facebook. To prove discrimination with statistical rigor, we use external datasets in carefully controlled experiments, with results that apply to gender-based discrimination. We would like to to test for discrimination with other protected categories, such as race, and to test different types of jobs, and the same job categories over time. To evaluate these additional factors "at scale" (with multiple job categories and on a regular basis) requires support from the ad platform. We propose to define how a platform would support external auditing, and to evaluate its effectiveness, either at full scale, with support of an ad platform; or to evaluate an approximation of our auditing API at smaller scale without platform support. | More details | |
| Urban Tilth | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $19,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Loyal to the Soil: Restoring resiliency and connection in under-resourced West County watersheds | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Contra Costa County | California | http://www.urbantilth.org | We are requesting funding to support the restoration of riparian habitat along Lower Wildcat and San Pablo Creeks in North Richmond--thereby reducing pollutant delivery into San Francisco Bay and enhancing the resiliency of these impacted urban ecosystems. Urban Tilth has a profound connection to the Richmond community, and to North Richmond in particular, and we know it is this commitment that creates a lasting impact in the ecosystems we steward and the residents we empower. Unfortunately, the sporadic governmental resources that underserved watersheds receive are insufficient for combating the sort of challenges-- e.g., fragmented ecosystem processes, biodiversity loss, illegal dumping-- that destabilize our fragile riparian ecosystems and the SF Bay downstream. Urban Tilth’s Watershed Restoration Field Crew is a group of young Richmond residents who excelled in our Basins of Relations Training Program and now work year-round to support watershed health in West Contra Costa County. The Crew’s ability to restore sensitive ecological processes while also amplifying underrepresented voices has inspired several partnerships with local agencies to provide long-term care of public lands. While this crew has opportunities to work in far-flung (but well-funded) watersheds, the riparian corridors in our neighborhood remain neglected, overburdened, and disconnected from the community. Rose Foundation support would allow our Field Crew to nourish the natural spaces in our own community and continue their growth as community leaders, bringing an increasingly large percentage of our watershed’s residents into direct contact with the natural resources that sustain us. Restoring the capacity of urban riparian corridors to support a native food web, filter runoff, and be resilient in the face of change necessarily requires sustained community-based stewardship. We would be honored to have your support as we reconnect community and creek in mutually-beneficial relationship. | More details |
| Valley Improvement Projects | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Merced County ; San Joaquin County ; Stanislaus County | California | http://www.valleyimprovementprojects.org | To support climate justice work, advocacy to reduce local plastic waste, and outreach to youth and farmworkers on environmental justice issues in low-income, Spanish speaking communities in Stanislaus County. | More details |
| Vashon Nature Center LLC | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $25,000.00 | Central Sound | BeachNET: discovering our role in a healthy Puget Sound | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Washington | https://vashonnaturecenter.org/ | Vashon Nature Center (VNC) is excited to launch a year-long effort to revamp our long-term community science and education program called BeachNET (Beach Nearshore Ecology Team) for COVID safety and to create a wider, more diverse volunteer corps that better involves all aspects of our community in issues of water quality and Puget Sound health. We ask support from Rose foundation to help us renovate BeachNET programs to increase justice, equity, diversity and inclusion by: 1. Supporting a new Latinx Community Education Specialist position to work with the island Latinx community on watershed health engagement; 2. Work with Vashon Island School District on an exciting pilot program to offer up to 3 internships for students from underrepresented groups to gain early career experience in watershed science and conservation; 3. Add a new beach clean-up program to the existing BeachNET community science programs to involve a wider sector of our population in cleaning up Puget Sound; 4. Offer a Latinx community day at the local natural history exhibit and adjacent rain garden to raise awareness of local watershed health issues. 5. Create innovative and safe responses to the current health crisis through using virtual technologies accessible to a larger audience. Rose Foundation has been pivotal in supporting VNC’s growth from a small, fiscally sponsored group to a successful nonprofit with a thriving staff, board, and community partnerships. We have become the cornerstone for community engagement around watershed health on Vashon-Maury Island. This past year, we learned important lessons about racial inequities and were reminded that diverse and representative community engagement is fundamental to the success of environmental stewardship. We are fired up about making these issues primary in restructuring our programs, partnerships, and youth opportunities for 2021 and beyond. We cannot think of a better partner to help us instigate this then the Rose Foundation. | More details | |
| Verde | Columbia River Fund | 2021 | $40,000.00 | Columbia River | Water Justice Leadership Institute | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Environmental Justice ; Environmental Health and Toxics | Oregon | http://www.verdenw.org | The WJLI will train 15 community members representing both rural and urban communities across Oregon to become leaders and champions for local water policy changes. Approximately 4-5 participants will live by and have direct contact to the Columbia River. The Institute will help participants identify potential projects to enhance water justice in their own communities, and develop capacity to advocate for those ideas with state and local decision makers. The Rose Foundation's funding will support the Columbia river clean up/canoe trip, as well as, Verde staff time to develop the WJLI curriculum, recruit participants statewide, facilitate 12-15 training sessions, and fortify final participant presentations that identify community focused water enhancing projects where participants live, work and play. We are applying on behalf of the Oregon Water Futures (OWF) Collaborative, a partnership between Coalition of Communities of Color, Oregon Environmental Council, University of Oregon, Willamette Partnership, and Verde. The Collaborative focuses on climate change impacts on drinking water and supporting community advocacy to secure Oregon’s water future. It seeks to foster a statewide water justice movement by lifting community voices that are often left out of conversations and decision making. These are communities whose potential to advocate, educate, and act in response to statewide challenges regarding the health of ecosystems, water affordability, access to clean drinking water, decaying infrastructure, and emergency preparedness has been left mostly untapped, ignored, or unseen by agencies, utilities, and policymakers allocating funds and resources in those areas. Through statewide community outreach and surveys conducted in 2020, the Collaborative identified both an information gap and a desire for knowledge about water and water justice. As we face challenges such as climate change, pollution, and increasing urbanization, these require us all to be mindful of what it means to have a future for Oregon waters like the Columbia River for all living beings. The vision for water justice in the state must engage low-income, rural, BIPOC, and migrant communities as community assets, as these communities both contribute valuable culturally specific values and knowledge about how to best care for water for generations and provide insights into water resources, infrastructure, and management. The Water Justice Leadership Institute gives BIPOC and low-income community members the resources necessary to advocate for their communities and push inclusive legislative and policy-making action in the state. | More details | |
| Wakulima USA | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $35,300.00 | Central Sound | Integrated Stormwater Mitigation, Utilization, and Skillshare for Wakulima | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Washington | https://www.wakulimausa.org/ | In a collaborative partnership with Dynamic Waters and Sawhorse Revolution, Wakulima USA seeks funding to build a multi-faceted rainwater retention, storage, and education project on our working urban farm located in Des Moines, WA. The integrated system is designed to mitigate and manage approximately 45,793 gallons of stormwater. Our system will drastically reduce the high stormwater flow experienced by the half-acre large farm. A series of above ground cisterns will be installed and provide irrigation for the farm during the dry summer season. A rain garden of native plants will also be installed to filter out harmful contaminants, slow stormwater runoff, and reduce erosion. Through our organization’s various programs, we envision using this green stormwater infrastructure project to reinforce our cultures’ environmental stewardship ethic and pollution education for Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC); youth; and community members. Furthermore, we intend to use this project as a demonstration site to train female-identifying and/or immigrant/refugee-identifying peoples on the technical build-out of both cisterns and rain garden. We hope to recruit about six to eight participants and utilizing a cohort curriculum model to support collective learning. All participants will be paid a modest stipend, at minimum $500 per individual for a minimum weeklong course. Through this experiential opportunity rooted in Wakulima’s community and economic mobility, we hope lifelong learners and students can exchange knowledge with one another and expand simple stormwater management practices. This project will also benefit three neighboring waterways draining into Puget Sound: Des Moines Creek, Barnes Creek, and Massey Creek. All part of WRIA: 9. This urban salmon bearing streams is impressive to the longevity of our sustained coast salish ecosystem. | More details | |
| Walker Basin Conservancy | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2021 | $22,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Protecting the Bodie Hills Using Science and Stakeholder Engagement | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Mono County, CA | California | https://www.walkerbasin.org/ | This project will help defend the Rough Creek watershed within the Bodie Hills from proposed exploratory gold mining by collecting data on the status of Rough Creek and developing partnerships with key stakeholders to strengthen the case for protection. | More details |
| Washington Physicians for Social Responsiblity | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $22,920.00 | South Sound | Protecting Water Quality from Fossil Fuels in the Port of Tacoma | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Climate Change & Energy | Washington | https://www.wpsr.org/ | Tacoma’s industrial tideflats, situated on the Puyallup Tribe’s ancestral estuary and home to the Port of Tacoma, is an ongoing target for new and expanded fossil fuel projects – threatening local water quality and human health. The port is one of the largest terminals in the Pacific Northwest. Stopping new oil and gas infrastructure, and mitigating the expansion of existing facilities in the Tacoma Tideflats, presents an opportunity to significantly decrease harmful fracked gas pipeline construction, storage, and vessel traffic in the Salish Sea and northern Washington watersheds. WPSR’s campaigns to stop the construction of a major liquid “natural†gas facility at the Port of Tacoma, and to establish permanent protections against fossil fuel infrastructure in the tideflats are critical to protecting local water quality, and community and environmental health. With past support from the Rose Foundation, WPSR has mobilized health professionals to protect regional water quality by resisting new major fossil fuel projects along Commencement Bay. Oil spills in particular are linked to increased incidence of cancer, reproductive disorders, and other ailments by contaminating local waterways and fishing resources. Health-based advocacy is essential to transcend the "jobs versus environment" debate that has persistently hampered local conservation efforts. Continued partnership with Rose Foundation will allow WPSR and our growing cadre of nurses, physicians, and healthcare workers to recruit and empower additional local health professionals to advocate for protection of the tideflats and local waters. We strongly believe that enlisting health professionals is essential for charting a new course for Tacoma’s industrial port area and its surrounding waters. Our record of effective health advocacy, and WPSR’s reputation among leading local environmental and health organizations, speak to the unique and powerful influence of the health voice. | More details | |
| Water Climate Trust | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $6,000.00 | North Central & East | Water for Nature Campaign | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Plumas County ; Sacramento County ; San Francisco County ; Shasta County ; Siskiyou County | California | https://www.waterclimate.org/ | To advocate for the restoration and protection of instream flows in rivers and streams in the upper Sacramento River watershed through policy advocacy, organizing, and participation in key state and federal regulatory and legal processes. | More details |
| Watershed Alliance of Marin | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Protect Endangered Wildlife from Destructive Development | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Marin County | California | http://www.watermarin.org/ | To pursue legal action that would require Marin County conduct a full CEQA review of an ecologically important property at the headwaters of Redwood Creek which is slated for development. | More details |
| Watershed Alliance of SW Washington | Columbia River Fund | 2021 | $25,103.00 | Water Quality Diversity Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Environmental Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://thewatershedalliance.org/ | The Watershed Alliance has long-standing stewardship and education programs that involve more than 1000 volunteers each year in tree plantings, invasive species removals, and litter cleanups, while using the events to educate participants about the steps they can take to protect water quality. Historically, these programs have been focused on Burnt Bridge Creek in the city of Vancouver, WA, which is a tributary of the Columbia River (via Vancouver Lake). In the last few years, we have also conducted stewardship activities in additional creeks and rivers that flow directly into the Columbia River. While we have begun to make efforts in recent years to demographically diversify who participates in our stewardship events and whom we directly educate, we have been constrained in these efforts based on limitations posed by our current funding streams. We are asking the Columbia River Fund to provide $25,103.40 in funding so that we can augment our staff in 2022 with a specific focus on increasing the diversity and inclusive nature of all our volunteer stewardship, outreach, and education events. A primary focus of the extra staff time will be to add a Spanish language component to all our events so Spanish speakers will be able to participate in volunteer activities. The promotional materials and registration forms will all be in Spanish and English. A staff member at events will provide safety and activity details in Spanish so everyone can fully participate. A secondary focus of the work will be to deepen our relationships with BIPOC community organizations, forming partnerships when appropriate. This will be done through networking and connecting with League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), NAACP, Odyssey World International Education Services, among others. The new and strengthened relationships will result in increased participation at events, helping to improve water quality for disenfranchised and underserved communities. We also hope these new and deeper relationships will help us identify additional ways we can better serve those communities in 2022 and beyond. | More details | ||
| Watsonville Wetlands Watch | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2021 | $9,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Community Driven Water Quality Monitoring and Action to Restore the Watsonville Wetlands | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Santa Cruz County | California | https://www.watsonvillewetlandswatch.org/ | Watsonville Wetlands Watch will expand and strengthen our youth and community water quality monitoring program in the Watsonville Slough System, an impaired waterbody that is one of the State’s largest remaining coastal freshwater wetlands. This work will be paired with creative and effective youth and community outreach and engagement to elevate and increase the impact of this work. | More details |
| Weed Warriors | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $20,000.00 | Central Sound | Invasive Weed Removal near Myers Way Wetlands - Phase 3 | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | http://naturestewardswa.org/ | Weed Warriors, Camp Second Chance, a sanctioned drug-free and alcohol free homeless camp, and community volunteers will continue to remove invasive noxious weeds in the the wetland area of Myers Way. This wetland area is the start of Hamm Creek that empties into Puget Sounds via the Duwamish River. The project offers education about noxious weeds, wetlands, and native plants, with site restoration of the wetland area near the Camp located on Myers Way So, Seattle, WA. We have restored a section of the wetland and will continue to expand the restoration footprint within the wetland and wetland buffer delineated area. | More details | |
| Wholly H2O | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $3,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Toxics & Environmental Health | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County | California | https://whollyh2o.org/ | Wholly H2O seeks to foster the next generation of water conservationists and watershed stewards by creating personal connections between communities and their watersheds. Through citizen science, online environmental educational programming, public guided walks, and interdisciplinary projects that connect art, science and grassroots activism, they create active and engaged watershed health leaders who model the practices necessary for the long-term survival and revitalization of local waterways. Their unique watershed educational programs engage the diverse urban communities of the East Bay, particularly youth, with the region’s dynamic creek ecosystems from San Leandro and Oakland to El Cerrito, Berkeley and Richmond. This grant will support their ongoing “Walking Waterhoods†community education program. They will expand on the eight live-streamed virtual walking tours they produced last year to create eight new live stream events in the East Bay watershed system. This funding will also support eight citizen scientists BioBlitz events along Codornices, Sausal, Strawberry and Temescal Creeks, the Berkeley Marina, and Point Molate. These events bring community members and scientists out into the watershed to document the various species living there and are valuable opportunities for grassroots learning and collecting biodiversity data that can be used by researchers and Bay Delta open space activists. | More details |
| Wild Fish Conservancy | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2021 | $30,000.00 | South Sound | Puget Sound Riparian Protection Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | http://www.wildfishconservancy.org | Riparian habitats are among the most important on our landscape, supporting more biodiversity than almost any other. Healthy riparian corridors provide critical functions that protect water quality and the integrity of our watersheds: these include energy dissipation, shade, bank stability, allochthonous inputs, large woody debris recruitment, and filtering pollutants to protect water quality. Safeguarding riparian functions is critical to protect water quality buffer against climate change impacts. Local and state government regulations exist to protect against loss of riparian condition and function by requiring buffers around streams. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of existing regulations is compromised because the regulatory (water type) maps used by planning and permitting departments to determine stream buffers are inaccurate. Many streams are mis-mapped and mis-classified, and many more are not on the maps at all. With systematic water type assessments, Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC) has field-verified stream locations and classifications of thousands of Puget Sound stream reaches where time-sensitive threats to riparian habitats exist or are anticipated, so that accurate watertype data can inform appropriate land-use decisions. We have made those data available online for state and local governments and Tribes to consider during planning processes, but until recently there was no clear process for submitting non-forestland water type corrections to the WA Dept. of Natural Resources (WDNR) to update the state’s official regulatory water type map. In 2020, WDNR initiated a new non-forestland water type modification process. With support from the Rose Foundation, WFC will prepare and submit to WDNR at least 75 of the most significant water type modifications we documented during water type assessments we performed over the past decade. We define significance in terms of the extent of increased protection for water quality in streams. | More details | |
| Wolf Creek Community Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $5,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | Rainbow Trout Assessment and Protection in Threatened Streams | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Toxics & Environmental Health | Nevada County | California | http://www.wolfcreekalliance.org/ | To continue a 17- year water quality and fish monitoring program in three native trout streams in the Wolf Creek watershed; and protect threatened trout populations through research, community education, organizing and advocacy. | More details |
| World Privacy Forum | Consumer Privacy Rights Fund | 2021 | $100,000.00 | California - statewide | Index of Vacinne Credentialing Systems: Privacy Impacts and Pathways Forward | Advocacy ; Technology/Product/Service ; Education | California | http://www.worldprivacyforum.org | This project is focused on documenting, analyzing, and impacting the serious proposals for “vaccine credentialing systems,†or "vaccine passports." These systems pose significant privacy risks for Californians, and stand to have profound, systemic impacts on each and every Californian. Thus far, Californians have not had enough of a voice in how these systems will look and operate. That needs to change quickly, before the systems are built into deeper business and government procedures. Beyond travel, these systems will also be utilized in other contexts, such as employment and education. There are more than 35 serious systems being built, with more on the way. The “Digital Green Pass,†a credentialing system IATA has built for travel, has already been piloted by several airlines. The European Commission has granted interim approval, even though the pass has problematic privacy issues, such as mandatory biometrics for travel. This project will bring transparency to these activities. | More details | |
| Zero Waste Humboldt | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2021 | $2,000.00 | North Coast | Zero Waste Business Cooperative Bulk Purchase and Truth in Foodware Project | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Humboldt County | California | https://zerowastehumboldt.org/ | To develop a Cooperative Bulk Purchase Program of food service items to help small businesses and schools reduce the per unit cost of compostable foodware and ensure their compliance with the City of Arcata’s ordinance to reduce plastics and single use discarded materials. | More details |
| A Community Voice | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Louisiana | http://www.acommunityvoice.org/ | The Blight to Bioswales project works with the lowest income residents who are most vulnerable to flooding due to blight and increased rainfall, as they are the least able to migrate or rebuild post-disaster, to develop strategic plans to install bioswales/raingardens to mitigate mass blight. This project improves resiliency through education and knowledge that will foster ready engagement with city officials and stakeholders and find long-term solutions that will prepare communities for impending disasters. | More details | ||
| A Community Voice | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | http://www.acommunityvoice.org/ | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| A Community Voice | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $300.00 | Reality Grantmaking Panel 3rd Place | Louisiana | http://www.acommunityvoice.org/ | General Support | More details | |||
| Adopt a Stream Foundation | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $35,000.00 | Central Sound; ; This site encompasses 2,826 feet of the Middle Fork Quilceda Creek as well as 1,384 feel of an unnamed tributary in the Quilceda Creek watershed. | Strawberry Fields Buffer Enhancement | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Washington | https://www.streamkeeper.org/ | Strawberry Fields Park is a 72-acre park owned by the City of Marysville. This park contains 2,622 feet of the main stem of the Middlefork Quilceda Creek, including one unnamed tributary. The Middlefork Quilceda violates state water quality standards for both bacteria, and dissolved oxygen levels. The poor water quality is attributed to multiple factors. These factors include the loss of riparian habitat and lower base flows, as well as improper manure management, septic failure, and pet waste. The overall goals of this project are to improve water quality in Quilceda Creek through the restoration of 14.6 acres of riparian forest. The 35,196.24 being requested will be used to fund the planting and maintenance activities required to do so. One of the major barriers to successful riparian plantings is supporting the new plantings while they become established. This funding will support AASF’s efforts to control invasive species such as reed canary grass, Himalayan blackberry, Japanese knotweed, and bittersweet nightshade; all which are established throughout the site. These invasive plants threaten both the survival of the installed native flora and could easily spread into additional sites downstream. This funding will also support hosting volunteer events to place plant-protectors onto installed native plants. Such protectors have been demonstrated to significantly improve protection from herbivory, which is commonly observed at this site. | More details | |
| All One Ocean | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $3,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; Marin County ; San Mateo County ; Sonoma County | California | https://www.alloneocean.org/ | To provide engaging and thoughtful environmental education about the impact of pollution on our Oceans, and teach sustainable alternative solutions which will promote environmental preservation, change consumer behavior, and ultimately create policy change. | More details |
| Alliance for Environmental Leadership | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Social Media Outreach Program | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Environmental Justice | El Dorado County ; Nevada County ; Placer County ; Yolo County | California | https://enviroalliance.org/ | To implement a coordinated social media outreach program that will grow civic engagement and citizen advocacy among people of color and youth in the Sierra Foothills. | More details |
| American Rivers | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Central Sound; ; Longfellow Creek sub-basin Duwamish River basin Elliott Bay | Longfellow Creek Network | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | https://www.americanrivers.org/ | Seattle Public Utilities (SPU), as part of a consent decree, is developing a plan to improve water quality by limiting combined sewer overflows into the City’s waterways using natural infrastructure for stormwater management. Longfellow Creek, an urban waterway that flows through Roxhill and Delridge in West Seattle before draining into the Duwamish River and Elliot Bay, is one watershed where several stakeholders are investing in natural infrastructure projects. However, there is little coordination occurring amongst the stakeholders to ensure projects are being implemented in a coordinated way. American Rivers will leverage our momentum on our Roxhill Bog restoration project to coordinate local partners and provide a platform to: discuss their work in the Longfellow Creek watershed, explore collaboration and find funding opportunities that will amplify and accelerate natural infrastructure projects. By increasing coordination of these partners and bringing new stakeholders to the table, we will foster the development of a coordinated plan to use natural infrastructure throughout the watershed, thereby improving water quality and establishing a network of partners to implement projects for years to come. American Rivers is well positioned to organize and guide this coordination. Our project to restore the headwaters of Roxhill Bog has provided us the opportunity to build strong relationships with local partners and assist them with improving relationships with SPU. We will draw upon this work, as well as the experience of American Rivers’ staff who have worked on green stormwater infrastructure projects across the country, to inform our strategy in Longfellow Creek and ensure that our local partners have the resources, tools and coordination needed to meet their long-term water quality goals. | More details | |
| Amigos de los Rios | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | Southern Coast | Emerald Necklace - Rio Hondo River Watershed - Multiple Objective Greenway Enhancement Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Los Angeles County | California | http://www.amigosdelosrios.org | Amigos de los Rios requests $20,000 to support our Emerald Necklace - Rio Hondo River Watershed - Multiple Objective Greenway Enhancement project. This project will engage local students and community members in transforming a segment of the Rio Hondo flood control channel right of way from a barren area to one with enhanced habitat, urban forest canopy, active transit, habitat, and recreation value for adjacent disadvantaged communities. This initiative is part of a larger “Mountains to Sea†natural infrastructure network along the San Gabriel and Rio Hondo Rivers. We have completed native landscape design and permit process with L.A. County Public Works and relevant agencies to implement Urban Greening Project adjacent to the existing County Class 1 regional bike trail. Amigos will lead a series of Emerald Necklace Watershed Steward Volunteer Events, guiding participants in activities including planting native trees, shrubs and grasses along river corridor, to improve soil health, create infiltration planters to promote groundwater infiltration and prevent pollutants from entering river corridor and flowing to ocean. This multi-benefit project will improve stormwater capture, water resources management, and will provide environmental justice co-benefits for underserved Latino and Asian communities of eastern L.A. County, Project will improve watershed health, access to recreation, air and water quality protection, vector control, water conservation in public landscapes, reduce heat island impacts in response to public health challenges: including120 trees, over 800 native shrubs & grasses, i watershed health interpretive signage, enhanced permeable surfaces.This will transform a blighted underutilized area that serves local Arroyo High School and other student regionally as well as residents of El Monte, unincorporated L.A. County, and surrounding cities and provide a regional natural infrastructure amenity while training next-generation watershed stewards. | More details |
| Arroyo Seco Foundation | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $7,000.00 | Southern Coast | Arroyo Seco Native Trout Restoration Program (ASNTRP) | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.arroyoseco.org/ | To catalog environmental conditions and fish passage barriers in the upper watershed of the Arroyo Seco with the ultimate goal of restoring native trout. | More details |
| As You Sow | Consumer Products Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Pesticides and Lead in Food: Shareholder & Prop 65 Action | Consumer Products | California | http://www.asyousow.org | Over a billion pounds of conventional pesticides are used in U.S. agriculture each year, with pesticide residues found in 90% of Americans studied. Our goal is to dramatically reduce toxic pesticides in agriculture, beginning with use of glyphosate and other pesticides, especially when used as desiccants. Through shareholder advocacy we will hold consumer-facing food companies, the biggest customers of agricultural commodities, responsible for reducing their suppliers' pesticide use and delivering on their own "sustainable" and "responsible" sourcing claims Medical foods sold by leading manufacturers and intended for patients requiring tube feeding are contaminated with dangerous levels of lead, cadmium, and arsenic. Infants and children especially are vulnerable to heavy metals. We will target medical foods, especially those intended for premature babies, through research/investigation, engagement with the medical community, consumer education, and Prop 65 actions | More details | ||
| Ascend Wilderness Experience | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $6,500.00 | North Coast | Ascend Teen Stewardship Work Trip | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Sustainable Forestry | Humboldt County ; Shasta County ; Siskiyou County ; Tehama County ; Trinity County | California | http://ascendwilderness.org/ | To defray a one-week Teen Stewardship Work Trip and backcountry trail restoration experience for eight 14-18 year old Trinity County youth, achieving the twin goals of restoring impacted habitat and building the conservation community in Trinity County. | More details |
| AsianWeek Foundation/Florence Fang Community Farm | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | The Florence Fang Community Farm's Black Organic Farmers Program | Environmental Education ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | San Francisco County | California | https://ffcommunityfarm.org/ | To revitalize the land and strengthen food sovereignty, security, and access, by creating a sustainable, regenerative food system that serves and empowers the Black community and cultivates intercultural learning and connections across communities of all backgrounds in Bayview-Hunters Point. | More details |
| AsianWeek Foundation/Florence Fang Community Farm | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $320.00 | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | Environmental Education ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | California | https://ffcommunityfarm.org/ | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | More details | ||
| Battle Creek Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $3,000.00 | North Central & East | General support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Shasta County ; Tehama County | California | http://www.thebattlecreekalliance.org | To collect long-term, year-round data regarding the diminished water quality of streams which are downstream of clearcut and salvage logged land in the Sierra and Cascade mountain ranges, and pursue litigation to promote resource conservation and protect the water supply from further degradation. | More details |
| Battle Creek Alliance | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Battle Creek Watershed Protection Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Shasta County ; Tehama County | California | http://www.thebattlecreekalliance.org | Battle Creek Alliance is seeking funding to continue its Citizen’s Water Monitoring Project in the rural Battle Creek watershed in eastern Shasta and Tehama counties, northeastern California. This project has collected data since 2009 to track the effects occurring from major landscape-level changes downstream of Lassen National Forest and upstream of the Sacramento River. Over 12,000 water and habitat quality samples have already been collected, which continue to be analyzed to identify ongoing cumulative effects. The project provides education to broaden community knowledge and evidence to promote resource conservation, and to protect the water supply from degradation for the local low-income rural community, as well as the larger downstream communities in the Sacramento River watershed. Battle Creek is also the site of one of the largest salmon restoration projects in the country, due to it being one of the most important fish spawning streams in the Sacramento Valley. Along with the benefits to water quality, intact forests are a crucial piece of nature that protect air quality and store carbon. Funding is additionally needed for a lawsuit (initially filed in May 2020) which challenges the ongoing approval of logging plans which consistently state the multitude of logging plans have no significant effects. These effects include non-point source water pollution from the permanently deforested miles of logging roads as well as the hundreds of thousands of cutover acres from clearcutting and salvage logging. This is our first suit in 10 years, so is the first where we have real evidence from our water quality sampling and our research paper. We also have a second claim regarding the overall "Patterns and Practices" that the regulatory agency has used for so long to avoid honestly admitting to the cumulative impacts. We have a well-known water attorney, but he expects the case to cost 30,000. | More details |
| Battle Creek Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,500.00 | North Central & East | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy | Shasta County ; Tehama County | California | http://www.thebattlecreekalliance.org | To collect long-term, year-round data regarding the diminished water quality downstream from clearcut and salvage-logged land in the Sierra and Cascade mountain ranges, and pursue litigation to promote resource conservation and protect the water supply from further degradation. | More details |
| Bay Area Green Tours | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Virtual Experience Program | Environmental Education ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice ; Other | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; Fresno County ; Marin County ; Napa County ; San Francisco County ; San Mateo County ; Santa Clara County ; Santa Cruz County ; Solano County ; Sonoma County ; Yolo County ; Yuba County | California | https://www.bayareagreentours.org/ | To create virtual educational tours and digital content for Bay Area residents about local environmental topics, from sustainable and regenerative agriculture, to waste management and food justice. | More details |
| Beyond Pesticides | Consumer Products Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Community Pesticides and Alternatives Information and Advocacy Program | Consumer Products | Nationwide | https://www.beyondpesticides.org/ | Beyond Pesticides takes a holistic approach to advancing sustainable, regenerative, organic practices, products, and policies to solve the pesticide poisoning and contamination problem. This framework provides the foundation for ending pesticide dependency in all aspects of use, agricultural and nonagricultural, while protecting a cross section of people, including those facing disproportionate risk, and the environment on which life depends. Because of their hazards to human health, adverse impact to air, land, and water, and ecosystems, as well as their contribution to biodiversity decline and the global climate crisis, we urgently advance both organic practices and markets. We will work with communities to prevent, rather than simply reduce, toxic chemical use and recognize the power and importance of biological systems and ecosystem services, and the need to challenge misinformation that diverts us from the problem and solution. | More details | ||
| Bigfoot Trail Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | North Coast | Siskiyou Wilderness Collaborative #2 | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Other | Del Norte County ; Siskiyou County | California | http://bigfoottrail.org/ | To support a collaborative team that will maintain ten miles of the Bigfoot Trail in the Siskiyou Wilderness, keeping it accessible to hikers and building the conservation community in Del Norte County. | More details |
| Black Farmers Collective | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Central Sound; Black Farmers Collective_Farm Location Map_Rose Foundation.pdf ; Our farm site drains into Puget Sound. It is in the center of the city on the corner of Yesler Way and I-5, .5 mile uphill from Puget Sound. Please see attached map and Dropbox link for more information. | Yes Farm integrated Storm water Mitigation, Utilization, and Demonstration Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Washington | https://www.blackfarmerscollective.com/ | Black Farmers Collective (BFC) is proposing a multi-faceted rainwater retention, storage, and education project for our Yes Farm located in the Yesler neighborhood of Seattle. The project will leverage a past design partnership with the University of Washington to install a purposely designed storm water catchment and storage system, a rain garden filtration project, and bioswale retention zone reducing storm water overflow into Puget Sound. The system is designed to reuse 54,000 gallons of water annually for our farm irrigation system. Our system is interconnected and will drastically reduce the high storm water flow on the farm and be used to increase storm water pollution mitigation education for Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC). Yes Farm is at the bottom of a large hill with high density urban development and limited green space, directly above I-5, and .5 miles uphill from Puget Sound. Due to the high clay content of the soil in our farm very little storm water is currently held in our undeveloped areas. The rain garden will be installed at the uphill portion of the main farm and planted with native plants designed for filtering contaminants. This will filter pollutants, slow storm water runoff, and reduce erosion. The bioswale will be installed at the bottom of the farm working with the natural slope of the property to capture and hold storm water. We will utilize organic material and slow drain soil to reduce run off into the freeway and on to Puget Sound. The water catchment system will use rain roofs to capture and store rainwater which will be reintroduced to the system as irrigation for our raised beds and developed soil. This integrated system will be utilized as a demonstration site for BIPOC youth and communities. Through experiential education opportunities students can learn from and share with their community the value in storm water management and imagine an environmental career breaking the barriers that uphold the Green Ceiling. | More details | |
| California Coastkeeper Alliance | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $11,000.00 | Statewide | Permitting Unregulated Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations Initiative | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice | Humboldt County ; Kern County ; Kings County ; Los Angeles County ; Mendocino County ; Orange County ; Riverside County ; Sacramento County ; San Joaquin County ; San Luis Obispo County ; Sutter County ; Yuba County | California | http://www.cacoastkeeper.org | California Coastkeeper Alliance’s Permitting Unregulated Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) Initiative will result in a Santa Ana regional permit that will require currently unregulated Non-Dairy CAFOs in the Santa Ana watershed to dispose of their animal sewage and other pollutants in a safe manner to ensure clean and healthy California waterways. | More details |
| California Desert Coalition | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $7,290.00 | Southern Desert | Defend the Desert Workshop Series | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | San Bernardino County | California | https://www.cadesertcoalition.org/ | To conduct a series of conservation advocacy workshops that encourage community participation in land use decisions and environmental policy to protect the Mojave Desert. | More details |
| California League of Conservation Voters Education Fund | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Southern Desert | Protect Our Desert Water: Eagle Crest | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | CLCVEF works on a statewide level. The work funded by this grant would focus on, but not be limited to, Riverside County and San Bernadino County residents and elected officials. | California | http://www.clcvedfund.org/ | To stop California state legislation AB 1720, which threatens the aquifer under Joshua Tree, creates unwarranted and needless exemptions for its pumping, and authorizes a wasteful hydroelectric energy storage project in the town of Eagle Crest in Riverside County. CLCVEF will continue its long standing effort to halt this project, employing a multifaceted communications campaign across California that raises public awareness about the bill and exposes the corruption and true intentions of the supporting company, NextEra. | More details |
| California Native Plant Society | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2020 | $24,840.00 | North Central & East | Protect Walker Ridge: Preserving a Global Plant Diversity Hotspot | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Colusa and Lake counties | California | http://www.cnps.org | The California Native Plant Society and a diverse alliance of organizations will implement a two-pronged campaign to stop a proposed wind development and secure the long term protection of Walker Ridge, a region that contains more than two dozen rare plant species. The campaign, relying heavily on virtual engagement techniques, is designed to have immediate impact while also raising the site’s profile and building a constituency of individuals and organizations that understand and care deeply about the importance of Walker Ridge. | More details |
| California Sportfishing Protection Alliance | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $49,950.00 | Central Valley | Bay-Delta Water Quality Protection Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy ; Other | Contra Costa County ; Sacramento County ; San Joaquin County ; Solano County ; Stanislaus County ; Yolo County | California | https://calsport.org/news/ | CSPA is presently involved in a series of complex multi-faceted administrative and legal proceedings before state and federal agencies addressing instream flows and water quality standards for the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary and tributary waterways, including the San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Calaveras and Mokelumne Rivers in San Joaquin County. Each of the proceedings is critical to the health, viability and restoration of the water quality and aquatic and riparian ecosystems of these waters. | More details |
| California Wilderness Coalition | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2020 | $7,500.00 | Sacramento Valley | Building State Support for Inventoried Roadless Areas | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Sacramento | California | https://www.calwild.org/ | To educate and urge state officials to exert their influence in U.S. Forest Service (USFS) projects that threaten inventoried roadless areas (IRAs) in California. IRA’s are some of the wildest remaining areas of our national forests. CalWild will inform state offices of four recent projects which threaten IRAs with logging, road-building, and/or new off-highway vehicle routes, and work to get letters from the state in support of modifying the projects or asking for full environmental impact statements. | More details |
| Cannabis for Conservation | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,500.00 | North Coast | Wildlife Conscious Cannabis Certification | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Other | Humboldt County | California | https://www.cannabisforconservation.org/ | To develop a pilot wildlife conservation certification to increase habitat connectivity and encourage wildlife-friendly land management practices on cannabis farms in Humboldt County. | More details |
| Capital Region ESD 113 | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $9,907.00 | South Sound; ; The Deschutes River Watershed very close to the estuary into Budd Inlet in the South Puget Sound. Students will be learning about how to preserve and protect the Deschutes River and its tributaries and in turn, influencing the Southern Puget Sound. | Watershed Education for South Sound Adjudicated Youth | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://www.esd113.org/ | This request would help to fund a new watershed education program for adjudicated youth in the South Sound. A new environmental education program is being implemented at the Thurston County Juvenile Detention Center in Olympia, Washington. This program includes weekly watershed education workshops or field experiences for adjudicated youth age 12-17. The program is coordinated by a regional science educator who will bring local environmental professionals to give workshops on a wide variety of topics including water quality, salmon habitat, ocean acidification, micro plastics, waste water, surface water runoff, local wildlife, native plants and environmental jobs. The youth will also be able to attend field experience and restoration work in nearby locations led by local environmental organizations such as Thurston Conservation District, Pacific Shellfish Institute, Lott Clean Water Alliance, Thurston County Water Resources, Wolf Haven International, Pacific Education Institute and others. The youth will learn how to be better environmental stewards and gain an understanding of their local environments. All the activities will be centered around the Deschutes watershed and Budd Inlet and will be focused on improving local water quality. | More details | |
| Cascade Forest Conservancy | Columbia River Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Columbia River | Mount St. Helens No Mine Campaign | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice ; Environmental Health and Toxics ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://cascadeforest.org/ | The Green River valley is a local treasure in the Washington Cascades, but it is under the shadow of a dangerous industrial mining proposal. In fact, two years ago American Rivers put the Green River on its list of top ten Most Endangered Rivers, due to the threat of mining. This valley, just a few miles from the Mount St. Helens crater, is a recreational paradise for hikers, bikers, flyfishers, and horseback riders. On this 40th anniversary of Mount St. Helens’ eruption, we are asking the Rose Foundation to support our grassroots campaign to protect 11,000 acres of this important and beautiful river valley. An open-pit mine with toxic tailings ponds in this seismically active area would pose a tremendous risk to wildlife, human health, and recreation. Protecting this valley is crucial, and not just for us here in the Northwest – these lands were purchased under the Land and Water Conservation Act, and building a mine here would set a terrible precedent for millions of acres around the country that were purchased under this important piece of legislation. Under a grant from the Rose Foundation, the Cascade Forest Conservancy will lead a grassroots campaign with two primary objectives: preventing any mining activities within the Green River valley by overturning exploratory drilling permits, and creating long-term protections for this special place through a mineral withdrawal. The latter will involve educating the public and lawmakers -- lobbying constitues a very small portion of our activities and will NOT be funded through funds from Rose Foundation. | More details | |
| Center for Biological Diversity | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $30,000.00 | South Sound ; Central Sound ; North Sound ; Salish Sea; Seattle Times - cooke-operations-map.jpg ; This project affects essentially all of the communities of the Puget Sound region, the Columbia River watershed, and the northern Oregon coast. Cooke intends to conduct net pen operations throughout Puget Sound, as shown in the attached graphic. | Fighting Destructive Net Pen Aquaculture in Puget Sound | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/ | The Center for Biological Diversity will work alongside peer organizations to challenge a permit approval by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) allowing Cooke Aquaculture to continue harmful net pen aquaculture operations throughout Puget Sound. In 2017, a catastrophic net pen failure resulted in the escape of over 250,000 Atlantic salmon at Cooke's Cypress Island facility. Washington subsequently passed a law banning all open water net pen aquaculture of Atlantic salmon by 2022. Despite this ban, WDFW issued a permit in January 2020, allowing for Cooke's net pen operations to continue in Puget Sound by transitioning to a domesticated, partially sterile form of steelhead. These operations would pose a significant danger to Puget Sound habitat, as these fish are capable of interbreeding as well as exchanging pathogens and parasites with native wild steelhead, an endangered species. Working with the Center for Food Safety, Wild Fish Conservancy, and Friends of the Earth, the Center has filed suit in state court challenging WDFW's permit approval, charging that it poses significant environmental risks and depends on mitigation measures that will not prevent harm. Briefing begins this spring. In addition to litigation efforts, the Center and partners will engage and organize with tribes and local fishing communities to mobilize against this threat, with a goal of defeating the proposal and putting an end to all net pen fish-farming in Washington - the last state on the West Coast to allow the practice. | More details | |
| Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $9,000.00 | Southern Coast | From Air Pollution 2 Water Pollution in the Inland Empire | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Riverside County ; San Bernardino County | California | https://www.ccaej.org/ | The Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice has studied air pollution impacts from the explosion of the logistics industry in the Inland Empire region for many years. We are recognizing what starts as air pollution may end up as water pollution. In the last decade, more than 150 million square feet of industrial space, the vast majority of it warehouses was constructed. With this logistics industry boom brings increase of road transport of heavy-duty diesel and drayage trucks (at the facility site) which is the largest contributor to nitrogen dioxide pollution. In southern California, tremendous effort been expended on monitoring air quality for human health concerns but virtually no effort has been expended on monitoring deposits of air pollutants into our waterways such as the Santa Ana River. CCAEJ is interested as to how many warehouse developments constructed along the Santa Ana River that runs through part of San Bernardino and Riverside County and just how close in proximity to the watershed. We assume that the density of warehouse developments along the Santa Ana River contributes to an increase in atmospheric pollutant source(s) entering the waterway. Understanding the pollutant mobility is critical when considering the ecological and human health impacts of air pollution. We should also evaluate the implications of climate change on the Santa Ana River, especially with the increase of heat, increase of air pollutants from transportation and greenhouse gas emissions effects. Our intent for this proposal is two-fold: first to conduct a ground truth assessment on the proximity and number of warehouse development along the Santa Ana River in San Bernardino and Riverside County, secondly to educate/engage residents to understand the relationship between air and water pollution and to advocate for their rights to good health. We will do this by providing toxic tours, teach ins, ground truth, community meetings and leadership training. | More details |
| Center for Farmworker Families | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Central Coast | Watsonville Center for a Healthy Environment | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Monterey County ; Santa Cruz County | California | http://www.farmworkerfamily.org/ | To provide a central resource center for farmworkers and strengthen relationships with ally organizations, in order to pursue local and state campaigns to restrict hazardous pesticide use and inform impacted residents about pesticides. | More details |
| Center for Food Safety | Columbia River Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Protecting Oregon from the Nation's Largest Mega-Dairy | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Oregon | https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/ | This project seeks to stop the expansion of mega-dairies in Oregon, legally intervening to stop the the re-opening of one of the most disastrous mega-dairies in Oregon’s history, Easterday, located just miles from the Columbia River. Center for Food Safety is one of the groups leading the campaign with Senior Attorney Amy Van Saun serving as both co-manager and providing legal assistance. Our coalition of environmental, farmer, rural advancement, public health, and animal welfare organizations, uses grassroots pressure, policy initiatives, and litigation to protect communities and the environment from the threats posed by factory farms. If permitted, Easterday would house nearly 30,000 cows, generating 187 million gallons of animal waste a year, in an area that has long been designated a “Groundwater Management Area†due to unsafe nitrate levels (above the federal safe drinking water threshold). Excessive nitrates in drinking water cause serious health problems, like blue baby syndrome, reproductive and cardiovascular issues, and even cancers. Not only is Easterday located in a Groundwater Management Area with high nitrate levels, it is also an area with strained water resources. Lost Valley, at one third of its permitted size, was using nearly one million gallons of water per day in a critical groundwater area (meaning closed to new uses) through a loophole it exploited. Further, Umatilla and Morrow counties have a higher population of Hispanic and Latinx communities than the rest of Oregon, and low-income communities of color already disproportionately bear pollution burden from CAFOs, fossil fuel infrastructure, and other environmental harms. | More details | ||
| Centreville Citizens for Change | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Justice | Illinois | https://floodedandforgotten.com/ | To empower and mobilize the residents of Centreville who have been impacted by severe storm water flooding and raw sewage overflows to hold elected officials, governmental bodies, and utility companies accountable. | More details | ||
| Citizens for a Healthy Bay | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | South Sound; ; Our work will change the landscape of industrial development, prevent water pollution, and improve water quality in Commencement Bay, Tacoma, Washington. | Mobilizing Diverse Environmental Advocates to Stop Industrial Pollution in Commencement Bay | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | http://healthybay.org | Tacoma has reached a watershed moment, one which will determine if we will continue our trajectory as a hub for heavy industry that pollutes Commencement Bay, or if we will become leaders in the movement towards clean, innovative development that improves water quality by preventing stormwater pollution, limiting toxic discharges from industry, and curbing industrial air emissions. Citizens for a Healthy Bay (CHB) aims to protect our Bay from increased water pollution through a three-pronged approach: Technical Analyses and Comprehension; Land Use Reform, and; Community Education and Engagement. The Tideflats continue to be a target for fossil fuel development due to its natural deep-water port, existing infrastructure, rail access to fossil fuel deposits, proximity to international energy markets, and a political reputation for fast-tracking Port projects. As Tacoma evolves away from being hub for dirty industry, CHB is a driving force for achieving new policies that promote smart urban growth. We play a key role in the continuation of a city-wide fossil fuel moratorium, and are actively influencing new policy that will inform how the lands of the Tideflats will be developed and utilized in the future. We believe education and connection-to-place is the first step in creating an engaged community capable of advocating for the systems and policy changes that impact their everyday lives. We connect community members to their local waters by inviting them onboard for Bay Patrol to learn about the issues we work on and the solutions we create. Through our trainings and workshops, CHB provides the community a way to engage in highly technical processes around contaminated site cleanup and urban growth - fostering an educated, effective advocacy community. If our mobilizing is successful, the impact of system changes that prevent new, heavy polluting industry, while advancing sustainable, forward-thinking development in Tacoma will have far reaching implications. | More details | |
| Citizens' Committee for Flood Relief | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Toxics & Environmental Health | Missouri | https://www.facebook.com/groups | The Committee is made up of concerned individuals that represent the residents, businesses, and families of De Soto affected by urban flooding. They work at finding effective ways to protect De Soto from flooding and also work to revitalize the town, in conjunction with city, county, state and federal agencies. This project will support their ongoing work of mobilizing local residents, partnering with organizations such as the USGS and US Army Corps of Engineers to conduct studies, generating political will around urban flooding, future planning around buildings now located in flood plains, and emergency planning. | More details | ||
| Citizens' Committee for Flood Relief | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Missouri | https://www.facebook.com/groups/609613372545223/ | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| Citizens' Committee for Flood Relief | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $100.00 | Reality Grantmaking Panel Participant | Missouri | https://www.facebook.com/groups/609613372545223/ | General Support | More details | |||
| Clean Label Project | Consumer Products Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Asbestos in America's Best-selling Cosmetics & Consumer Products | Consumer Products | Nationwide | https://www.cleanlabelproject.org/ | Johnson's & Johnson's has been under significant media, regulatory, and public health scrutiny over asbestos being found in its baby powder (talcum powder) with links to uterine and ovarian cancer. Still the FDA does not limit asbestos levels in cosmetic talc, and the industry monitors itself. While the baby powder industry is under increased scrutiny, baby powder is used in a myriad of cosmetic products ranging from body and shower products, feminine hygiene products, and cosmetics. Talcum powder contamination is a women’s reproductive health issue and environmental justice issue. If talc suppliers (testing positive for asbestos) can no longer sell to major brands, that supply is selling somewhere. Clean Label Project will investigate the presence of asbestos in cosmetic and personal care products. We will target two types of products 1cosmetics and personal care products targeting young girls, 2cosmetics and personal care products marketed as natural, sustainable, better-for-you, etc | More details | ||
| Coalition for Wetlands and Forests | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | New York | http://www.sicwf.org/ | This project seeks to preserve the Graniteville Wetland and Forest through the courts, and protect it from infill development, by finding a purchaser who will turn it over to the State or City Parks Department or to do so by way of eminent domain. By preserving these freshwater and tidal wetlands, this project aims to ameliorate the effects of climate change flooding and to buffer the effects of intensive air pollution. The Coalition seeks to educate and empower those who will be most affected by climate change. | More details | ||
| Coalition for Wetlands and Forests | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | New York | http://www.sicwf.org/ | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| Columbia Riverkeeper | Consumer Products Fund | 2020 | $30,000.00 | Stopping Toxic Pollution Project | Consumer Products | Washington | http://www.columbiariverkeeper.org | The project will protect food webs and human health by reducing the amount of toxic pollution from consumer products and industrial sources in the Columbia River. We will implement two connected strategies: 1) stop the discharge of illegal toxic pollution by enforcing the Clean Water Act, and 2) fight efforts by the Trump administration to weaken the State of Washington’s limits for toxic pollution. The project will achieve the following outcomes: 1: Eliminate 50,000 pounds of toxic pollution discharges; 2: Polluters pay at least $150,000 in penalties to non-profit organizations; 3: Create a culture of compliance with the Clean Water Act because dischargers know we are watching; 4: Push innovative methods to reduce pollution; and 5: Ensure thousands of pounds of toxic pollution do not enter Washington waters every year because we prevail in court to stop the Trump administration’s politically-motivated rollback of Washington’s toxic pollution limits. | More details | ||
| Comite Progreso de Lamont | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Kern County ; Orange County | California | To provide community input on the Kern General Plan update and county budget approval, and advocate for infrastructure improvements and environmental health protections for disadvantaged communities. | More details | |
| Committee for a Better Arvin | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Climate Change & Energy ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Kern County | California | To provide community input on the Kern General Plan update and yearly county budget approval, administer a community garden for 40 families, and continue environmental justice advocacy for disadvantaged communities in the Central Valley. | More details | |
| Committee for a Better Shafter | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Kern County | California | To participate in the ongoing AB 617 processes to reduce air pollution in Shafter, ensure its implementation, and advocate for disadvantaged communities. | More details | |
| Committee for a Better Shafter | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $330.00 | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | California | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | More details | ||||
| Community Environmental Advocates Foundation | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $7,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | Stop the Idaho-Maryland Mine | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Nevada County | California | http://www.cea-nc.org/ | To oppose the reopening of the Idaho-Maryland gold mine though citizen advocacy, public outreach and education. | More details |
| Community In-Power and Development Association Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Environmental Justice | Texas | https://www.cidainc.org/ | This project seeks to continue Community In-Power’s work of combating urban flooding via community-led home repairs and federal buyout assistance, strengthening flood management infrastructure, convening the community and educate the broader public on what is happening in Port Arthur, and combating climate change by challenging big polluters. | More details | ||
| Community In-Power and Development Association Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Texas | https://www.cidainc.org/ | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| Community In-Power and Development Association Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $500.00 | Reality Grantmaking Panel 2nd Place | Texas | https://www.cidainc.org/ | General Support | More details | |||
| Council for Watershed Health | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | Southern Coast | Enhancing Trash Assessments and Developing Educational Tools Through Student Participation | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.watershedhealth.org/ | Trash is pervasive in the streets and streams of the Los Angeles River Watershed, a River with one of the nation’s first trash TMDLs. The ecological, health, and aesthetic impacts of trash are increasingly coming into focus. While the solutions and consequences of the trash issue are complex, we can begin with a better inventory of trash extent within the watershed by engaging future scientists, leaders, and voters on the issue. The proposed project is inspired by the pervasiveness of trash at popular recreational sites monitored by Council for Watershed Health (CWH), and leverages an ongoing partnership with Pasadena City College (PCC). The proposed project will aid in coordinating and training local students to assess their own communities for trash, provide a hands-on opportunity for students to engage in a local water quality issue and scientific research, and activate and leverage collected data through the creation of trash maps and educational resources. Students from PCC will be trained to implement a customized trash assessment that, like the riverine trash assessment implemented as part of the 2018 Bight Program, will involve trash surveys that count and categorize trash types. CWH, in partnership with PCC instructors, will create educational resources that highlight the impact of trash and visualize the project’s findings. After data collection concludes, instructor interviews and student focus groups will further inform the development of educational resources, communication strategies, and messaging. The resources and trash maps generated through this program will be shared with decision makers and stakeholders to inform future research, signage, and target best management practices. Additionally, the resources and framework for participation will be made available for other educators to implement in their own classrooms. | More details |
| Creek Lands Conservation | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $23,500.00 | Central Coast | Santa Maria River Healthy Watershed Initiative | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Santa Barbara County | California | https://creeklands.org/ | Our proposed "Santa Maria River Healthy Watershed Initiative" will bring much needed attention and monitoring to this watershed focusing on the highly impaired areas of the Santa Maria River Estuary and Orcutt-Solomon Creek tributary. While some studies and plans have been completed in the past, sufficient action has not been taken to enact plan recommendations or perform consistent monitoring. This project will develop real action in this neglected watershed and its impaired estuary. The Santa Maria River watershed is one of the four largest river systems within the northern range of the federally endangered Southern California Steelhead Distinct Population Segment (DPS) and supports large urban and agricultural areas. This initiative builds partnerships with local organizations and stakeholders to generate concepts for water quality and habitat improvements. Local volunteers are organized to collect monthly water quality monitoring data from the Santa Maria River Estuary, the state's highest legacy DDT estuary. We will develop a framework for an index or report card for the watershed. Education and outreach are an important part of this project and will increase the local visibility and awareness of the river and watershed, providing a valuable nexus with nature and an opportunity to harness local support for future projects. The Santa Maria and Guadalupe areas are home to many agricultural and disadvantaged communities, which have less access to resources about nature or opportunities to recreate in or engage with it. By working with the communities to build this initiative, we foster connections between communities and their local ecosystems. Funds support projects to engage stakeholders, monitor current conditions, further develop existing project concepts, and involve local partners in education and outreach efforts for children, college students, and adults. | More details |
| Defenders of Wildlife/California | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Statewide | Providing Policy Recommendation for Improved Fire Management for More Resilient Forests | Sustainable Forestry | Sacramento | California | http://www.defenders.org | To analyze the current policy terrain and provide recommendations to support ecologically beneficial management of California’s public and private forests, including the increased use of prescribed fire. Defenders of Wildlife/ California will assess the best options for policy change and formulate a suite of recommendations to be utilized by Defenders and shared with other conservation organizations working on resilient forest management. | More details |
| Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Central Sound; DNDA - Longfellow Creek Restoration Sites Map (1).JPG ; Longfellow Creek watershed and basin | Delridge Wetland Park and Longfellow Creek Environmental Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://dnda.org/ | Walking distance from Louisa Boren K-8 STEM, the Delridge Wetland Park is located in Delridge, a highly urbanized setting that’s changing as residential development and gentrification increase. As DNDA moves towards completion of the site, we are seeking funding to consistently engage students at K-8 STEM in wetland education, and in hands-on environmental science lessons once in-person classes resume post-pandemic. The Delridge Wetland Park is part of the Longfellow Creek Watershed, and we plan to expand our environmental engagement into other sites in the watershed where we already lead restoration work: Croft Forest, and Thistle Greenspace. We want to bring other neighborhood youth into these West Seattle urban greenspaces to learn the impacts of environmental awareness and stewardship. As a functioning outdoor classroom, the Delridge Wetland Park is a unique asset to our community as it allows youth, and others in our neighborhood, to engage in systems-based projects while being immersed in Seattle’s urban forest. Contact with nature is essential for healthy mental and cognitive development in young children, and studies have shown that poor access to urban green spaces is associated with behavioral problems, inattention and hyperactive disorders. Although the pandemic has put aspects of this project on hold, we are continuing construction and virtually engaging with students. As we know that the outdoors is a safer place in the pandemic, we await public health guidance that will allow us to be physically in our outdoor classroom again. | More details | |
| Deschutes Estuary Restoration Team | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | South Sound; WRIA_13_map_draft2.jpg ; DERT works in the Deschutes Watershed, a 57 mile long system of streams and lakes. The Deschutes River is the headwaters of Puget Sound,†historically flowed freely into Budd Inlet at the southern tip of Puget Sound in Olympia, Washington. | South Sound Healthy Watershed Program - Phase One | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Washington | http://www.deschutesestuary.org | DERT is currently partnering with Puget Soundkeeper Alliance (PSKA), the Squaxin Island Tribe, Salmon Defense and the Nisqually Indian Tribe to execute Phase 1 of the South Sound Healthy Watershed Program, The Program will help DERT move to the next phase of accomplishing our overall mission to restore and protect the Deschutes Watershed. With this funding, DERT will expand our presence in the Watershed, increase our volunteer base to engage in kayak and boat patrols and conduct citizen science, use drone technology to develop a map that identifies fresh and marine water habitat restoration opportunities and develop nutrient reduction strategies for these over-taxed waters. DERT’s’ South Sound Healthy Watershed Program will address these root causes and seek out new opportunities to improve water quality using the following tools: 1. Boat and kayak patrols to monitor pollution where trained volunteers collect water quality samples and remove detritus; 2. Identification of restoration opportunities through analysis of shorelines used by Native Americans since time immemorial to inform and innovate modern restoration and maintenance in reference to potential sea level rise; and 3. Creation of draft maps of the watershed using drone technology culminating in a story map to educate the public about DERT and partners conservation and restoration efforts while providing them with tangible, interactive maps and video for engagement and future projects. 4. Develop a new and improved program to recruit and train volunteers in South Sound in-water and on-land activities. DERT's South Sound Healthy Watershed Program will become the fulcrum of our water quality and estuary restoration efforts and will engage the community in a new, more active way. | More details | |
| Dirt Corps LLC | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | Central Sound; DC Green-Duwamish sites.jpg ; Main focus: Middle Green (Riverbend, Nelson Side Channel, Bicentennial Park, Minkler Shops) Lower Duwamish (Pt. Rediscovery, 8th Ave, Southern/Rose and Orcas Green Streets) Other sites: Throughout mainstem Duwamish | South King County Community Green Job Training and Lower Green Riparian Revegetation Project Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | https://www.thedirtcorps.com/ | Grant funding will help support the operation of our Green Job Training Program and provide additional support to our riparian re-vegetation project in Tukwila, in which we are partnering with the Green River Coalition through CWM ReGreen 2019 and 2020 Grants. Over a course of two, six week sessions, our program will train twenty participants in the fields of urban forestry, green stormwater infrastructure, and ecological restoration through a combination of classroom and hands-on field training. The goal of our program is to introduce people from underserved communities to accessible green career pathways. Leveraged funding will support two rounds of community outreach and recruitment, twelve weeks of training over two sessions, development of current trainees to become crew leaders/instructors, and curriculum development to continue improving and adapting the program to be relevant for the communities we serve. DIRT currently maintains multiple green stormwater infrastructure facilities in South Seattle and ecological restoration projects on tributaries or main-stem sites along the Green-Duwamish River. These Duwamish Valley centered projects become our teaching sites and further opportunities for advanced skill building. Our training program teaches community members to become stewards of their environment while providing employable job skills. Shared regional goals of environmental stewardship, workforce development, community resilience, and economic equity create important societal linkages while also serving goals of increased water quality benefits through riparian restoration; direct maintenance of stormwater facilities; and increasing the number of skilled people needed to design, install, and maintain these projects. | More details | |
| Duwamish Alive! Coalition | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $10,000.00 | Central Sound; DAC area of work map.JPG ; Our primary area of focus is the Duwamish Watershed, however we have expanded to coordinating with projects and partners throughout the Green-Duwamish Watershed to share information, collaborate and build an awareness of the entire system. | Duwamish Alive General Community Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | http://www.earthcorps.org/pugetsoundsteward.php | With Covid's significant impact on our coalition partners and communities, our 2021 plan is based on adaptability and resilience. We will continue to advance our mission of improving the health of the Duwamish Watershed through restoration work, education and promoting stewardship, especially long term community stewardship. With this new challenge of Covid adding to those of climate change and equity and justice issues, we are adjusting our efforts to smaller restoration projects, especially those that have been overlooked in communities of diversity but can add great value to improving the health of urbanized streams and creeks. We will continue our efforts in habitat restoration and education within the watershed by building in flexibility for our 2 primary Duwamish Alive! volunteer events next year is key, adjusting them to the appropriate health requirements now that we have experience and clarity of what is required. We are especially focusing on Longfellow Creek's many various project, facilitating coordination and sharing of expertise throughout its sub-basin but also now focusing on two areas that have been overlooked - private homeowner property of the creek and the Jefferson Golf Course which has a significant segment of the creek. The goal is to personally engage homeowners who have creek property in providing healthily habitat and water quality by education and resources for restoration efforts with the goal of creating a neighborhood of creek stewardship. This is a new, holistic approach, forming a team of DAC partners that specialize in vegetation, water quality, fish/wildlife and community starting with a pilot residence and then expanding with nearby neighbors. For the homeowners, it changes the creek from a liability into an asset that will be carefully stewarded. Delridge is an area of low income, communities of diversity with few programs available to help these homeowners in creating healthy habitat and water quality. | More details | |
| EarthCorps | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $30,000.00 | Central Sound; Commencement Bay project location maps_EarthCorps.pdf ; Commencement Bay and the Puyallup Watershed, specifically the Puyallup Tribe sites of Yowkwala and Squally Beach that are part of the Commencement Bay Stewardship Collaborative (maps of both sites are uploaded here, along with a CBSC overview map) | Commencement Bay Initiative: Restoration of Puyallup Tribe’s Squally Beach and Yowkwala Sites | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Washington | http://www.earthcorps.org | EarthCorps is a core partner of an innovative experiment in community-based restoration taking place in the coastal area and surrounding watersheds of Commencement Bay. In the Tacoma region, Commencement Bay has been transformed from one of the most polluted spots in the country to a national model for recovery, where restored habitats support critical populations of birds and fish alongside once heavily-polluted industrial areas. The Commencement Bay Trustees include National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Puyallup Tribe of Indians, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, Washington Department of Ecology, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Washington Department of Natural Resources. Since 1998, they have worked to restore over 300 acres of habitat throughout the Puyallup River Watershed. The Trustees developed the Commencement Bay Stewardship Collaborative (CBSC) to ensure that the habitat they created and the salmon and birds that depend on these habitats can grow and thrive. In 2014, the Trustees entrusted the ongoing Commencement Bay stewardship of 15 individual sites to EarthCorps. Rose Foundation’s investment will leverage funding from CBSC and allow EarthCorps to expand restoration efforts at two Puyallup Tribe CBSC sites. Due to the structure of the consent decree and funding limitations, comprehensive restoration at these two sites has not been possible to date. Your funds would allow us to activate upland forest restoration that links to the Yowkwala site’s backshore where we have focused restoration over the past six years. At Squally Beach, your support would allow us to control aggressive weeds on adjacent lands that threaten to set back current restoration efforts. Ultimately, your investment would activate and link restoration on a fuller expanse of the Puyallup Tribe’s CBSC lands, ensuring these sites can safeguard water quality and healthy habitat for salmon and other marine wildlife for years to come. | More details | |
| Earthrise Law Center at Lewis & Clark College | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | South Sound ; Central Sound ; North Sound ; Salish Sea; Earthrise Maps for Rose Puget Sound 2020.pdf ; The project works to protect all of Puget Sound, as it focuses on nitrogen and toxics, which move throughout the Sound from the original sources. This project also targets Budd Inlet and the Deschutes River basin, in particular. See attached maps. | Legal Advocacy for a Cleaner Puget Sound | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | http://law.lclark.edu/centers/earthrise/ | Earthrise Law Center (“Earthriseâ€) will continue its existing targeted litigation, and initiate new litigation, to help control both point source (industrial and municipal dischargers) and nonpoint source (run-off from agriculture, forestry, and urban areas) pollution into Puget Sound. In this litigation, Earthrise will represent Northwest Environmental Advocates (“NWEAâ€), which is also submitting a parallel proposal for this project. Together with additional outside co-counsel, Earthrise and NWEA will prosecute several lawsuits designed to use the “hammer†of statutes like the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act to change federal and state agency decision-making in Washington. In turn, this litigation will require changes by the State of Washington, and the federal agencies that oversee Washington, to improve the foundational programs affecting pollution into Puget Sound. The litigation targets key federal and state agency decision-making processes, with the ultimate goal of bringing about on-the-ground reductions in pollution into Puget Sound. This project targets multiple forms of Puget Sound pollution. In particular, the lawsuits focus on nutrient pollution, which causes water quality problems such as low dissolved oxygen, massive algal blooms, and food web changes. Focusing on nutrient pollution is strategic because nutrient treatment technology also removes many regulated and unregulated toxic pollutants. Additionally, one of the cases involved in this project directly targets water quality standards for toxic pollutants. This project has two main goals: (1) to control nonpoint source run-off into Puget Sound, and (2) to change the fundamental Clean Water Act programs in Washington to better address both point and nonpoint source pollution into the Sound. | More details | |
| EarthTeam | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $7,500.00 | Sacramento Valley | Upper Sand Creek Basin Restoration Project - Marsh Creek Watershed | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Contra Costa County | California | http://www.earthteam.net | Fourteen low-income students from Antioch High will be recruited as research interns for one year to work with the Friends of Marsh Creek Watershed, and Contra Costa Flood Control District to restore native habitat, assess litter contamination, and survey water quality in the Upper Sand Creek Basin. Interns will study the correlation between the restoration of native vegetation and water quality. They will also address litter concentration issues and waterway blockage at the urban drool inflow at the Upper Sand Creek Basin. The Upper Sand Creek Basin is an excellent site for restoration efforts and WQ monitoring because it was constructed recently and revegetated using native plants collected from the basin before excavation. Despite restoration efforts, the basin requires study and maintenance to ensure the effective filtration of water through stream-side willows and the thorough re-installation of diverse native plant species throughout open spaces. The research team will use scientific methods and GLOBE instrumentation to perform WQ surveying, invasive species removal, litter mapping and clean-up, and native plant installations in the Upper Sand Creek Basin for one year, with in-class training and a minimum of 10 field days. Interns will implement an outreach campaign to community members with a series of on-campus presentations and one to two community events at the basin, including the fourth annual Earth Day event. The project has essential long-term ecological restoration objectives that include the viability of the stream for endangered species, including the red-legged frog and California tiger salamander. Other species that call the basin home include red-winged blackbirds, bobcats, owls, and more. | More details |
| Earthworks | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Protecting CA Wildlands from the “Critical Minerals†Agenda Toward a Just and Clean RE Transition | Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Inyo | California | http://earthworksaction.org | To produce and disseminate a report on the fallacy of “critical minerals†rhetoric, preferred policy options and alternatives to new mining for the renewable energy transition, and public lands at risk from unregulated mining. California wildlands, notably sacred sites near Conglomerate Mesa, Panamint Valley, and areas around Death Valley, are at risk from U.S. policy proposals to fast-track new mining for so called “critical minerals.†Earthworks and allies will use this report to inform key members of California’s Congressional delegation and the Biden Administration as part of an early 2021 congressional briefing on critical minerals, and advocate for comprehensive mining reform toward a more circular economy and less new mining on public lands. | More details |
| Education, Economics, Environmental, Climate and Health Organization | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Mississippi | EEECHO’s mission is to support the efforts of communities seeking a better quality of life, through equity based, holistic approaches. This project will continue and expand educational and training outreach and build EECHO's organizational and community capacity to bolster understanding of flooding, environmental pollution, and climate change. Their continued activities will include challenging development of wetlands, activating community members and local politicians, and conducting workforce training for a variety of environmental careers. | More details | |||
| Elyria, Globeville, Swansea & Partners | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Sustainable Forestry ; Environmental Justice | Colorado | https://egs-partners.com/ | Elyria, Globeville, Swansea & Partners focuses on outreach, advocacy and education on environmental issues and community development in North Denver. This year, EGS & Partners will focus on educating and training community members around rain barrels and urban flooding, and working with these community members to then install and maintain the rain barrels. | More details | ||
| Environment in the Public Interest | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $12,000.00 | Central Coast | Santa Maria River Watershed Steelhead Trout Enhancement | Water Resources/Watershed Protection; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Other | San Luis Obispo County ; Santa Barbara County | California | http://www.epicenteronline.org | "The Santa Maria River watershed is one of the four largest river systems within the northern range of the federally endangered Southern California Steelhead Distinct Population Segment (DPS). The Santa Maria River watershed supports a self-sustaining population of rainbow trout (the resident life-history form of O mykiss) in the Sisquoc River watershed. It also supports anadromous spawning of adult steelhead (the ocean-going life-history form of O. mykiss) during some wet years. Nearly the entire Santa Maria River watershed, including the Cuyama and Sisquoc rivers, are designated critical habitat for the Southern California Steelhead DPS. (Stillwater Sciences 2012, Santa Maria River Instream Flow Study: Flow Recommendations for Steelhead Passage, p ES-2)." In 2012, NOAA Fisheries Service released the “Southern Steelhead Recovery Plan,†concluding that increasing stream flow in the Santa Maria River watershed is a vital step in restoring steelhead in all of Southern California. Twitchell Dam on the Cuyama River, tributary to the Santa Maria River, has been identified as a major obstacle to steelhead passage as Twitchell Dam, limits the timing and quantity of flow into the Santa Maria River. This prevents Steelhead fry from reaching the Pacific, and ocean dwelling Steelhead from reaching Sisquoc spawning habitat. The 2013 Flow Study provides a detailed plan for restoring the Steelhead population using “modified operation of Twitchell Dam to approximate pre-dam hydrologic conditions in the mainstem Santa Maria River…†Stillwater Sciences 2012, Santa Maria River Instream Flow Study: Flow Recommendations for Steelhead Passage (“Stillwater Studyâ€). Since the conclusion of the Flow Study no corrective action has occurred and the flow regime remains unchanged. In 2017 SLO Coastkeeper and Los Padres Forest Watch initiated litigation seeking to improve flows for the benefit of Steelhead Trout under State code 5937 and the Endangered Species Act. | More details |
| Food & Water Watch | Consumer Products Fund | 2020 | $30,000.00 | Holding the Industrial Meat Production System Accountable | Consumer Products | Nationwide | http://foodandwaterwatch.org/ | Food & Water Watch (FWW) requests funding to support our continuing work to hold the industrial meat production system in the United States accountable for many environmental and public health harms it creates. Our organization takes a holistic approach to addressing our broken food system, employing robust campaigns that use legal tools, organizing, communications and outreach and strategic research to counter wrongful industry practices. This funding will be used to allow us to further expand the legal work we are doing to stop the big meat producers from misrepresenting their products to the public, as well as opposing new swine inspection protocols that will mean more adulterated pork entering into our food system. Our goal is to use the courts to stop these practices from continuing and force a more honest and protective system of meat production in the US. | More details | ||
| Foothill Conservancy | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $6,750.00 | Sierra Nevada | Mokelumne River and Watershed Protection Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Amador County | California | http://www.foothillconservancy.org | Foothill Conservancy's Mokelumne River and Watershed Protection Program seeks long-term solutions for protecting the watershed’s valuable natural attributes, including clean water and habitat relied on by people, fish, and wildlife. The program has four broad goals: 1) Ensure that local and interregional water and use planning decisions do not harm the Mokelumne River and watershed and protect water quality. 2) Ensure continued protection of the Mokelumne River's extraordinary cultural, historical, recreational, and scenic values. Human and natural stressors continue to affect the Mokelumne River watershed, exacerbated by climate change and the threat of larger more severe fires. 3) Protect and restore wildlife habitat within the Mokelumne watershed through a combination of actions, including ecologically sound forest restoration, proper management of existing hydroelectric projects, and native anadromous fish reintroduction to the upper Mokelumne River. 4) Develop a larger, younger, and more diverse cadre of advocates for our rivers, watersheds, lands, and communities. | More details |
| Foothills Water Network | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Save the Bear River: Stop Centennial Dam | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Nevada County ; Placer County | California | http://www.foothillswaternetwork.org | To stop the proposed Centennial dam, which would flood the last free-flowing and publicly accessible stretch of the Bear River, destroying the native fishery, over 100 Native American cultural sites, popular recreation opportunities, and nearly 35 homes. | More details |
| Foothills Water Network | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $6,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Protect the Yuba and Bear Rivers and Stop Centennial Dam Campaign | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy | Nevada County ; Placer County ; Yuba County | California | http://www.foothillswaternetwork.org | To protect and restore the Yuba, Bear and American rivers through active engagement in hydro-power re-licensing efforts, and to lead the coalition challenging the proposed Centennial Dam. | More details |
| Friends of Auburn Ravine | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $4,200.00 | Sierra Nevada | Auburn Ravine Creek Juvenile Salmon and Steelhead Survey | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Placer County | California | https://www.auburnravine.org/ | To survey the juvenile Steelhead and Chinook Salmon populations in Auburn Ravine and advocate for the protection and enhancement of fish habitat. | More details |
| Friends of Pierce County | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $7,000.00 | South Sound ; Central Sound; ; The project's focus will be on the shoreline areas of Pierce County, in Puget Sound. | Saving Shorelines | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | http://www.friendsofpiercecounty.org | Shorelines are under constant pressure from many angles. Development and buffer reduction are one of the main negative impacts to Puget Sound. When a homeowner wants to reduce a shoreline buffer, they must apply for a shoreline variance with the county. Under the new Pierce County Shoreline regulations, cumulative impacts are to be considered by the Hearing Examiner when deciding to allow shoreline buffer reductions. The problem is the Hearing Examiner only considers how future development will impact a shoreline area - not what is currently built (as required by state law). In order to establish a precedent for better shoreline protections, we need to be in position to hold the county accountable to better enforce its own regulations and consider the cumulative impacts to Puget Sound shorelines within Pierce County (which are mandatory in the County's new Shoreline regulations). Friends of Pierce County seeks funding to enlist technical experts, conduct research, educate community members and work with county government to reassess, better define and more thoughtfully apply its shoreline regulations when deciding on cumulative impacts from shoreline development. Funding would also be used for office equipment and mailers. | More details | |
| Friends of Plumas Wilderness | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Bear Fire Photo Project | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Sustainable Forestry | Butte County ; Plumas County | California | https://plumaswilderness.org/ | To establish 12 permanent photopoints at prominent locations on the rim of the Middle Fork Feather River Canyon to document post-fire effects following the devastating North Complex Fire. | More details |
| Friends of Sausal Creek | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Water Quality Improvement through Study, Monitoring, and Restoration | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Alameda County | California | https://www.sausalcreek.org/ | The major program areas of FOSC are restoration, monitoring, and environmental education--all intertwined and supported by volunteers, staff, and board members. Since our founding 24 years ago, our work in the watershed has revolved around improving water quality and ensuring the survival of creek species, including the native fish populations, by encouraging native plant growth and by stabilizing stream and tributary banks. This type of work requires both a long view and a persistent, year-in-year-out, on-the-ground effort. This grant will provide essential funding for our core areas of work in two complementary projects: The Dimond Canyon Erosion Control Project (Erosion Control Project) and the Rainbow Trout Conservation and Management Plan (Trout Plan). Monitoring, maintaining, and improving water quality form the core of these projects. Success of both the Erosion Control Project and the Trout Plan will rely on assessing riparian habitat damage and threats, monitoring interventions, determining necessary restoration and remediation actions, and implementing those actions with the ongoing support of our dedicated volunteers. At the same time, we will be training the next generation of local citizen scientists and environmentalists to carry on the work and help protect this resource. Rose Foundation funding will pay staff to oversee and coordinate these efforts, purchase supplies and equipment, and support other program and administrative costs. | More details |
| Friends Of Skagit Beaches | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | North Sound; Anacortes Storm Outfalls.jpg ; Anacortes is on Fidalgo Island in North Puget Sound. The city limits include ~60% of the island’s shoreline. The city has 79 storm water outfalls draining into Fidalgo Bay, Padilla Bay, Burrows Bay, Guemes Channel and Rosario Strait. See map. | Anacortes Citizen Science Water Quality Initiative | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Washington | https://skagitbeaches.org/ | The City of Anacortes has 79 storm water outfalls that are subject to monitoring for water quality under their storm water discharge permit. The City meets the permit requirements for monitoring; however, the Storm Water Division is interested in a greater volume of data collection. This project establishes a partnership between Friends of Skagit Beaches and the City of Anacortes to make available additional resources by using a crew of trained citizen science volunteers. The City will provide required monitoring criteria, quality assurance guidelines, and be responsible for any lab analyses of samples collected under this project for certain contaminants. Collected data will be documented, analyzed and available to residents and other constituents. Friends of Skagit Beaches (Friends) will train, outfit, and coordinate citizen science volunteers to take field measurements and collect samples from storm water outfalls in the city. Volunteers will be recruited from the Salish Sea Stewards program. These volunteers receive general training on the marine ecology, critical eco-systems and habitats, and organizations in Skagit County working to preserve, protect, and restore those critical resources. Friends is one of the organizations affiliated with this program and routinely uses Salish Sea Stewards volunteers to support our projects. Other interested community members will also be invited to participate. This project will establish baseline data on Anacortes storm water discharges into local bays and waterways. This will enable the City to prioritize their discharge sampling and help to identify outfalls that require action to mitigate pollution at upstream sources. By involving local citizens in storm water monitoring and making data publicly available, the project will increase visibility of water quality issues and engage the public in seeking solutions to problems that impact their water quality. | More details | |
| Friends of the Los Angeles River | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | Southern Coast | Rewilding the LA River through Education and Community Engagement | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Los Angeles County | California | https://folar.org/ | For the first time since the River was channelized, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studied and approved a plan that looks at removing concrete from stretches of the channel, making way for vegetated, widened, and terraced River banks. The ARBOR Plan focuses on an 11-mile stretch from Griffith Park to downtown Los Angeles, the longest continuous natural-bottom section of River where vegetation and wildlife are plentiful. It sets the gold standard for urban river restoration, identifying places where wetland habitat can be restored, and water quality can be improved without compromising flood protection. FoLAR is focused on a future for the LA River where equitable public access and ecological restoration are prioritized – removing concrete from the River where appropriate is the best way to accomplish this. That’s why we are calling for over 100 continuous acres of open space along the east bank of the River in the Glendale Narrows. We support concrete removal and meaningful ecological restoration at the Taylor Yard G2 River Park project, which will reconnect people with nature, and we oppose the Casitas Lofts Luxury Development, which threatens to choke off public access to and restoration of the River. Promoting green infrastructure as a means to return wildlife habitat, clean runoff, and recharge aquifers, while also improving public health and community wellness are key to this effort. Now more than ever FoLAR must continue to inspire and involve diverse community members - especially those in the disadvantaged communities proximal to the 100 acres - through the Great LA River CleanUp, Source to Sea watershed education, and Crack the Concrete Community Engagement programs. | More details |
| Georgetown Open Space Committee | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change & Energy ; Other | Washington | https://www.seattleparksfoundation.org | This group advances parks and open space improvements in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle. They will host a block party to kick off a series of five coordinated neighborhood discussions about climate induced flooding and emergency planning. From these discussions, they will create a coordinated neighborhood response team and plan to address flooding and other emergencies, including how they involve the most vulnerable such as the elderly and disabled. This organization is also conducting community mobilizations around green infrastructure as part of a separate Rose Foundation grant. | More details | ||
| Georgetown Open Space Committee | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Washington | https://www.seattleparksfoundation.org/project/georgetown-open-space-priorities/ | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| GMO Free USA dba Toxin Free USA | Consumer Products Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | End the Practice of Toxic Chemical Desiccation of Food Crops (The Desiccation Project) | Consumer Products | Nationwide | https://gmofreeusa.org/ | The agricultural practice of food crop desiccation with toxic chemicals is a public health issue. Glyphosate desiccation is generating much scrutiny and companies have begun sourcing glyphosate-free crops. This is welcome, but we believe a single-chemical focus could be an exercise in greenwashing. Though glyphosate desiccation is widespread, other equally or more dangerous herbicides such as paraquat, diquat and glufosinate may be used. The most recent U.S. data (2016) shows paraquat use rose nearly 200% to 14 million pounds since 2009. But USDA doesn’t include glyphosate or paraquat in annual testing of pesticide residues in food. Why? HRI Labs detected paraquat in beans, peas and lentils, likely from pre-harvest desiccation. Our project will investigate the prevalence of desiccant chemicals (glyphosate, paraquat, diquat and glufosinate) in whole and processed foods and use the resulting report to pressure the food industry to end the practice of chemical desiccation of food crops. | More details | ||
| Great Peninsula Conservancy | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | South Sound; Project Location Map_Updated.pdf ; This project will take place along the shoreline of Lynch Cove, where the Union River flows in Hood Canal, one of the four main basins of the Puget Sound. (See attached map). | Klingel-Bryan-Beard Wetlands Wildlife Refuge Shoreline Planting Project | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://greatpeninsula.org/ | Great Peninsula Conservancy’s (GPC) Klingel-Bryan-Beard Wetlands Wildlife Refuge protects just under one-hundred acres of estuary wetland and forest buffer near the mouth of the Union River. This bird-watchers’ haven is a piece of a community wide conservation effort to protect Lynch Cove, the nutrient rich estuary where the Union River flows into Hood Canal, one of the four main basins of the Puget Sound. Lynch Cove provides critical habitat for fives species of salmon, including Endangered Species Act (ESA)-listed Hood Canal summer chum and chinook salmon. Both species depend on the near-shore waters of the Lynch Cove estuary for food and protection from predators – and because of the large-scale community conservation work in this area, young salmon continue to find these things. This community effort - led by non-profits, public agencies, private landowners, and volunteers - succeeded in permanently protecting more than 540 acres of estuary and near-shore habitat of Lynch Cove. Through two previous, large-scale restoration projects, GPC and partners removed fill and structures to restore estuary habitat on GPC's Klingel-Bryan-Beard Wetland Wildlife Refuge on Lynch Cove. Our currently-proposed project will allow GPC to engage the community in the next step of this wider effort: installing a native plant community along the estuary shoreline. GPC will recruit community volunteers, educate the volunteers about watershed health and stewardship, and lead the volunteers in invasive species removal and native plant installation on eight acres of shoreline. Removing invasive species and establishing a healthy, climate-change resilient native plant community will create wildlife habitat, provide shading for juvenile salmon feeding grounds, and preserve water quality in Hood Canal. Engaging volunteers in the project will educate the community about their watershed, local ecosystems, and the importance of watershed stewardship to protect our natural resources. | More details | |
| Greater Treme Consortium, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space ; Climate Change & Energy | Louisiana | http://greatertreme.org/ | This project will pursue the development of an environmental education/renewable clean energy/cultural arts site, on a vacant lot which the group owns. Funding will be used to match other potential resources to further their goal to combine an outdoor environmental education component with cultural aspects of the Treme community. They will continue to use artwork to draw in community members to then be able to explain how these small green infrastructure projects that they have already installed help reduce flooding and why increasing green infrastructure is important to the environment and health. The artwork is a link to the community and opens doors to have conversations about green infrastructure, climate change, and what we all can do to combat its effects. | More details | ||
| Greater Treme Consortium, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | https://greatertreme.org/ | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| Greater Treme Consortium, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $200.00 | Reality Grantmaking Panel Finalist | Louisiana | https://greatertreme.org/ | General Support | More details | |||
| Green Futures Lab | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Central Sound; 2008_10268m_WRIA8map-D4.pdf ; The Sweetgrass Living Shorelines Restoration project will locate prototypes in the urbanized freshwaters of the Lake Washington Basin and Ship Canal, and the salt and/or brackish waters where the basin drainage outflows into Central Puget Sound. | Sweetgrass Living Shorelines Restoration Project: Fabrication, Stewardship and Education | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | http://greenfutures.washington.edu/ | The purpose of the Sweetgrass Living Shorelines Restoration Project is to test new ways to retrofit existing armored urban shorelines with living shorelines that can improve water quality, increase salmon habitat, and restore cultural keystone species such as Ka’qsxW or sweetgrass (common three-square bulrush) in the Lake Washington Basin, Ship Canal and Central Puget Sound. This project will build on the planning and design groundwork established by the Sweetgrass Urban Shorelines Working Group, which is bringing together planners, scientists, regulators, designers, and community stakeholders to reimagine living shorelines that are connected to local communities. With funding provided by King County, the Sweetgrass Living Shorelines Restoration Project is in the process of selecting sites and developing innovative living shoreline designs that can be monitored and evaluated for their effectiveness in improving habitat and water quality. Rose Foundation support will fund fabrication and stewardship of these projects, with community education and engagement targeting American Indian youth and young adults to participate in the reestablishment of Ka’qsxW and other critical shoreline habitats. Rose Foundation funding for this project will support collaboration of the University of Washington (UW) Green Futures Lab (GFL) and EarthCorps in community outreach, material costs, construction, deployment, operation and maintenance of demonstration project designs, with in-kind outreach support from the Na’ah Illahee Fund and United Indians of All Tribes Foundation. The funds will enable the GFL and EarthCorps to involve Indigenous young adults, and support the cultural connection local Indigenous peoples have to the water, surrounding environment and diminishing salmon populations. | More details | |
| Green River Coalition | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $39,730.00 | Central Sound; Master Map.jpg ; Continue work within the Soos Creek Basin (Middle Green River) Additional sites within the main stem Green River in Kent including Riverview Park (Lower Green River) Additional tributaries: Mill/Springbrook Creek (Lower Green River) | Soos Creek Basin Community Building, City of Kent/Green River Collaboration, and Operations Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Washington | http://www.greenrivercoalition.org/ | Grant project funding will support our new and ongoing projects including our CWM ReGreen 2018 grant based on restoration work within the Soos Creek Basin and our CWM ReGreen the Green 2019 grant based on restoration work within the lower Green River, Tukwila. We are also in the process of applying for the ReGreen 2020 grant, which will continue our restoration efforts within the Soos Creek Basin while expanding work in the City of Kent on the main stem Green River and on the Mill Creek/Springbrook Creek tributaries. We will be closely coordinating the work we do in Kent with our Green the Green Network partners across three existing grants to continue and expand our coordination and mutual support on the Green River from Tukwila to Auburn. We anticipate starting invasive removal work with the City of Kent in the Mill/Springbrook basin later this summer. The Rose Foundation grant will help support the initial phase of this work until the anticipated Regreen 2020 grant, anticipated to be awarded in fall 2020. This project will also help to support employment for our part-time operations manager, who performs many of the oversight responsibilities including grant management, community outreach, and fundraising. The retainment of an operations manager has been a pivotal asset in increasing the overall capacity of our organization. | More details | |
| Greenfield Walking Group | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Climate Change & Energy ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Kern County | California | To support the engagement of South Kern residents in health-promoting recreation opportunities, and community advocacy efforts to prioritize inclusive land use and improved infrastructure in the county budget and Kern General Plan Update process. | More details | |
| Greenfield Walking Group | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $330.00 | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | California | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini Grant | More details | ||||
| Harbor WildWatch | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $14,200.00 | South Sound; kgi watershed map.jpg ; HWW calls the Key Peninsula–Gig Harbor–Islands (KGI) Watershed within Pierce and Kitsap Counties home. The KGI watershed covers over 100,000 acres, with 179 miles of saltwater shoreline and 70,000 residents across two peninsulas and several islands. | Community Science: Collecting Meaningful Data to Encourage Stewardship in the Salish Sea | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Washington | https://www.harborwildwatch.org/ | Harbor WildWatch’s (HWW) Community Science Experience (CSE) trains and guides citizens to collect meaningful scientific data at select south Puget Sound sites. This program includes beach monitoring at 10 locations, salmon observation, water quality monitoring, Rockfish surveys, beach clean-ups and, the newly added, sea bird and eelgrass surveys. Efforts in 2018-19 brought a total of 108 events with 1,506 community scientist participants. In 2020-21, HWW is seeking grant funding to fund existing CSE events, implement the newly developed monitoring protocol for eelgrass monitoring, expand the number of water quality sampling sites, continue to increase participation through improved promotion, and complete trend analysis of the last seven years of data using the GIS. | More details | |
| Health Research Institute | Consumer Products Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Tested Clean | Consumer Products | Nationwide | https://hrilabs.org/testedclean/ | Pesticides are pervasive. Even organic products can be contaminated. The Tested Clean program informs consumers that manufacturers have gone the extra mile--excluding pesticides and verifying this through rigorous, independent testing. Tested Clean is modeled after the highly successful Non-GMO Project that certifies over 60,000 consumer products. With expertise in certification and testing, Health Research Institute is well positioned to offer a similar certification for pesticides. HRI’s CEO and Chief Scientist was a leader in the development of the Non-GMO Project. He also designed and implemented ProTerra, an international sustainability certification evaluating millions of tons of soy yearly. The Tested Clean seal, already on 30 products in over 500 stores, informs product choices by consumers. This year, we aim to recruit 40 pioneering companies to offer foods that are test-verified and labeled Tested Clean to assure consumers they are buying the cleanest, safest foods available. | More details | ||
| Healthy Community Resources and Advocacy | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security | Louisiana | https://www.hcsnola.org/ | This group will continue to build and advance green infrastructure through community education. They will establish an Urban Agricultural Green Infrastructure site that satisfies the dual purpose of addressing repetitive flooding via green infrastructure techniques, and helping increase access to healthy food choices for residents. In a pilot program based on a community needs assessment, residents were interested in learning home-based growing techniques in order to increase food security while applying green infrastructure interventions. | More details | ||
| Healthy Community Resources and Advocacy | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | https://www.hcsnola.org/ | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| Healthy Community Resources and Advocacy | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $100.00 | Reality Grantmaking Panel Participant | Louisiana | https://www.hcsnola.org/ | General Support | More details | |||
| Hollygrove Neighbors Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy | Louisiana | https://www.facebook.com/hollygroveNOLA/ | Hollygrove Neighbors is an association of dedicated residents working to promote a safe, clean, and proud Hollygrove community. This project will continue their work installing and maintaining green infrastructure, convening community members, repurposing vacant lots, and spreading their message to to build a more sustainable future. | More details | ||
| Hollygrove Neighbors Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | https://www.facebook.com/hollygroveNOLA/ | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| Hollygrove Neighbors Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $1,000.00 | Reality Grantmaking Panel 1st Place | Louisiana | https://www.facebook.com/hollygroveNOLA/ | General Support | More details | |||
| Humboldt Baykeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | North Coast | Mad River Toxics Initiative | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice | Humboldt County | California | http://www.humboldtbaykeeper.org | The 2021 Mad River Toxics Initiative will advance one of the region’s most pressing water quality issues: legacy dioxin contamination that threatens the drinking water supplies for two-thirds of Humboldt County residents. The former McNamara & Peepe lumber mill is located adjacent to a Mad River tributary near the city of Blue Lake. Fungicide spills from the mill in the late 1960s killed tens of thousands of fish in the Mad River. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in the 1990s, delegating responsibility for site cleanup to the California Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC). This site has been a major concern for decades due to its proximity to the Mad River, just a mile upstream from the municipal drinking water supply wells owned and operated by the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District. However, with no viable Responsible Party to be held liable, there has been little opportunity to press for further cleanup and restoration of the site until December 2018, when DTSC announced that it will develop a new “Remedial Action Plan†to contain contaminated groundwater plume that is moving toward the Mad River. In 2019, the agency conducted groundwater monitoring and found very high dioxins levels. Its new cleanup and restoration plan was delayed until 2021. This new plan will be subject to public review and comment afforded by the California Environmental Quality Act, providing the first opportunity since 1998 to press for meaningful action on the site. Humboldt Baykeeper has made progress on this issue in the past year, but more work remains to be done to protect and restore water quality, including groundwater, surface waters, municipal drinking water supplies, and private wells. Working with scientists, community members, and government agencies, we will use a multi-pronged approach to reduce water quality impacts and restore the health of critical riparian habitats while protecting drinkable, fishable, swimmable waters from further degradation. | More details |
| Indigenous Permaculture Program | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $4,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Santiago Food Project | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Alameda County ; San Francisco County | California | http://indigenouspermaculture.org/ | To grow and distribute food through the Santiago Food Project Garden and provide bilingual Spanish/English programing based on traditional indigenous agricultural practices to communities in the San Antonio and Fruitvale Districts of Oakland. | More details |
| Jefferson Land Trust | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Salish Sea; Jefferson Land Trust 2020 Properties Map.jpg ; We work across all 10 watersheds that flow to the Salish Sea in Jefferson County. This project will focus on two: - Chai-yahk-wh Preserve on the shores of Marrowstone Island. - Snow Creek Forest Preserve in Quilcene. | Stream to Sea: Community-Supported Stream and Wetland Stewardship | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://saveland.org/ | We respectfully request The Rose Foundation’s support of 40,000 over two years to help improve Salish Sea water quality through our Streams to Sea project. This project will enhance the health of our streams through community supported restoration and stewardship, and create and implement a Wetland Ecological Health Assessment protocol for our wetlands in Jefferson County, all of which feed into the Salish Sea and support threatened marine wildlife such as salmon and orcas. Stream Restoration As a result of our Forest and Stream Ecological Health Assessment in 2018-2019, we discovered that stream and forest health across our 23 preserves is suffering from the lack of coarse woody debris: in-stream log jams (that add complexity and sediment retention) and on-land down logs (that act as sponges during the longer seasonal dry periods we expect to see as a result of climate change). Without coarse woody debris in our streams, water quality suffers during both high and low water flow periods and jeopardizes the fish and amphibians that make their homes there. Without intervention, coarse woody debris would take hundreds of years to develop naturally. Maintaining stewardship of these areas in the short and long-term ensures that water quality remains optimal, and wildlife habitat and migration corridors are enhanced forever. Wetland Ecological Health Assessment Protocol Your support of our Stream to Sea project will allow us to create a Wetland Ecological Health Assessment protocol that complements those for forests and streams we developed and deployed in 2018-2019. We haven’t had the technical expertise and staff capacity to fully assess wetland water quality and health levels across the numerous freshwater wetlands that dot our lands, often associated with salmon streams. Following assessment of current wetland health conditions and stewardship needs, your support will then allow us to implement necessary wetland restoration and stewardship improvements in 2022. | More details | |
| Klamath Forest Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $6,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Del Norte County ; Humboldt County ; Shasta County ; Siskiyou County ; Trinity County | California | http://klamathforestalliance.org | To participate in the development of USFS projects on the Klamath, Six Rivers, and Siskiyou Crest forests, monitor and document fire suppression efforts, and advocate forest and rare species protection in the Western Klamath. | More details |
| Kwiáht | Orca Fund | 2020 | $31,198.00 | Salish Sea; Kwiaht project location map.pdf ; Kwiaht’s food-web monitoring program collected specimens of plankton, forage fish, juvenile and adult Chinook salmon on southeast Lopez Island, just 12 miles north of Admiralty Inlet, an area frequented by SRO, whale watchers and salmon fishers. | Sustainable community monitoring of managed toxics in the SRO food web | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Washington | http://www.kwiaht.org | Forage fish such as Pacific Herring and Pacific Sand Lance are key mediators of the impacts of Puget Sound water quality on Chinook salmon and the Southern Residents that feed selectively on them. Unlike endangered salmon and cetaceans, moreover, forage fish are abundant, easily sampled, short-lived, mobile, and largely panmictic throughout the Salish Sea. Monitoring toxic loading of forage fish can serve as a reliable and sustainable alternative to direct measurement of toxics in SRO, which is comparatively costly and opportunistic. Forage fish toxic loads should also respond more quickly and sensitively to any changes in overall Puget Sound water quality, on a timescale of 2-3 years, rather than a decade or more in the case of accumulations in long-lived mammals. This project builds upon a well-established citizen-science program monitoring juvenile Chinook outmigrants and their forage fish prey in the San Juan Islands, which already contributes to the state’s Marine Waters reporting system, by adding annual measures of four families of bio-accumulative toxics in herring and sand lance populations preyed on by Chinook salmon. Consistently pooled annual samples of over 500 forage fish (under current federal and state permits) will provide a high level of statistical confidence and sensitivity to change; while an existing trained volunteer base and local community-based laboratory will reduce costs and ensure sustainability of annual fish collections and processing. | More details | |
| La Asociacion de Gente Unida por el Agua | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Fresno County ; Kern County ; Kings County ; Madera County ; Merced County ; Tulare County | California | http://www.communitywatercenter.org | To advocate for safe, clean and affordable drinking water in low-income communities of color in California's San Joaquin Valley, by working to clean up existing pollution and preventing further contamination. | More details |
| Laguna Creek Watershed Council | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $2,000.00 | Sacramento Valley | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Sacramento County | California | https://lagunacreek.org/ | To develop and disseminate educational information on the effects of climate change in the Laguna Creek watershed and the Sacramento region, and work with partners to create a mitigation strategy focused on tree planting. | More details |
| Little Growers, Inc | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Agriculture/Gardens/Food Security ; Environmental Justice | Florida | https://www.ccfei.org/partners/little-growers-inc/ | Little Growers seeks to prepare the community to fight the adverse effects of climate change, including flooding, heat and pollutants. They seek to build a localized green economy that provides jobs and ownership opportunities to local residents that restore the environment, while investing in building the health, wealth and resilience of communities most impacted by climate change. Working with the cities of Palm Bay and Melbourne, they are focusing their work on the role of green infrastructure, including tees and gardens, in climate mitigation and adaptation. This project includes continuing their work in community gardens and helping residents impacted by climate-related flooding become active participants in stormwater mitigation solutions through sustainable landscaping. | More details | ||
| Little Growers, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Florida | https://www.ccfei.org/partners/little-growers-inc/ | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| Little Growers, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $100.00 | Reality Grantmaking Panel Participant | Florida | https://www.ccfei.org/partners/little-growers-inc/ | General Support | More details | |||
| Local Ecology and Agriculture Fremont | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $3,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Alameda County | California | http://www.fremontleaf.org | To scale up activities to feed at-risk residents by expanding their community garden acreage, increasing donations of organically- grown food to the Tri-Cities Volunteer Food Bank, and creating a new Urban Farm to bring healthy food to people with obesity and diabetes risks through a county-driven Food-As-Medicine program. | More details |
| Local Environmental Action Demanded Agency, Inc. | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Toxics & Environmental Health | Oklahoma | http://www.leadagency.org/ | LEAD Agency is a non-profit environmental justice organization devoted to the protection of human health and the environment. They educate and empower their communities, advocate for the interests of area residents, and act as a liason between the public and tribal and governmental agencies. This year, LEAD Agency's work on flooding will focus on education and engagement of the public and legislative/agency staff and research. | More details | ||
| Long Live the Kings | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | South Sound; Project Location.PNG ; This project will be in the Nisqually Watershed along Highway 7 where it crosses over Ohop Creek. The site is owned by the Nisqually Land Trust, who support the project and are engaged in the proposed project design. | Nisqually Stormwater Management Pilot Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://lltk.org/ | Untreated stormwater is a significant concern for the health of Puget Sound’s aquatic ecosystems. Urban waterways are vulnerable to toxic stormwater runoff during and immediately following rain events, which carry contaminants from roadways into the waterway and out to sea. Throughout many urban waterways in Puget Sound, coho salmon – a species of concern under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) – experience pre-spawn mortality because of toxic stormwater runoff, limiting population recovery and contributing to extirpation in local streams (Spromberg & Scholz 2011; Scholz et al. 2011; Spromberg et al. 2015). Toxic stormwater also impacts the health and fitness of juvenile coho, ESA-listed Chinook, and their prey (McIntyre et al. 2015; King County 2018). Long Live the Kings and the Nisqually Indian Tribe are partnering with Cedar Grove, Nisqually Land Trust, Washington State University, and local water chemistry laboratories to pilot a new stormwater biofiltration system within the Nisqually watershed. In-ground systems have proven successful at filtering stormwater to reduce pollution entering waterways. This project will be the first in situ test of a compost-based containerized mobile filtration system designed to capture and filter stormwater runoff from bridges, elevated roadways, and other structures. The system will be installed along Highway 7 where it crosses Ohop Creek, a Nisqually River tributary, to filter vehicle impacted stormwater (VIS). This pilot study will test the mobile VIS biofiltration system’s effectiveness at removing harmful contaminants before they enter the Nisqually River system by comparing water chemistry and toxicity to fish in pre-filtered water versus post-filtered water during storm events. Results will serve as a model for future stormwater management and will inform transportation redesign projects in ecologically sensitive areas throughout the region, including a major redesign of the I-5 corridor over the Nisqually Estuary. | More details | |
| Los Angeles Waterkeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Southern Coast | Community Plastics Activation | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.lawaterkeeper.org/ | Los Angeles Waterkeeper (LAW) requests a one-year 25,000 grant to support our efforts to protect and restore LA’s inland and coastal waters using outreach and education, fieldwork, and community action. Grant funding will help us launch our new Community Cleanup Challenge, with Plastics Activation (Cleanup Challenge), a new program under our Healthy Habitats strategy. Healthy Habitats aims to restore our inland waterways and impacted marine environment back to functioning ecosystems. Our innovative Cleanup Challenge builds upon previous community engagement programs and expands our impact and reach across LA County. We fuse hands-on science and technology to reconnect Angelenos to the waterways in their backyard and provide resources for environmental stewardship. This program aims to educate communities about the impact of human consumption on the planet and encourage behavior change that will ultimately reduce negative externalities on our environment and the life that depends on it. Over the next year, the pilot of our cleanup challenge will engage hundreds of community members to clean up and collect critical data on plastic pollution, improving the health of Los Angeles’s watershed. Utilizing the state of the art Litterati app, participants will engage in cleanups across the county, and capture critical data on waste through geo-tagged photos that help make the problem measurable. Data captured from cleanups help illustrate the magnitude of the pollution problem locally, and can be used to advocate for larger systems change and enable development of effective solutions. Ultimately, we aim to provide community members – especially those living in historically underserved communities – the tools necessary to address pollution in their waterways, and make their voices heard as LA County addresses its pollution challenges. All of these efforts will improve the health and safety of our communities and encourage shared stewardship of our environment. | More details |
| Los Angeles Waterkeeper | Environmental Health and Toxics Fund | 2020 | $2,500.00 | Making Waves 2020 | Consumer Products | California | https://lawaterkeeper.org/ | Making Waves is Los Angeles Waterkeeper’s (LAW) annual benefit to support our work in pursuit of swimmable, drinkable, fishable waters for all Angelenos. Each year, Making Waves brings together hundreds of the region’s water warriors, as we raise our glasses to the most innovative thinkers, designers, policy-makers, practitioners, storytellers, and other bright minds working toward our common goal: clean, safe, equitable water. | More details | ||
| Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $15,000.00 | Southern Coast | Los Cerritos Wetlands Water Quality Monitoring Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change and Energy ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Los Angeles County ; Orange County | California | http://lcwlandtrust.org/ | Zedler Marsh is a remnant tidal salt marsh within the Los Cerritos Wetlands (LCW) at the mouth of the San Gabriel River (SGR), and is one of two locations where the River supports tidal wetlands. Plantings of Pacific cordgrass were performed in 2012 and 2018 and have been key in trapping nutrients, pollutants, and sediments from the watershed. A water quality monitoring program began in 2018 to measure this plant’s impacts on water quality in the SGR as well as Zedler Marsh and the program has been collecting data ever since. We propose to expand the water quality monitoring program to include 5 already existing sampling locations in Zedler Marsh and the San Gabriel River, and incorporate 5 new sampling locations throughout the Haynes Cooling Channel and Hellman Ranch Lowlands. Data collected as part of this program will assist in broadening the Land Trust’s advocacy, outreach, and education efforts. Final reporting documents will be shared with a variety of stakeholders including: Aquarium of the Pacific’s Citizen Science Sea Turtle Monitoring Program, NOAA, California State University, Long Beach researchers, local Lifeguard Associations, Marine Safety Departments, and SGR watershed health agencies and nonprofit partners in Upper and Lower SGR working groups. Results will also be shared with local citizens attending Los Cerritos Wetlands Stewardship Program events and through social media posts. This monitoring program will allow local agencies and landowners to make informed design and planning decisions based on multiple years of water quality data ultimately leading to scientifically rigorous large-scale restoration programs. | More details |
| Los Padres ForestWatch | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Southern Coast | Defending the Los Padres National Forest from Loophole Logging | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Ventura County (Pine Mountain) Kern County (Cuddy Valley) | California | https://lpfw.org/ | The Los Padres National Forest is threatened by three planned logging projects targeting old-growth forests. Two of these projects are the subject of this request: (1) the Cuddy Valley Project, for which we are seeking funds to file an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and (2) the Pine Mountain Project, for which we are seeking funding to conduct surveys for California spotted owl and other species at risk. | More details |
| Lost Sierra Food Project | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $4,000.00 | North Central & East | General Support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Plumas County | California | https://www.lostsierrafoodproject.org/ | To manage an educational and production farm in Plumas County to increase access to local foods, provide workforce development programs, and create educational food and farming opportunities for rural, low-income residents. | More details |
| Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Environmental Justice | Louisiana | http://www.sustainthenine.org | This group has succeeded in communicating this urgent issue of ecosystem restoration to members of New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward and residents have increasingly embraced the importance of ecosystem restoration as well as the implementation of other non-structural measures of flood protection. With this project, they would continue building knowledge among key stakeholders, incorporating resident voice into master planning, leading multiple lines of defense tours of the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle, and conducting resiliency-training workshops designed to serve participants related to hurricane preparedness and wetland restoration. | More details | ||
| Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | Louisiana | http://www.sustainthenine.org | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| Mad River Alliance | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | North Coast | Mad River Alliance Water Quality and Temperature Monitoring Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Humboldt County | California | http://www.madriveralliance.org/ | Mad River Alliance's Water Quality Monitoring Project (MRWQMP) and Temperature Monitoring Study (TMS) put citizens in touch with the Mad River, the source of water for approximately 88,000 Humboldt County residents. The MRWQMP trains teams of citizen scientists to collect, test, record, and share Mad River water quality data results with the public, agencies, and land managers. The TMS works with other agencies to collect, record, and share Mad River temperature data results with the public, agencies, and land managers. Ongoing monitoring provides a feedback loop so managers can understand how practices are effective in reducing negative impacts. This monitoring will help managers improve upon practices and improve water quality over time. | More details |
| Marin City People's Plan | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | California | https://marincitypeoplesplan.org/ | With this project, Marin City People's Plan aims to put their community at the head of planning and implementation processes and to activate and raise the awareness of community members, home owners, youth and community groups to design and implement nature-based adaptation solutions to address flooding problems related to climate change driven extreme storm events. Funds will be used towards the implementation of their Watershed Steward Training and Watershed Steward Project, which will train community members in designing and subsequently implementing a model resiliency project to help mitigate Marin City’s climate vulnerabilities. | More details | ||
| Marin City People's Plan | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $500.00 | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | California | http://www.marincitypeoplesplan.org/ | Grassroots Leadership Fund Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| Marine Ecology and Telemetry Research | Orca Fund | 2020 | $43,546.00 | Salish Sea ; Puget Sound; | Ecology and health status of Southern Resident killer whales in the outer waters of Washington State | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | http://www.marecotel.org/ | The mission of Marine Ecology and Telemetry Research is to support the conservation of marine species by conducting research into their biology, behavior, and physiology for use by managers and stakeholders. They promote the development, improvement, and use of technologies that support their research and embrace collaborations (i.e., Navy, NOAA, International Whaling Commission, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada) to support effective research by aligning expertise with objectives and outcomes. | More details | |
| Mirabeau Gardens Neighborhood Association | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $2,500.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Louisiana | http://mgna.freeservers.com/ | This is the rebirth of a neighborhood association active before Hurricane Katrina. As a new iteration of this organization, the Mirabeau Gardens Neighborhood Association will leverage support from this grant to build the capacity of leadership, offer empowering and educational programming for residents, and maximize participation at meetings and events. | More details | ||
| Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,500.00 | North Central & East | Medicine Lake Highlands and Aquifer Protection Campaign | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Modoc County ; Shasta County ; Siskiyou County | California | http://www.mountshastaecology.org/ | To build regional partnerships and develop an advocacy strategy for the long-term protection of the Medicine Lake Highlands and its aquifer. | More details |
| Mycelium Youth Network | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support for our Climate Resilient Classrooms | Climate Change & Energy ; Toxics & Environmental Health ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County ; San Francisco County | California | https://www.myceliumyouthnetwork.org/ | To empower young people in Oakland and San Francisco to proactively respond to the realities of climate change through the Climate Resilient Classrooms Initiative, a scalable model for climate adaptation and mitigation in 3rd - 12th grade education. | More details |
| Mycelium Youth Network | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $330.00 | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | California | https://www.myceliumyouthnetwork.org/ | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| Neighborhood Housing Services of Los Angeles County | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Statewide | NHS Environmental Justice and Water Conservation Outreach Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Los Angeles County | California | https://nhslacounty.org/ | As part of the ongoing programming at NHS’ Center for Sustainable Communities (CSC), located in Compton, CA, NHS will provide resources and programming on green infrastructure, environmental justice and water quality and conservation to residents. NHS will conduct outreach and begin distributing materials on green infrastructure, environmental justice, and water quality and conservation training to residents, in addition to regular NHS materials on buying, fixing, and keeping your home. An expanded curriculum will be included as part of both our urban agriculture programming, and our homebuyer education and foreclosure prevention education course offerings. Finally, NHS will provide rain barrels to home purchase and home rehabilitation clients. | More details |
| NorCal Community Resilience Network | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $3,000.00 | Statewide | Resilience Hubs Initiative | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Alameda County ; Humboldt County ; Santa Cruz County ; Sonoma County ; Tuolumne County | California | https://norcalresilience.org/ | To support the Neighborhood Resilience Hubs Initiative in creating a network of demonstration sites in the East Bay that integrate climate solutions, community building, and disaster preparedness to help neighborhoods create climate resiliency hubs. | More details |
| NorCal Resilience Network | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $330.00 | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | California | http://norcalresilience.org/ | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| Northwest Environmental Advocates | Columbia River Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Advocating for a Clean Columbia Through Strengthened Regulation | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health and Toxics ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Oregon | https://northwestenvironmentaladvocates.org/ | While aquatic environments are increasingly experiencing measurable impacts of climate change, the Clean Water Act is failing to deliver the pollution controls and habitat protection it promises to species—from frogs to salmon to orcas. The states of Oregon and Washington, along with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), routinely fall short in several key ways, by: (1) not taking the actions required by law; (2) taking actions that avoid actually requiring pollution controls; and (3) creating new loopholes. These three approaches are used by the agencies to maintain the unacceptable status quo in carrying out all aspects of the Clean Water Act, and to avoid the regulatory ramifications of the Endangered Species Act. And yet the agencies insist that these Clean Water Act mechanisms are the way to deliver protection to threatened and endangered species, such as the salmon of the Columbia River basin. For example, the states and EPA repeatedly claim that the means to restore the streamside vegetation that is needed to maintain stream temperatures and flows, and to filter other pollutants, are the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) clean-up plans that are required for waters that violate water quality standards. EPA says TMDLs will protect thermal refuges essential to salmon migrating through the hot waters of the Columbia River. Washington and Oregon contend TMDLs will result in controlling polluted runoff from logging and farming. But both states’ TMDL programs are broken, not only in their ability to produce TMDLs, but to use TMDLs for the purpose they assert is so essential. NWEA, working with its outside six-person legal team, is currently litigating and advocating for protective state water quality standards, timely and complete impaired waters lists, timely and effective TMDLs, and discharge permits and nonpoint source controls sufficient to protect human health and aquatic life, all of which are essential to protecting the Columbia River and its vast basin. | More details | ||
| Northwest Environmental Advocates | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | South Sound ; Central Sound ; North Sound ; Salish Sea; Map for Rose Puget Sound 2020.pdf ; The project addresses the entirety of Puget Sound. Maps: (1) Puget Sound sewage treatment plants; (2) Deschutes basin; (3) South Fork Nooksack basin. (Budd Inlet and Lake Whatcom are nearby, respectively.) | Advocating for Puget Sound Water Quality and Salmon Habitat | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://northwestenvironmentaladvocates.org/ | Puget Sound is beset by nitrogen and toxic pollution that is causing widespread algal blooms, exploding jellyfish populations, and adverse effects to salmon and orca whales. Its tributaries are beset by unshaded stream banks that cause water temperatures to rise, threatening the existence of cold-water salmon and amphibians. Despite current poor water quality conditions in Puget Sound’s marine and fresh waters, which state and federal agencies have predicted will worsen from increased population pressures and the measurable effects of climate change, these same agencies continue business as usual in the form of discharge permits that are missing required pollution limits and nonexistent or inadequate coastal nonpoint source pollution control programs. NWEA, working with its outside six-person legal team, is focused on a three-part advocacy and litigation strategy to achieve the following results: (1) to control nitrogen discharges to Puget Sound from sewage treatment plants, which will concurrently reduce the discharge of toxic pollutants, including unregulated pharmaceuticals and personal care products; (2) to improve or jump start controls on nonpoint sources including farming, logging, and on-site septic systems, with an emphasis on forested riparian buffers; and (3) to strengthen the Clean Water Act and state regulatory programs that drive pollution controls on point and nonpoint sources, including obtaining new water quality standards to protect aquatic species from toxics pollutants and fine sediment, the timely and complete publication of impaired waters lists that include all pollutants affecting Puget Sound species, and timely and effective TMDL clean-up plans that establish the pollution controls needed to restore polluted waters. | More details | |
| Northwest Environmental Defense Center | Columbia River Fund | 2020 | $36,000.00 | Clean Water Initiative | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice ; Environmental Health and Toxics | Oregon | https://www.nedc.org/ | NEDC's 2021 Clean Water Initiative work will continue to target pollution from point source discharges to the Columbia River and its Oregon tributaries. We will focus on strengthening and enforcing terms, limits and conditions contained in individual and general National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits issued by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). We will also track all 401 certifications in the lower Columbia River Basin proposed by Oregon DEQ during the project year, drafting summaries of each certification action, submitting public comments and coordinating advocacy opportunities with other organizations when warranted. | More details | ||
| Not An Alternative | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $30,000.00 | Central Sound; ; Our work affects 75 drainage basins on Vashon-Maury Islands and 54 miles of shoreline and near-shore ecosystems (half of King County’s undeveloped shoreline) in WRIA 9; programs will be near the salmon-bearing watersheds of Judd and Shinglemill. | Whale People: Protectors of the Sea—Education, Culture, and Community Science to Improve Our Waters | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Washington | http://thenaturalhistorymuseum.org | We propose to use our award-winning outdoor exhibition and film Whale People: Protectors of the Sea to inspire and catalyze community-wide action to improve water quality in Puget Sound. In collaboration with Lummi Nation, Vashon Nature Center (VNC), Vashon Heritage Museum, and the Vashon School District, we will produce a program that includes large-scale outdoor exhibitions at two public sites on the island; a speaker series (virtual and/or in-person TBD); curricula tie-ins for 3rd-12th grades; and coordinated media promotion to engage youth and adults in ways to reduce stormwater pollution. We will promote the VNC’s new rain garden as both a model and a site that will require ongoing community investment; volunteer opportunities through their Stormwater Action Groups; and ways to use the VNC and WSU citizen science stormwater monitoring toolbox. We will enable students and audiences to learn from and about Coast Salish tribes’ ancestral teachings about right relations with nature, and how to protect natural and cultural heritage and the health of the waters. The exhibition will debut outside the Heritage Museum as part of its new natural history exhibition and next door to the VNC rain garden. It features a 16-foot, 3,000-pound orca totem made by the House of Tears Carvers and an IMAX-style film projected onto a 15’x30’ roofless octagonal tent, integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge, marine science, and underwater videography of local orcas. School field trips and a speaker series featuring Indigenous fishers, leaders, and allied scientists will inspire and promote concrete steps people can take to improve local water quality. Our projects will provide the context and catalyst for community science and civic engagement in the Vashon community, increasing the likelihood that people will change behaviors and act to support regional engineering projects, development decisions, and policy initiatives to help restore and protect Puget Sound waters. | More details | |
| Okanogan Highlands Alliance | Columbia River Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Clean Water Act Citizen Enforcement Suit for Violations at the Buckhorn Mine | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Washington | https://okanoganhighlands.org/ | Okanogan Highlands Alliance (OHA) is bringing a Clean Water Act Citizen Enforcement Suit for Violations at the Buckhorn Mine against Crown Resources Corporation and Kinross Gold Incorporated, USA. We are seeking support to 1.) coordinate the legal effort, and 2.) hire consultants with specialized and expert knowledge to bolster our case. The Buckhorn Mine operated from 2008-2017 in the Okanogan Highlands of north-central Washington State. The site is still regulated by a discharge permit that limits the amount and extent of pollution that can leave the mine site. The companies are in continuous violation of the permit and have amassed over 2500 permit violations in the last five years. These permit violations are violations of the Clean Water Act. In order to effectively coordinate the Clean Water Act Suit, OHA will continue scrutinizing the mine as we have done since it was originally proposed. This involves working with regulators, reviewing mine management plans, analyzing monitoring data, and questioning decisions made by all parties involved. | More details | ||
| Olympia Coalition for Ecosystems Preservation | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | South Sound; Overview of project.pdf ; Budd Inlet, Olympia, WA | Ecosystem and Water Quality Enhancement through Watershed Restoration in Olympia, WA Â- Phase III | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | https://olyecosystems.org/ | The Olympia Coalition for Ecosystems Preservation (OCEP) recently conserved two acres on West Bay Drive that are contiguous with the now 18.5 acres of conserved land in the West Bay Woods in Olympia, WA. The entire West Bay Woods is an important watershed to West Bay in Budd Inlet, and represents a meaningful opportunity to address the significant water quality issues in Budd Inlet by enhancing stormwater infiltration and detoxification with green infrastructure. The eastern edge of the newly acquired properties consists of remnant feeder bluffs that once marked the pre-settlement shoreline of West Bay in Budd Inlet. This site (directly across the bay from the Port of Olympia) has experienced significant disturbance over the past century. Most recently in 2014, the City of Olympia removed approximately 250 mature trees from the slope and surrounding area as part of the construction of a retaining wall and sidewalk. The City, however, neglected to implement the final stage of construction, a required tree plan. The result is a denuded slope that has experienced significant and predictable invasive species growth. OCEP proposes to restore and revegetate this area and to construct a landscaped stormwater pond that would significantly enhance stormwater treatment of upland flows by increasing capacity and by reducing flow through the adjacent contaminated Reliable Steel site located on the Budd Inlet shoreline. The location of the proposed pond was once a paved parking lot for the Reliable Steel site before it shut down in 2009. Rose funding would be dedicated to the construction of the pond and associated check dams in the seasonal stream that is partly fed by two upland, Rose-funded green infrastructure projects. The project represents a significant partnership-building opportunity for OCEP as we pivot from the forested watershed to the conservation, remediation and restoration of the post-industrial West Bay Shoreline that is currently a target for development. | More details | |
| Orange County Environmental Justice Education Fund | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Southern Coast | Building Community Capacity with Photovoice (BCCP) | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Orange County | California | https://www.ocej.org/ | Building Community Capacity with Photovoice (BCCP) is a tested project, in which residents of disadvantaged communities in the Santa Ana River Watershed employ participatory research, specifically the photovoice methodology, to document, understand, educate, communicate, advocate, and ultimately build community capacity to ensure water quality for all. Photovoice uses photography to document storm water, point, and non point pollution within disadvantaged communities. BCCP is a response to Orange County Environmental Justice Education Fund’s (OCEJEF) 2016-2017 door- to-door multilingual survey of Orange County (OC) residents living within CalEPA Disadvantaged Communities. Of 4,163 respondents, 41.3% rated water quality “below average or bad.†The survey also revealed a prevailing mistrust of public water sources and water management systems. Moreover, residents also described a myriad of socio-economic issues that impacted their capacity to engage with local governments to find solutions and to create opportunities for building trust. Additionally, studies of internal reconnaissance of water pollution show that the OC cities with the largest populations of people of color have disproportionately high numbers of toxic industries compared to other Orange County cities(i). The findings from the survey led OCEJEF to implement a water-related leadership development and education program, Communities Organizing for Better Water (COBW) in 2018. COBW increases knowledge of water systems and government transparency by documenting water quality issues, building resident leadership, and developing an advocacy campaign. With support from the Rose Foundation, OCEJF will expand BCCP in Anaheim, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Orange, and Santa Ana with the ultimate goal of empowering community members to hold public and private systems accountable to high water quality as well as be engaged and a part of creating systems and policies that support this goal. | More details |
| Organic Consumers Association | Consumer Products Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | End Industrial Salmon Farms | Consumer Products | Maine | https://organicconsumers.org | OCA will use funding from Rose Foundation to expand consumer education, advocacy, and litigation exposing the human and environmental health harms caused by industrial factory farming. Building on past success investigating and litigating against factory farm products in the dairy and poultry sectors, OCA will launch an industrial fish farm campaign, by targeting Ducktrap smoked salmon. We’ve chosen this brand because: 1. the word “natural†appears on the packaging; 2. the product is a national brand, sold in major retail chains like Whole Foods; and 3. because by naming the product after a Maine river, the company misleads consumers into thinking the salmon sourced by Ducktrap comes from Maine, when in fact a significant portion comes from Chile where the use of antibiotics in industrial salmon farms is widespread. We expect our investigations into Ducktrap will lead to additional campaigns targeting smoked salmon brands, and future campaigns targeting fresh/frozen farmed salmon. | More details | ||
| Pepperwood Foundation | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $8,750.00 | North Coast | Shadehouse Rebuild for Post Fire Restoration of Native Grasslands | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Sonoma County | California | https://www.pepperwoodpreserve.org/ | Pepperwood Foundation requests support to build a new native plant shadehouse propagation facility to replace the one damaged during the 2017 Tubbs Fire. Two recent fires have significantly altered the ecological health of the native grasslands at Pepperwood Preserve and destroyed and damaged buildings on our property. Bulldozer fire lines created to stop the Kincade Fire in October 2019 resulted in significant disturbance to 15 miles of oak woodlands and native grasslands. In 2017, the Tubbs Fire burned our barn and shop to the ground, heavily impacting the nearby plant propagation facility. Our rebuild of the barn and shop is under way but requires moving the damaged propagation facility away from the shadow of the new structure. Given the extensive loss of native grasslands to the bulldozer lines, we want to double our native grass plug production numbers from 14,000 to 28,000 plants annually. This increase in production will require doubling the footprint of our propagation facility. By increasing native plant propagation capacity and plantings this project will improve water quality by reducing erosion as well as improving stream flow by improving water infiltration and soil water holding capacity. Perennial grasses improve soil organic matter and provide better ground cover than non-native annual grasses. These grasses reduce impacts of hard rainfall, slow run-off, and increase water retention, thus reducing potential flooding downstream. Native plants favor healthy wildlife populations and support invertebrates including pollinators. | More details |
| Point Molate Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; Marin County ; San Francisco County | California | https://ptmolatealliance.org/ | To advocate for the conservation of Point Molate, the last undeveloped natural headland on San Francisco Bay, as a public resource and a regional park. | More details |
| Point Molate Alliance | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Environmental Justice | Alameda County ; Contra Costa County ; Marin County ; San Francisco County | California | https://ptmolatealliance.org/ | To advocate for the conservation of Point Molate, the last undeveloped natural headland/coastal prairie on San Francisco Bay, as a public resource and a regional park. | More details |
| Project Grow | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Southern Coast | Riparian Restoration Team | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Orange County | California | http://www.projectgrowca.org/ | One acre of riparian habitat will be restored at the Newport Valley site in Upper Newport Bay through a project involving high school students, mentored by college students. A minimum of 10 college student interns from diverse backgrounds, will be recruited and trained as “Environmental Leaders." The college student leaders will mentor and engage three classes of students from Title 1 high schools (approximately 30 students per class). Each class will participate in six habitat restoration field trips during the 2020-2021 school year, for a total of 18 restoration field visits. Environmental Leaders will learn ecological restoration techniques, environmental education methods, and volunteer and event management. The high school students will learn about the ecology of the area, restoration techniques, and will observe changes in the habitat over the course of the year as the restoration progresses. The high school student's teachers will receive orientation materials as well as lesson plans from habitat restoration curricula such as Our Wetlands, Our World and other sources to extend learning into the classroom. | More details |
| Proyecto Pastoral | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $15,750.00 | Southern Coast | Promesa Boyle Heights: Green Infrastructure & Surface Water Quality Leadership Training Series | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Los Angeles County | California | https://www.proyectopastoral.org/ | Investment from the Rose Foundation will allow Promesa to train a core group of community leaders to become environmental health promotoras by deepening their knowledge and understanding of watershed health, surface water quality issues and green infrastructure projects in Boyle Heights. Funding will enable Promesa to build its infrastructure for incorporating environmental health into Promesa’s existing promotora model for long-term and sustainable change, and to develop curriculum and outreach materials. This will lay the groundwork to be able to train future cohorts of environmental health promotoras. By engaging a group of residents leaders in the work, Promesa will develop resident capacity in Boyle Heights to connect green infrastructure projects with surface water quality, protection from pollutants, as well as connecting the issues to a broader environmental justice and health framework. | More details |
| Puget Soundkeeper Alliance | Consumer Products Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | The Puget Sound Leadership, Clean Water Regulation and Enforcement Project | Consumer Products | Washington | https://pugetsoundkeeper.org/ | Puget Sound is struggling to overcome the challenges of a growing population, increased development, urban runoff, and waterway traffic all resulting in additional sources of pollution – 21 species are currently listed as threatened or endangered, including orca whales and Chinook salmon. Stormwater runoff transports pollutants into waterways and is the single-largest contributor of toxic pollution to Puget Sound today. Agricultural pollution from dairies, feedlots, pesticides and erosion impairs shellfish beaches. Wastewater facilities still release unsafe levels of toxic chemicals and nutrients that cause long term health issues for the Sound. Soundkeeper will use its proven track record to strengthen water quality standards and pollution discharge regulations and work to ensure implementation of these regulations through on-water patrols, monitoring and enforcement. Soundkeeper will work to leverage community voices to pressure agencies to do the right thing for Puget Sound. | More details | ||
| Puget Soundkeeper Alliance | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | South Sound; WRIA13 Map.jpg ; Our project covers WRIA 13, which includes the Budd/Deschutes, east Eld and Henderson Inlet watersheds. Future expansion is envisioned to WRIA 14. | South Sound Healthy Watersheds Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Washington | https://pugetsoundkeeper.org/ | Puget Soundkeeper will provide program development support to the Deschutes Estuary Restoration Team (DERT) in Pollution Monitoring and Prevention in the South Puget Sound. The DERT mission is to restore and protect the Deschutes River and Budd Inlet watershed (DERT advocates for the removal of Olympia’s 5th Avenue Dam and the full restoration of the Deschutes Estuary). Since 2011, they have worked to educate the South Sound community on the benefits of estuary restoration and advocate for funding and necessary studies. They envision a restored urban estuary and functioning ecosystem in the headwaters of Puget Sound. Puget Soundkeeper will provide training, resources and logistical support to DERT to expand their capacity and assist them in becoming a Waterkeeper affiliate working in partnership with Soundkeeper and other waterkeepers and organizations in the region focused on the goal of restoring and protecting the waters of Puget Sound as a whole. DERT’s work will cover WRIA 13, which includes the Budd/Deschutes, east Eld and Henderson Inlet watersheds, with the intention of future expansion into WRIA 14, which includes Oakland Bay, Totten Inlet in the South Sound and southern portions of Hood Canal. | More details | |
| Redwood Community Action Agency | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $7,000.00 | North Coast | Gulch to Bay: Urban Waterway | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Humboldt County | California | http://rcaa.org/ | The Gulch to Bay Urban Waterway project focuses on First Slough in Eureka, an urban waterway which was recently given another chance. Last fall, a sinkhole depression formed on a busy city street presenting a public safety emergency. Water was pooling under the road. The City designed and installed a larger culvert to accommodate storm events and provide for fish passage. The prior culvert presented barriers to fish passage. This urban stream section got a riparian 'facelift.' The work that was done to stabilize the banks and enhance the stream for fish passage is highly visible from the main road and presents a great public outreach opportunity. It received a lot of public attention when traffic was rerouted. It lies at the gateway to Cooper Gulch Park, a city-owned property with educational and recreational amenities. With this project still in the public memory and public eye, now is the time to bring awareness to, and steward protection of, this important tributary to Humboldt Bay. The culvert replacement site is about a half-mile upstream from the bay and this lower section through Cooper Gulch Park has received more than its fair share of encampments and dump sites. Natural Resources Services (NRS) division of Redwood Community Action Agency (RCAA) requests funding to implement a year-long program working with Cooper Gulch youth, community members and neighbors. The program will include interpretive programming for two Gulch school sites highlighting: water quality, stormwater, watershed health for aquatic life and connection to marine environments. Walking field trips will include trash pickups, water quality testing and aquatic-life exploration. Project partners (constituency section) and neighbors will engage in larger scale clean-ups to remove abandoned encampments. At the project's conclusion, interpretive displays featuring youth's artwork will educate the visiting public about the values of healthy watersheds. Schools will be gifted trash grabbers. | More details |
| Regeneration/Regeneración | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $330.00 | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | California | https://www.regenerationpajarovalley.org/ | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | More details | |||
| Resource Renewal Institute | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2020 | $15,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Restore Point Reyes Seashore | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Primarily, Marin County and neighboring counties. | California | https://www.rri.org/ | To delay the National Park Service’s finalization of a General Management Plan for Point Reyes National Seashore until a new, more open-minded administration and secretary of the interior are in place in Washington DC. Resource Renewal Institute will develop, gather and share extensive scientific research, documentation, expert testimony and public input with the California Coastal Commission whose own consistency determination process will influence the final Park Service decision. | More details |
| Restore the Delta | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Central Valley | Environmental Justice Youth Initiative for the Urban Delta | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | San Joaquin County | California | https://www.restorethedelta.org/ | Stockton lies at the seat of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the heart of the battle for water in CA. Restore the Delta (RTD) is a local nonprofit in Stockton dedicated to preserving the Delta and fostering young environmental justice leaders. To create advocates for our waterways, we must build opportunities for them to understand and appreciate the impact water quality has to the health and history of Stockton and CA overall. RTD has recently developed strategic partnerships with grassroots social justice nonprofits in Stockton that represent underserved communities and have a strong focus on developing youth advocates. Through this collaboration, RTD will engage youth from disinvested neighborhoods in Stockton and communities of color, providing them with the tools and know-how to become citizen scientists. So how do you get these youth to care about a local resource they know little about? Their experience of the Delta involves seeing homeless camps on slough embankments and stagnant, uninviting green water. Many of them are already involved in local advocacy, but they haven't heard about how harmful algal blooms in their backyards contribute to the asthma their families experience, create smelly toxic air when fish and plants die off, and harm local economics dependent on our waterways. RTD and their partners plan to train youth to become Citizen Scientists. This includes learning about the science and economics of Stockton’s local waterways, conducting water quality testing, practicing public speaking and advocacy skills, and using technology to connect local data with health, education, and economic outcomes for their communities. Through Citizen Science, youth will understand how water quality testing and how that data can make changes in our city and region. The data collected will be used by them to inform policy recommendations and report to regional and state water boards, the county board of supervisors, and within their local communities. | More details |
| River Otter Ecology Project | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $6,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Alameda County ; Alpine County ; Amador County ; Butte County ; Calaveras County ; Colusa County ; Contra Costa County ; Del Norte County ; El Dorado County ; Fresno County ; Glenn County ; Humboldt County ; Imperial County ; Inyo County ; Kern County ; Kings County ; Lake County ; Lassen County ; Madera County ; Marin County ; Mariposa County ; Mendocino County ; Merced County ; Modoc County ; Mono County ; Monterey County ; Napa County ; Nevada County ; Placer County ; Sacramento County ; San Francisco County ; San Joaquin County ; San Mateo County ; Santa Clara County ; Santa Cruz County ; Shasta County ; Sierra County ; Siskiyou County ; Solano County ; Sonoma County ; Stanislaus County ; Sutter County ; Tehama County ; Trinity County ; Tuolumne County ; Yolo County ; Yuba County | California | http://www.riverotterecology.org | To promote the restoration and conservation of Bay Area watersheds through citizen science monitoring, research, and educational programming about local river otter populations. | More details |
| Russian Riverkeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | North Coast | Clean Water Advocacy Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Mendocino County ; Sonoma County | California | https://russianriverkeeper.org/ | We are requesting support for our Clean Water Advocacy Program to reduce pollution, improve flows and increase inclusion of BIPOC communities in our work. We will improve the Dairy and Vineyard permits to reduce nutrient and sediment pollution and improve enforcement of permit violations and work on State Nutrient Policy to provide more enforceable numeric criteria. We will advocate for mandatory water conservation for all flow reductions in times of drought. To better serve BIPOC communities we will devote a portion of this grant to working to become more inclusive in all aspects of our work. The Russian River suffers from nine pollution impairments and has many segments that are pumped dry leaving our community with an unhealthy river. Further climate change will put even more strain on our watersheds health as we are seeing wild swings from the floods of February 2018 to our current drought in 2020 which is the third driest yearn recorded history. We have gone from one extreme of too much water to not enough water in less than18 months, this is not sustainable. In order to prepare our watershed and community to ensure and thrive in climate change we must reduce pollution, reduce water use and make more room for the river for bigger floods which will increase groundwater recharge to prepare for droughts. Our work in this grant will address the biggest impacts to water quality, seek to reduce water loss that impacts water quality and engage our entire community by becoming more inclusive of BIPOC communities that suffer more from environmental degradation and pollution. | More details |
| Sacred Roots | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $4,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Sacred Roots Food Solidarity Project | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Alameda County | California | http://www.sacred-roots.org/ | To build a network of "mutual support pods" throughout Fruitvale, San Antonio and East Oakland, including a network of home-based gardens, medicine sowers, medicine makers and artists, to feed, heal and connect communities of color during the COVID-19 public health emergency. | More details |
| Safe Ag Safe Schools | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Central Coast | General Support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Monterey County ; Santa Cruz County | California | http://www.safeagsafeschools.org/ | To engage residents in efforts to reduce pesticide threats in Monterey County, including cultivating media attention, monitoring the regulatory process, and training and mobilizing residents to participate in government decision-making. | More details |
| Salish Sea Sciences | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Central Sound ; Salish Sea; ; The proposed project's focus is on students from the Green-Duwamish watershed and for the purpose restoring, protecting, enhancing, and mitigating that watershed, by way of their immersion in a Salish Sea experience in Friday Harbor, San Juan Island. | Ecology and Conservation—Green-Duwamish watershed meets the Salish Sea | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Washington | salishseasciences.org | The project for consideration is a 2-week immersive, residential summer Ecology and Conservation program tailored specifically to engage and empower 8-9 high schoolers—nominated by Unleash the Brilliance, an organization designed "to help close the achievement gap for students at the risk of academic failure and keep them out of the school to prison pipeline"—who have exhibited exceptional environmental leadership in their home communities in the Green-Duwamish River watershed. Salish Sea Sciences respects the commitment demonstrated by these young people and intends to support and compound the sustainability of their efforts. Salish Sea Sciences is situated on San Juan Island in the Salish Sea, where fresh water and shorelines are precious and where the severe losses of southern resident orca remind us we are at an ecological precipice. The location also is one of the world's most biologically diverse and home to a constellation of organizations and individuals with extraordinary expertise in marine and environmental sciences as well as advocacy, policy and law, offering what the National Monument Declaration suggests: "a refuge of scientific and historic treasures and a classroom for generations." Salish Sea Sciences is thus positioned to expose students to the arc of environmental science, action, and career awareness, highlighting the Salish Sea as a giant estuarial system from the mountains to the Sound and Straits and drawing attention to the fluidity between research and mitigation efforts pursued here in microcosm with that of the Green-Duwamish Rivers. Students return home to their watershed with a renewed energy to engage, enabled with action plans, and equipped with new knowledge and skills to exert a positive effect. Students obtaining a sense of belonging and agency in a place they can fully appreciate as their own, in the company of a tight cohort, and among mentors representing multiple fields of expertise and experience is a powerful thing. | More details | |
| Salmonid Restoration Federation | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $10,500.00 | North Coast | Humboldt Bay Aquaculture Research, Outreach, and Education | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Humboldt County | California | https://www.calsalmon.org/ | Salmonid Restoration Federation (SRF) is a state-wide non-profit in the fisheries sector that proposes to track the Nordic Aquafarms project (NAF), advocate on behalf of the community, communicate important information to the public, and prepare for future aquafarming scoping projects in the Humboldt Bay watershed. Nordic Aquafarms (NAF) plans to build a land-based fish farm at an old pulp mill site on Humboldt Bay, with an outfall pipe for discharge extending approximately one mile into the Pacific Ocean. The local community is concerned about the potential impacts of this project related to water quality, native species, and the economy. This is a major land development project, with the potential to have both large costs and benefits to Humboldt County’s economy and environment. The current NAF proposal requires a large amount of fresh water, which would come from the municipal water supply in the Mad River. Diverting this water may have detrimental effects on the water quality of the river and its estuary. Environmental impacts such as reducing available summer flow in the Mad River or polluting Humboldt and Arcata bays could disproportionately affect specific communities. This grant would fund SRF staff to attend meetings and public hearings with Nordic Aquaculture, as well as review project elements for potential environmental impacts, and communicate with stakeholders throughout the review process. SRF would contribute to the process by identifying potential environmental issues and crucial questions to ask of the project, as well as advocating for specific decisions and engaging the public through outreach and education. Regardless of whether the Nordic Aquafarms project is completed or not, the Humboldt Bay area has been identified as a desirable site for future aquaculture projects, and this baseline research will be valuable and necessary for local entities to evaluate the environmental impacts of such projects on water quality and other risk factors. | More details |
| San Francisco Baykeeper | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $3,500.00 | The Healthy Bay Challenge | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | California | https://baykeeper.org/ | Sponsorship support for the 2020 virtual Bay Parade to move together for San Francisco Bay. Baykeeper’s Healthy Bay Challenge goals is encourage people to be healthy and keep the Bay healthy, too. Baykeeper’s mission is to hold polluters accountable and defend the Bay from the biggest threats. Their team of lawyers, scientists, and advocates is hard at work remotely – because the Bay needs to be protected, now more than ever. | More details | ||
| Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Southern Coast | Chiquita Landfill Expansion Phase 3 | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Los Angeles County | California | http://www.scope.org | To halt the expansion of the Chiquita Canyon Landfill in LA County, which threatens both a critical wildlife corridor and the water quality of the nearby Santa Clara River, as well as the health of local residents. | More details |
| Save California Salmon | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Colusa County ; Del Norte County ; Humboldt County ; Mendocino County ; Sacramento County ; San Francisco County ; San Joaquin County ; Shasta County ; Siskiyou County ; Trinity County ; Yolo County | California | https://www.californiasalmon.org | To provide support and resources to rural and Native American communities through online classes, trainings, and speaker series, to continue mobilization against new dams, diversions, and development projects that detrimentally impact Northern California’s rivers, salmon, and communities. | More details |
| Save California Salmon | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $7,500.00 | North Coast | Klamath-Trinity River Protection Campaign | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice | Del Norte County ; Humboldt County ; Trinity County | California | https://www.californiasalmon.org | To protect the Trinity and Lower Klamath rivers’ aquatic ecosystem and fisheries, including continued advocacy against the Sites Reservoir project and defending against efforts to increase water deliveries from these watersheds to the Central Valley Project. | More details |
| Save Del Puerto Canyon | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $4,500.00 | Central Valley | Save Del Puerto Canyon Community Engagement | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Stanislaus County | California | http://savedelpuertocanyon.org/ | To engage, educate, and empower the community to stand against the proposed Del Puerto Canyon Reservoir, which threatens the air, culture, history, and well-being of the residents of Patterson, CA. | More details |
| Save Habitat and Diversity of Wetlands | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $15,000.00 | Central Sound; SHADOW Location & Parcel Map.pdf ; SHADOW is part of the Green-Duwamish Watershed. The headwaters for Jenkins creek originate on SHADOW’s property. Jenkins creek flows into Soos Creek, a salmon-bearing system, which flows into the Green River entering the Puget Sound at Elliott Bay. | Preservation, Restoration and Education at SHADOW Lake Nature Preserve | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | https://shadowhabitat.org/ | SHADOW Lake Nature Preserve is requesting general operating funds to support the programs, projects, and services that we provide to our wetlands, the watershed, and our community. As SHADOW continues to grow the size of the Nature Preserve and navigate through a global pandemic, we remain committed to providing our surrounding communities with a place to enjoy nature, learn about the importance of critical wetland habitats, and engage in ethical land stewardship. SHADOW Lake Nature Preserve staff and board of directors has been working diligently to provide flexible environmental education opportunities, maintain safe public access to our trail system, and ensure our habitats and wetlands remain healthy. To continue to serve our region, SHADOW Lake Nature Preserve is striving to create and adapt our education and community engagement programs and activities to comply with new regulations. Our goal is to reach more community members, of all ages, through our current programming and alternative learning opportunities that include virtual classes and events and off-site environmental education. In addition to our education programs, SHADOW Lake Nature Preserve continues to work with community partners to complete stewardship and restoration projects at the Nature Preserve. SHADOW is a small organization providing a positive impact for our local habitats and the community. We contribute directly to the health of the Green-Duwamish Watershed through our habitat preservation and restoration efforts. More importantly, we connect the community to our natural landscapes and teach them about the importance of wetland protection, water quality, and how our ecosystem links to the rest of the Puget Sound. | More details | |
| Save North Petaluma River and Wetlands | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $2,500.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Sonoma County | California | https://www.facebook.com/SaveNorthPetalumaRiver/ | To support community engagement and litigation efforts to prevent development of the north end of the Petaluma River, which would increase flood risk, destroy critical fish and wildlife, and reduce an important site for wetland carbon sequestration. | More details |
| Sierra Business Council | California Wildlands and Smart Growth Rapid Response Fund | 2020 | $4,130.00 | Sierra Nevada | "Biomass in the Sierra: A Case for Healthy Forests and Rural Economies" Outreach | Sustainable Forestry | Nevada, Sierra, Placer, El Dorado, Tuolumne, Sacramento, + presentations that reach across the state via web-based platforms. | California | www.sierrabusiness.org | SBC's recently released white paper, "Biomass in the Sierra: A Case for Healthy Forests and Rural Economies", provides a scientifically-backed look at the case for rural biomass utilization as a tool for wildfire mitigation, forest health, and rural economic development in the Sierra Nevada. The paper is being recognized by as a unique document in offering a deep look at the questions surrounding biomass and SBC is fielding frequent requests for copies of the paper as well as for presentations on its findings from key California decision makers, forestry experts, academic groups, and others. SBC is requesting funding to reprint the paper itself in order to quickly meet the demand while coordinating an effective and efficient outreach campaign via a number of meetings and presentations. | More details |
| Sierra County Land Trust | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $7,500.00 | Sierra Nevada | Resource Management Program | Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Sierra County | California | http://www.sierracountylandtrust.org | To support the continued maintenance of forested open space lands in the Sierra Buttes/Lake Basin area of Sierra County adjacent to the Pacific Crest Trail. | More details |
| Sierra Nevada Alliance | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $15,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Sacramento River Watershed Restoration & AmeriCorps Service Learning | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Butte County | California | https://sierranevadaalliance.org/ | Sierra Nevada Alliance will use this grant to bring together 28 AmeriCorps members for five days of watershed restoration and service learning in April of 2021. This project will positively impact water quality and riparian habitat in the upper Sacramento River watershed, addressing issues related to regional wildfires. Members will restore 10 impaired Sacramento River watershed acres of critical riparian habitat through invasive species removal, native plant restoration and erosion control. Members will be given hands-on training in watershed restoration techniques, learning from local experts. They will use those skills to complete an additional 100 acres of watershed restoration at their host sites across the Sierra Nevada. As part of our mission to increase inclusiveness and equity in our organization, we will feature perspectives on local environmental issues and restoration approaches from diverse individuals in the Butte County region. This will reinforce Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training provided to members at the beginning of their service term in October and increase awareness of traditional ecological knowledge. Should COVID-19 restrictions prevent us from conducting this project in person, we will create a virtual training, which will be delivered online. This will feature experts from partner organizations, presenting on local environmental issues and projects. If it is safe to do so, we will amend on-the-ground restoration to only involve local (Butte County-based) SNAP members, preventing unsafe travel and group lodging. We will create video content of SNAP members in the field to share with the cohort and facilitate group learning, supported by presentations from experts on detailed techniques and project results. This virtual training will have the capacity to highlight diverse voices across the Sierra and create a connection among SNAP members and host sites throughout the region, even if we cannot work together in the same physical space. | More details |
| Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $6,332.00 | Salish Sea; ; Our Washington Conservation Corps crew will be working in the Skagit, Samish, and Sauk watersheds removing invasive species, planting native species, and becoming more involved with local community members at volunteer events. | Skagit Watershed Community Restoration | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | http://www.skagitfisheries.org/ | For over two decades, Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group (SFEG) has sponsored a Washington Conservation Corps (WCC) crew to complete restoration work in the Skagit, Samish, and Sauk watersheds. The WCC AmeriCorps program is designed to mentor new leaders in the field of restoration, and provides young adults the opportunity to gain hands-on experience, field skills, and training certification related to habitat restoration. SFEG is seeking funds to support both our sponsored WCC crew and our restoration partners through donated WCC crew labor. Our restoration projects are, in large part, possible because of the work of our WCC crew. Our WCC crew implements our riparian planting, maintains our restoration sites, and provides the workforce for our knotweed program in the Sauk and upper Skagit watersheds. By providing funds to support the WCC crew, the Rose Foundation will increase our ability to work with more partners and create more opportunities for the WCC members to participate in volunteer events. SFEG strives to enable the WCC crew to participate in events that help them grow and utilize their leadership skills, such as our Earth Day and Make a Difference Day volunteer events. We want to create opportunities that enable WCC members to participate in other parts of our organization, like our native plant nursery or at our monitoring sites throughout the Skagit. We would support new or underfunded restoration projects by providing necessary labor to important restoration work. With additional funding we would regularly send our WCC crew to support partner’s events, like Orca Recovery Day hosted by the Skagit Conservation District. | More details | |
| Snake River Waterkeeper, Inc. | Consumer Products Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | 2020 Water Quality Program - Protecting Youth from Toxic Waterways | Consumer Products | Idaho | https://snakeriverwaterkeeper.org/ | Snake River Waterkeeper (SRW) is dedicated to improving water quality - to protect youth from exposure to degraded waterways, safeguard drinking water, and restore native fish populations across the Snake River Basin. SRW's mission is "applying science and law to protect, restore, and sustain waters of the Snake River Basinâ€. The lynchpin of our water quality monitoring program is an advocacy campaign taking illegal polluters to court. We also organize volunteer river cleanups and host an online SWIM Guide and smartphone app alerting the public to sites that are unsafe to swim. By educating citizens, inspiring and engaging stakeholders, and mobilizing grassroots communities, SRW leads highly effective campaigns that decrease toxic pollution and improve recreational safety. Our 2020-21 Water Quality Program contains multiple project components directly aimed at decreasing toxic effluent pollution, increasing citizen awareness of dangerous areas, and protecting youth from toxic exposure. | More details | ||
| Sno-King Watershed Council | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Central Sound ; North Sound; WRIA 7, 8, 9 map.pdf ; We work in the Lake Washington-Cedar-Sammamish watershed (WRIA8), in the sub-basins of the Sammamish River, Swamp Creek, North Creek, Little Bear Creek, and others. We also are working in the Snohomish watershed (WRIA7) on the Skykomish River. | Protecting Puget Sound Streams via Project Reviews and Appeals Round 2 | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | http://snokingwatershedcouncil.org/ | This is an application to continue work which we previously have been funded by the Rose Foundation for. Over 2017 and 2018, we received $25,000 for this type of work, and completed a report on the work. This is still important and potentially precedent-setting work, in a niche in which few organizations operate. The water quality of Puget Sound is threatened by the many land-disturbing development projects underway, especially those which do not comply with applicable codes, particularly relating to water quality, storm water flow control, wetland delineation, and wetland and stream buffer widths. We have found that agencies and jurisdictions charged with reviewing applications and enforcing codes do not in fact use due diligence and often approve projects which under closer scrutiny don't meet the code requirements. Expert members of the Sno-King Watershed Council have been reviewing permit submittals, engineering diagrams and calculations, wetland and critical area drawings and reports, offering comments, and filing appeals as appropriate. As a result of our reviews, comments, and appeals, we have been successful in protecting streams and wetlands, getting better water quality and flow control designs enacted, and obtained settlements which have been used for construction of rain gardens and other projects to benefit the water quality of Puget Sound. In addition to the direct benefit of these reviews and appeals, they also set precedents, our goal being better subsequent review processes by enforcement agencies. We rely primarily on volunteer work for civil engineers and stormwater expertise, but also use paid consultants as needed including wetlands biologists and lawyers. We partner with affected downstream jurisdictions and other non-profits. With increased funding and capacity, we could increase the amount of work that we do in this vitally important area. With this proposal, we seek to increase our capacity in the area of project reviews and appeals. | More details | |
| Snohomish Conservation District | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | North Sound; Renew Location Map.png ; The site is located at 2721 164th St SW in Lynnwood, WA. The garden is located on the grounds of Renew Church on the east end of the lot. | Urban Agriculture: Reducing Stormwater Runoff and Increasing Food Access | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | http://snohomishcd.org | The Snohomish Conservation District (SCD) proposes implementing a systems approach to reduce stormwater runoff, improve salmon habitat, and increase food access in an area experiencing degraded water quality and food insecurity. This approach will include constructing an organic community garden, installing rainwater catchment, and engaging with the local community. Implementation will triple the size of the existing community garden, greatly increasing capacity to address food insecurity issues in an underserved area. This project will also add a rainwater catchment system to divert stormwater runoff and provide a water source for the food crops. The catchment system will retain stormwater from impermeable surfaces, which would typically enter the stormwater system and discharge to water bodies. This water will instead be filtered and used to irrigate urban food crops. Filtration and infiltration will reduce flooding and keep nutrients and pollutants from the waterways, reducing heavy metal, nutrient, and bacterial pollution. SCD will also engage the community to develop a food sovereignty program, making sure to grow and provide food crops that are culturally relevant for the community. The Renew Community Garden uses the fruit and vegetables grown in local food bank meals for the surrounding neighborhood and to bring together diverse groups of people through food. SCD will coordinate educational opportunities for the community to learn about the garden and its benefits; the ecosystem of the local watershed; and nutritional benefits of organically grown fresh produce. Outreach will also include education for volunteers and staff, signage to communicate system function and benefits, and ensure the garden’s long-term operation. SCD will use its extensive experience in successful community outreach projects and implementation of urban agriculture projects to produce significant improvements to stormwater runoff and local access to nutrition where both are needed. | More details | |
| Sonoma Safe Ag Safe Schools | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | North Coast | Regenerative Land Management for Watershed Resiliency | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Sonoma County | California | http://sonomasass.org/ | Natural disasters including fires and floods have had devastating impacts on the Russian River Watershed in recent years with the potential to create more disturbances in the future. Negative impacts would, however, be reduced by employing regenerative/â€climate smart†land management principles and by educating local landowners on alternatives to using toxic chemicals, like pesticides. The focus of this proposal is to provide community education to residents, farms, and schools in fire prone Russian River Watershed areas to decrease future degradation to the watershed. | More details |
| South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $35,000.00 | South Sound; 20190228_ButlerCovePermit_OptRed.pdf ; The Butler Cove Estuary Restoration Project is located on the west side of Budd Inlet approximately 2 miles north of Olympia in Thurston County. Attached is a location map and the restoration plan. | Butler Cove Estuary Restoration | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://spsseg.org/ | Butler Cove estuary was modified and developed in the early 1930’s by the property owner for the installation of fish rearing ponds from the mouth of the estuary up 400’ to Windolph Road, a private road. The development consisted of installing an earth embankment across the estuary, a concrete spillway, an 18-inch bypass pipe and upstream concrete divider walls and spillways. Fish rearing operations were abandoned and as a result of neglected maintenance, the impoundment filled with sediment. In 2006, the earthen dam failed, but the infrastructure remains. The project proposes to remove the remaining infrastructure; prepare a plan and work with local residents to address invasives; and let natural processes restore the creek bed. The Butler Cove Estuary is the largest pocket estuary in Budd Inlet that drains Butler Creek which has three separate tributaries each with wetland complex headwaters and host 3 miles of potential habitat. Each year, multiple salmonid species attempt to reach these headwaters (personal communication, Fred Seager). Restoration of Butler Cove salt marsh is high priority for locally driven salmon restoration. Restoration of marine marshes like Butler Cove improve estuarine function compromised by physical alteration. The Windolph Road community has been advocating for and supportive of this project since 2003. The project received $192,000 from the Salmon Recovery Funding Board. SRFB requires $35,000 match through volunteer contributions and other grant sources. The project is fully designed and partially permitted. | More details | |
| SPAWNERS | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $4,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | General Support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Contra Costa County | California | http://www.thewatershedproject.org | To provide hands-on ecosystem education, and foster appreciation and stewardship of the San Pablo Creek Watershed. | More details |
| SR3 Sealife Response, Rehab and Research | Orca Fund | 2020 | $74,536.00 | Salish Sea ; Puget Sound ; Canada; SR zoom.jpg ; Drone photogrammetry during small boat surveys in Salish Sea waters around the San Juan Islands (SJ on attached map), northern Puget Sound, eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca (JDF) and the Strait of Georgia (SOG). Map shows previous flight locations. | Quantitative health metrics for Southern Resident killer whales using non-invasive photogrammetry | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Other | Washington | https://www.sealifer3.org/ | Since 2008, the applicants have used aerial photogrammetry to develop the only quantitative time series for monitoring the health of Southern Resident killer whales (SRKW). Measurements from high-resolution still images, collected non-invasively using drones since 2015 (Durban et al. 2015), have provided measurements of body condition (Fearnbach et al. 2018, Fearnbach et al. 2020) and growth (Fearnbach et al. 2011) for the majority/all of the population in each year. These are being used to inform recovery actions to ensure adequate Chinook salmon prey, and to identify whales in concerning condition to support enhanced responses. We propose to extend these unique time series and identify further useful quantitative metrics of whale behavior and skin condition, also generated from non-invasive drone images. The utility of new health indices will first be evaluated (year 1) in the context of existing measurements of changing body condition for a subset of SRKWs that have died over the last 6 years during our high-resolution drone studies. In years 2-5, we will extend our time series with further data collection and intensive image analysis to generate population-wide time series for each health metric that showed utility from year 1. We will support a graduate student to quantify health metrics from existing and new drone images (currently 160,000 images 2015-2020, comprising a 355 whales-by-year matrix) and will analyze patterns of change relative to life history, mortality patterns and changes in growth and body condition. The outcomes will represent baselines for monitoring to evaluate the success of recovery actions and will establish benchmarks for poor health to identify “whales of concern†before they die. Durban et al. 2015. Journal of Unmanned Vehicle Systems 3:131-135. Fearnbach et al. 2011. Endangered Species Research 13: 173-180. Fearnbach et al. 2018. Endangered Species Research 35: 175-180. Fearnbach et al. 2020. Marine Mammal Science, 36: 359-364. | More details | |
| Stillwaters Environmental Center | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Central Sound; map of Restoration sites.pdf ; Puget Sound Appletree Cove Carpenter Creek Estuary Carpenter Lake Carpenter Creek watershed Kingfisher Creek Crabapple Creek | Carpenter Creek Estuary Restoration, Research, & Monitoring Program | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | http://www.stillwatersenvironmentalcenter.org | This model restoration project in Central Puget Sound protects & restores over 30 acres of high quality estuarine habitat in this crucial location for migrating salmonids. Our estuary is one of the last refuges before the salmon head north into the Strait. The MONITORING PROGRAM of the restoration project is critical to evaluation of the project effectiveness & in creating a reference site for restoration elsewhere around the Sound. We engage citizen-scientists & professionals, all volunteers, to conduct monitoring & research in the watershed on 20+ different parameters. RESEARCH: We add parameters as need & interest arises, such as the ground water sampling to determine the freshwater seepage into the saltwater marsh, due to new housing developments next door. In 2020, we will coordinate the locations of data collection across the parameters, to demonstrate the interdependency of elements of the estuary. A MODEL FOR OTHERS: In 2020, we continue to document our procedures & protocol for our citizen-based monitoring program, & we will share more of that on our website. When we started the salt marsh monitoring, we had no reference sites to access for protocol or comparison. We see a need to be a reference for other restoration around the Sound, especially citizen-based projects. EDUCATION: We use this restoration program to educate interns & graduate research students from Western Washington University, from the University of Washington, & other universities. We offer field trip sites for the local schools from pre-school to college, & high school field studies for our Kingston High School students. We also educate local citizens on the importance of watershed protection at a community & at an individual level. | More details | |
| Ten Mile Creek Watershed Council | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $3,000.00 | North Central & East | General Support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Mendocino County | California | https://treesfoundation.org/partner-groups/ten-mile-creek-watershed-council/ | To improve the riparian and woodland environment of the Tenmile Creek watershed through community environmental education and outreach, stream restoration, habitat improvement, forest management and forest fire risk reduction efforts. | More details |
| The Bay Institute | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Improving Delta Salinity and Selenium Protections | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Contra Costa County ; San Joaquin County | California | http://www.thebayinstitute.org/ | Late 2019 saw two major and related decisions on managing Central Valley salt and selenium discharges to the Delta – but both decisions left open the door to improving salinity and selenium management. The State Water Resources Control Board tentatively approved a Central Valley Regional Board basin plan amendment governing salt and nitrate management for the next few decades – but mandated that the Regional Board correct a number of problems with the salt management proposal within the next year. These concerns include effects on water quality relating to environmental justice, fish and wildlife impacts and water quality for downstream urban suppliers. Around the same time the Regional Board also approved a waste discharge permit for stormwater discharge from westside San Joaquin Valley irrigators that will also be in place for decades – but also put in a two-year reopener to address potential impacts of selenium in stormwater on fish and wildlife downstream. This automatic reopener, and the accelerated remand to the Regional Board and guaranteed review by the State Board of the salt management plan, represent enormous opportunities for critics of the stormwater permits and original salt management plan to secure additional improvements, in part because salinity and selenium reduction actions are closely related. The Bay Institute (TBI) has been a leader of the coalition focusing on salinity and selenium issues, which includes Contra Costa County & CCWD. We seek the support of the Rose Foundation to enable TBI to continue to play this lead role on the salinity and selenium issues, with the assistance of Hal Candee of Altshuler Berzon LLP, who has worked closely with TBI and other conservation groups for many years on related Delta and Agricultural Drainage issues. | More details |
| The Common Acre | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $35,000.00 | Central Sound; Map - ProjectLocationandWetlands.pdf ; Duwamish estuary sub-watershed; our planting site impacts the headwaters of the Duwamish River, Taylor Creek West Fork, and Lake Washington. The specific address of the site is: 10617 53rd Ave S, Seattle WA, 98178. | The Green Line Green Infrastructure Youth Crew | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://www.commonacre.org/ | The Green Line is one of The Common Acre’s keystone projects: a 2 acre pollinator conservation project along the Creston-Duwamish transmission corridor of Seattle City Light, developed and managed by The Common Acre and our partners since 2015. This demonstration site that models how communities may repurpose inactive public space to enhance pollinator habitat, food resilience, human health, and water quality. In 2020, The Common Acre will partner with DIRT Corps to conduct a project aimed at: engaging diverse local youth with our site, helping to prevent ongoing watershed pollution, and improving the health of native habitats along our site, including riparian restoration zones. Specifically, we will: 1) Engage up to 20 youth ages 13-22, in a 6-week program that offers 33 hours of curriculum focused on: stormwater and wastewater; BMPs of ecological restoration work; native and invasive plant ID and management; site assessment skills; visiting DIRT Corps’ nursery at King County’s South Treatment Plant; volunteer management and leadership skills. Youth will likely be recruited from Rainier Beach Action Coalition’s Youth Fellowship program, and will receive these opportunities in green infrastructure and ecological restoration guided by professional mentors and community leaders. 2) Work with an Indigenous landscape designer and DIRT Corps member to design and implement a site-expansion on up to 2 acres, focused on improving native habitat and increasing stormwater infiltration on the project site by installing up to 2,000 native shrubs and forbs, amending compacted urban soils, and removal of invasive species including Reed Canary Grass and Himalayan Blackberry. 3) Conduct 4 public work parties, co-managed by The Common Acre and DIRT Corps staff, and supported by our project Community Liaison, and Field Director. At these free public events, community members will play a hands-on role in site restoration and learn about issues impacting water quality. | More details | |
| The Detox Project | Consumer Products Fund | 2020 | $30,912.18 | Glyphosate Testing in Protein-Based Commodities | Consumer Products | Nationwide | https://detoxproject.org/ | This project is fiscally sponsored by NewFarms, located in Colorado, and is operated by The Detox Project. All funding for this project will be handled by NewFarms. The project testing will be performed by AGQ USA Laboratories in Oxnard, California. The Detox Project is set to start the first ever comprehensive testing of the protein-based commodity market in the U.S. for glyphosate contamination. The Detox Project currently runs the most successful pesticide certification program for food and supplement products in the world, with its Glyphosate Residue Free certification Standard currently growing very fast in the U.S. and Canada. Our vast experience of testing food and supplement products for certification purposes will be key for this project. Glyphosate is the world’s most used weedkiller and can be found in products such as Roundup. It is regularly used just before harvest on many of the protein-based commodities such as soya and peas. | More details | ||
| The Progressive Club of Johns Island | Grassroots Leadership Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | General Support | Environmental Education ; Environmental Justice ; Other | South Carolina | http://progressiveclub.org/ | Johns Island residents have been collecting data on Johns Island for two years related to Fill and Build development practices and the consequent urban flooding and runoff. The runoff and flooding adversely affect Johns Island, both in the urban and rural areas, and the surrounding waterways. The Progressive Club proposes to continue and expand this work by continuing data collection, drawing more detailed conclusions, and presenting results in civic and political venues. They will affect ongoing development practices, the development of City ordinances, and decisions made at all levels of the development process. | More details | ||
| The Sierra Fund | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | Feasibility Analysis for Carbon Credits for Meadow Restoration in the Upper Feather River Watershed | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change and Energy | Plumas County | California | https://sierrafund.org/ | Purpose: The purpose of this project is to quantify and monetize the carbon sequestration capacity of healthy meadows, using the Upper Feather River Watershed (UFRW) as a feasibility study. This approach aims to incentivize investments in multi-benefit meadow restoration activities on privately-owned meadowlands in the region. Background: In the 1800s, California’s rivers were engineered to deliver water in support of the newfound state. Today, an extensive system of built infrastructure in conjunction with natural waterways is “operated†to provide water for habitat, human consumption, agriculture, and hydroelectricity. The system’s ability to meet the increased demands for water and power, as well as environmental flows, depends on the functioning of the “green infrastructure†of the headwaters and the restoration and protection of key areas, such as meadows. Healthy meadows are among the most valuable green infrastructure in the Sierra Nevada. They provide a disproportionate number of ecosystem services compared to the area they cover, including flood attenuation, sediment filtration, water storage, water quality improvement, carbon sequestration, and livestock forage. Prior to European contact, hydrologically functional meadows existed across the region; however, beginning in the 1850s, livestock grazing became widespread, leading to degraded meadows that cease to function as wetlands and instead have ongoing erosion, and degraded water quality. There are an estimated 190,000 acres of meadows in the Sierra Nevada and 50 percent are considered to be degraded from overgrazing. The UFRW features an abundance of meadows as compared to the rest of the Sierra Nevada. Within the UFRW alone approximately 39,384 acres of meadow exists. Restoration of these ecosystems will enhance the capacity of meadows to perform their stabilizing functions, to the benefit of all water users along the river’s 185 miles from the headwaters to its confluence with the Sacramento River. | More details |
| The Watershed Project | California Watershed Protection Fund | 2020 | $9,000.00 | San Francisco Bay Area | Pursuing Water Quality Concerns in West Contra Costa County | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Contra Costa County | California | http://thewatershedproject.org/ | This project will use and build on The Watershed Project’s water quality database and visualization platform (https://app.thewatershedproject.org/), previously funded by the California Watershed Protection Fund in 2018, to explore water quality in West Contra Costa County, CA (WCCC) in greater depth. We will expand the parameters we sample to include data related to homeless encampments, continue to collect baseline data that will be used to identify trends, and will use the visualization app as an educational tool to engage policy makers, community members, and youth. Working with our local partner groups, this multi-benefit project engages environmental justice challenges facing WCCC communities. These include the need for reliable water quality data for local creeks, the opportunity to address water quality concerns facing creeks in the area, and the opportunity to involve local schools for hands-on learning. Through these three prongs, we will gather and input quality open source data to our “Explore Contra Costa Creeks†database that decision makers can use in developing effective public policy, and a variety of stakeholder groups can use for advocacy and education tools. First, we want to take this database tool to local groups in each watershed and identify where we can provide more value. Next, an item of growing and urgent community concern in WCCC is the increasing number of homeless encampments on creeks and waterways, which may pose a threat to water quality downstream. We propose to collect and analyze fecal coliform samples from stretches of creek above and below these encampments. If we find an impact to the health of the creek, we hope to use the data to advocate for better housing alternatives and/or better waste and toilet facilities for those facing homelessness. Third, we will also begin a creek-oriented environmental education campaign with local schools, getting students out in the creeks and contributing data to our project. | More details |
| Tilth Alliance | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $20,000.00 | Central Sound; rbufw-map-2019.pdf ; These projects are based in southeast Seattle, connecting the wetlands of Rainier Beach to Lake Washington and Puget Sound. | Soil & Water Stewards/Youth Employment | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | http://www.tilthalliance.org/ | With support from the Rose Foundation, Tilth Alliance piloted our Soil and Water Stewards (SWS) program in 2017 with a goal of training a diverse cohort of volunteers to lead water quality improvement projects and serve as watershed ambassadors throughout Seattle and King County. Additional support helped grow the program with a focus on traditionally underserved communities and fueled targeted outreach and projects in East and South King County, within immigrant and refugee communities, low-income neighborhoods, senior centers, and schools. This program has been phenomenally successful, having now trained 124 volunteers who worked over 1,365 hours of volunteer time including community-based water quality improvement demonstration projects, raingarden and green infrastructure installations, and educational workshops encouraging residents to adopt chemical-free, natural yard care and better manage stormwater runoff, all of which benefits the quality of water in Puget Sound. What began as a one-month, six-session, 21-hour training has grown into a nine-month program with 45 hours of comprehensive training on soil, water, and food system stewardship with monthly projects throughout King County. At our 10-acre Rainier Beach Urban Farm and Wetlands (RBUFW) public property in southeast Seattle, we employ 10 youth of color from low-income households to work on restoring the onsite wetlands that connect directly to Lake Washington. We ask the Rose Foundation to help keep this critical activity thriving for the benefit of the waterways and the youth. In addition to stipends for five additional youth, we ask the Foundation to support the development of outdoor signage that will educate the public on the importance of wetland preservation and connecting the wetland to Lake Washington and Puget Sound, as well as the impact of regenerative, sustainable, and organic growing methods on water quality. Youth participants will help design and install the new signage. | More details | |
| Toxic Free Future | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $40,000.00 | Central Sound ; Salish Sea; ; Puget Sound overall, but especially Elliot Bay, Commencement Bay, the Thea Foss Waterway, and the Duwamish River outfall. | Safer Products for Pollution Prevention in Puget Sound | Environmental Health & Justice | Washington | http://www.toxicfreefuture.org | Washington state’s wide-sweeping new Safer Products for Washington Act provides an unprecedented opportunity to remove millions of pounds of chemicals from thousands of consumer products. This will not only protect people and communities that make and use the products, it will protect vulnerable wildlife and sensitive ecosystems downstream of consumer product use. Toxic-Free Future (TFF) will assertively implement Safer Products for Washington, seeking input from collaborating partners in community-based organizations, and advocating that priority products for communities are addressed. We will also provide state agencies with strong science and analysis so product groups that are high volume and high exposure are targeted. TFF will also activate and engage our grassroots, coalition partners, decision makers, scientists, health-effected individuals, and media outlets. The first classes of chemicals to be addressed under Safer Products for Washington are PFAS chemicals, hormone disrupting phthalates, toxic flame retardants, industrial phenolics, and PCBs. What’s so exciting about Safer Products for Washington is that these chemicals will be addressed as entire classes, not just chemical-by-chemical. We can now prevent chemical whack-a-mole in which the chemical industry simply substitutes equally bad or worse chemicals for ones that are restricted. | More details | |
| Trees Foundation | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $2,500.00 | North Coast | Website Revamp 2020! Phase 2 | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Del Norte County ; Humboldt County ; Marin County ; Mendocino County ; San Francisco County ; Santa Cruz County ; Sonoma County ; Trinity County | California | http://www.treesfoundation.org | To continue the redesign of Trees Foundation's website and database, and modernize their digital communications strategy to enable broader outreach and more sophisticated messaging to partners, donors and constituents. | More details |
| Trees Foundation | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | North Coast | Website Revamp 2020! | Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Del Norte County ; Humboldt County ; Marin County ; Mendocino County ; San Francisco County ; Santa Cruz County ; Sonoma County ; Trinity County | California | http://www.treesfoundation.org | To redesign Trees’ website and online newsletter, and modernize their digital communications strategy to enable broader outreach and more sophisticated messaging to partners, donors and constituents. | More details |
| Twin Harbors Waterkeeper | Grays Harbor/Chehalis River Watershed Fund | 2020 | $60,000.00 | Grays Harbor/Chehalis River | The Chehalis River Watershed and Grays Harbor Estuary Clean Water Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Washington | https://twinharborswaterkeeper.org/ | The mission of Twin Harbors Waterkeeper (THW) is to protect and improve water quality in the Chehalis River Watershed, Grays Harbor Estuary and Willapa Bay Watershed. In order to achieve this mission TWH has three goals: 1) stop illegal water pollution; 2) prevent new sources of water pollution; and, 3) stop toxic discharges to water from historically contaminated sites. The goal of the proposed project is to work to achieve these goals specifically in the Chehalis River Watershed and Grays Harbor Estuary. In order to achieve these goals THW has a number of objectives and strategies including permit compliance review, field inspections, on-the-water patrols, pollution hotline, and legal actions including permit appeals and Clean Water Act litigation. | More details | |
| University of Washington | Orca Fund | 2020 | $74,948.00 | Salish Sea ; Puget Sound ; Canada; ; Coastal and inland waters of the Salish Sea, from Swiftsure Bank and the southwest coast of Vancouver Island through the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the San Juan Islands and southern Canadian Gulf Islands, and south Puget Sound. | Partitioning Multiple Pressures Impacting Southern Resident Orca and Other Whales in the Salish Sea | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://www.washington.edu/research/osp/ | This study will link physiological and environmental health in Southern Resident Orcas (SRO) and their habitat. We non-invasively measure stress, reproductive and nutritional health, toxins and microbiome diversity in genotyped SRO feces located by specially trained scat detection dogs (Wasser et al., 2004; Ayres et al., 2012; Wasser et al., 2017). Since 2007, we have collected 650+ samples using this method, enabling us to tie physiological and toxicant measures to concurrent measures of fish abundance, vessel traffic (presence, type, and activities), SRO behavior (e.g foraging, traveling, socializing, resting) and more, with the ultimate goals of partitioning the relative impacts of threats facing SROs identified by National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)/NOAA. These findings have made vital contributions to management decisions related to SRO recovery at the county, state, and federal level, including Washington’s Southern Resident Killer Whale Recovery Task Force. The proposed study will use existing methods from our lab and newly developed measures of toxicants and the microbiome in SROs to help prioritize mitigation efforts and better promote population recovery. Additionally, we will assess the potential of expanding our study to include mammal-eating orcas (MEO) and baleen whales (humpback, minke, gray) present in these inland waters, in an effort to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the overall health of the Salish Sea ecosystem across multiple trophic levels. These findings will help guide management decisions related to water quality and aquatic habitat of the Salish Sea. Dissemination of results will be through peer-reviewed publications, lectures/presentations, engagement with elected officials, outreach to the public, and education in public and Coast Salish tribal schools. | More details | |
| Washington Environmental Council | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | South Sound ; Central Sound ; North Sound ; Salish Sea; ; We are working to protect all bodies of water in the Puget Sound region. There are a high concentration of MTCA sites in Central Puget Sound, particularly the Duwamish River, Commencement Bay, and the Puyallup River. See map of sites in Attachments. | Puget Sound Toxic Pollution Prevention and Cleanup Advocacy | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Land Management/Urban Sprawl/Open Space | Washington | http://www.wecprotects.org | Washington Environmental Council is working to protect and restore Puget Sound from over a century of harm by advancing strong policies and funding mechanisms to improve water quality across the region. Over the next year, we will be working to strengthen and defend Washington’s signature toxic pollution cleanup and prevention funding program, the Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA). After failed legislative attempts, WEC helped secure MTCA’s passage in 1988 as a voter initiative, and the program has since cleaned up over 7,000 polluted sites across the state. However, there are still over 13,000 designated MTCA sites in Washington, with the majority of polluted sites concentrated in the Puget Sound region, particularly in communities of color and low-income communities. MTCA is currently undergoing a multi-year administrative overhaul, and WEC sits on the advisory group guiding this process. We are working to incorporate racial and economic equity in every step of the MTCA process, strengthen cleanup quality standards, and defend the program’s funding from being redirected to other state budget needs in the midst of an economic crisis. WEC needs additional resources in the coming year to fight attempts by major polluting industries to weaken MTCA, and to educate and engage the public in advocacy for toxic pollution cleanup and prevention. | More details | |
| Water Climate Trust | California Wildlands Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,500.00 | Statewide | Water For Nature Campaign | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy ; Environmental Justice | Plumas County ; Sacramento County ; San Francisco County ; Shasta County ; Siskiyou County | California | https://www.waterclimate.org/ | To advocate for the restoration and protection of flow levels in rivers and streams in the upper Sacramento River watershed through policy advocacy, organizing, and participation in key state and federal regulatory and legal processes. | More details |
| WaterWatch of Oregon | Columbia River Fund | 2020 | $15,000.00 | WaterWatch of Oregon's Columbia Basin Project | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation ; Climate Change & Energy | Oregon | https://waterwatch.org/ | Excessive stream temperatures in the Columbia Basin in Oregon often result from reduced streamflows caused by antiquated water policies. Now, on top of these legacy issues, the effects of climate change threaten about half of the cold water habitat in the Columbia Basin in Oregon in this century. Water Watch of Oregon recognizes the close connection between water temperature, adequate water in stream and smarter water management. The projects in this proposal protect and restore dry season streamflows, protect aquifers that provide cold source waters to streams and secure smarter water management in the Columbia Basin in Oregon. By addressing changes in hydrology and water temperature caused by climate change (and the legacy of antiquated water policies), these projects mesh precisely with objectives that scientists recommend to mitigate and adapt to climate change and address the threats to cold water habitat in the Columbia Basin in Oregon. | More details | ||
| Weed Warriors | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $10,000.00 | Central Sound; green-river-watershed-map with location in red.pdf ; | Invasive Weed Species Removal near Myers Way Wetlands | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education | Washington | http://naturestewardswa.org/ | The overall goal is to improve the health of the wetlands and streams within the Myers Parcels by removing invasive weed species. The project site, located in the Green/Duwamish Watershed, is in proximity to the headwaters of Hamm Creek, which empties into Puget Sound via the Duwamish River. The purpose of this project is to protect and conserve the wetlands of Myers Parcels and restore the damage by invasive weed infestations that occurred from neglect by a previous tenant. These Parcels are now in the City of Seattle Finance and Administrative Services Dept. and a section of the parcels is home to a City-sanctioned tiny-house encampment of approximately 50 homeless individuals, Camp Second Chance. The project includes activities that engage community volunteers and residents of Camp Second Chance in the removal of invasive noxious weeds in the area near the wetlands. The project addresses the social equity justice issues by training and employing the residents that have been displaced from traditional housing due to rising rental costs in the Seattle area. This project, located in a racially diverse low-income area of West Seattle, also demonstrates citizen involvement in environmental stewardship activities and educates about the importance keeping Puget Sound healthy. 1. Community Engagement in environmental stewardship of critical areas such as wetlands and stream tributaries that effect the health of Puget Sound 2. Assessment of invasive plants near the wetlands 3. Removal of invasive weeds to allow the natural re-vegetation of native plant species This project offers stipends to the camp residents, provides training on invasive species removal, and provides the necessary tools, work boots and jackets. The volunteer participants and the camp residents, who are of varied ethnicity, cultural backgrounds, and sexual orientation, will acquire a skill, increasing employment opportunities, and gain knowledge about the local environment. | More details | |
| Weed Warriors | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $10,000.00 | Central Sound; green-river-watershed-map with location in red.pdf ; The Myers Way wetland project site, located in the Green/Duwamish Watershed, is in proximity to the headwaters of Hamm Creek, which empties into Puget Sound via the Duwamish River. Address: 9701 Myers Way So., Seattle, WA 98108 Wetland #1 | Invasive Weed Removal near Myers Way Wetlands - Phase 2 | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | http://naturestewardswa.org/ | The overall goal of Phase 2 is to improve the health of the wetland within the Myers Parcels. The project site, located in the Green/Duwamish Watershed, is in proximity to the headwaters of Hamm Creek, which empties into Puget Sound via the Duwamish River. The purpose of this Phase 2 is to continue removing invasive Himalayan blackberry roots and begin the restoration process, provide weed suppression of mulched organic material, followed by restoration with native plants, such as willow, that further enhances the quality of the wetland habitat. In the first phase, we removed over one-half acre of dense, impenetrable blackberry thickets and some of the roots. The blackberry canes will be mulched and used on site as weed suppression to protect the soil from other invasive weeds. These Parcels are owned by City of Seattle with a section dedicated to a City-sanctioned tiny-house encampment of approximately 50 drug and alcohol-free homeless individuals, Camp Second Chance. Activities will engage community volunteers and residents of Camp Second Chance in the restoration of the delineated wetland area. The project addresses social equity justice issues by training and employing the residents that have been displaced from traditional housing due to rising rental costs in the Seattle area. This project, located in a racially diverse low-income area of West Seattle, also demonstrates citizen involvement in environmental stewardship activities and educates about the importance keeping Puget Sound healthy. This project provides training on invasive species removal, stipends for Camp participants, the necessary tools, and protective gear. The volunteer participants and the camp residents, who are of varied ethnicity, cultural backgrounds, and sexual orientation, will acquire a skill, increasing employment opportunities, and gain knowledge about the local environment, wetlands, and habitat restoration. | More details | |
| Western Environmental Law Center | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $30,000.00 | South Sound ; Central Sound ; North Sound ; Salish Sea; ; Our advocacy is broad and implicates the entire Puget Sound ecosystem. That said, our work will specifically protect Elliott Bay, the Duwamish River Watershed, Commencement Bay, Budd Inlet, and the waters of South Sound. | Legal Advocacy to Protect Puget Sound | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Health & Justice ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | http://www.westernlaw.org | The Western Environmental Law Center (WELC) is engaged in a legal advocacy campaign to protect the waters of Puget Sound. In this campaign, WELC's legal team will work with our clients and partners including, most notably, Northwest Environmental Advocates and Earthrise Law Center. WELC will not be partnering with, working with, communicating with, or coordinating with Puget Soundkeeper on this project. Puget Soundkeeper will not be a WELC client for this project. Specifically, WELC is fighting to protect the Sound's waters via two complimentary efforts. First, All Known, Available, and Reasonable Treatment (AKART) is the concept that all known and reasonable methods of pollution treatment must be used to control pollution. Currently, the Washington Department of Ecology is in violation of AKART and the agency routinely issues National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits that require only the use of secondary sewage treatment. This process fails to reduce the amounts of nutrients and toxics discharged to Puget Sound. Over the last 35 years, tertiary treatment, which can remove nutrients and toxics, has become increasingly known, available, and economically feasible. The goal of our legal advocacy is to force the Washington Department of Ecology to comply with AKART and the Clean Water Act to protect the Sound from improperly treated wastewater. Second, WELC is engaged in litigation challenging the Environmental Protections Agency’s approval of Washington’s 2012 Clean Water Act section 303(d) List and water pollution cleanup priority schedule, and failure to develop total maximum daily load (TMDLs) rules for impaired waters. In addition, we have sued EPA for failing to develop the necessary TMDLs, as the law requires. We filed our lawsuit with the District Court of the Western District of Washington. The goal of our advocacy is to force the EPA and Ecology to comply with the 303(d) rules, which will inherently lead to a cleaner, healthier Puget Sound. | More details | |
| Western Rivers Conservancy | Columbia River Fund | 2020 | $39,997.00 | Wenatchee River Sediment Reduction and Outreach Initiative | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education | Washington | https://www.westernrivers.org/ | WRC seeks funding from the Rose Foundation to design sediment reduction projects and perform water quality education in Kahler Creek, an important tributary to Nason Creek and the Wenatchee River watershed. The project will reduce sediment loading by restoring floodplain and riparian function and returning large wood structures to Kahler Creek to increase hydraulic roughness and slow flow velocities. These structures will raise in-channel and subsurface water elevations and trigger sediment deposition, bed aggradation, groundwater storage and riparian communities. These structures are expected to act as porous, natural dams that impound water, increasing the overall in-situ surface water storage within Kahler Creek. The project will re-store up to 38 acre-feet of water for slower release during critical low flow periods, cooling water temperature and improving riparian corridors and floodplain function for at-risk fish species. This project is located in Kahler Creek, a tributary to Nason Creek, one of the highest priority streams for protection and restoration in the Wenatchee Basin. Nason Creek supports habitat for eight fish species: spring Chinook, summer steelhead, and bull trout (all ESA listed), as well as sockeye salmon, cutthroat trout, and mountain whitefish. This project is strategically significant because it contributes to on-going conservation and restoration work being implemented in the Upper Columbia River Basin. Nason Creek has benefited from several instream restoration projects implemented by Yakima Nation Fisheries and others in recent years. Working with the multi-stakeholder Nason Ridge Community Forest partners, WRC will work with the Nason Ridge partnership to develop and disseminate outreach materials to encourage responsible land use practices in the basins. The Nason Ridge partnership is an ideal forum to perform this work, having been formed in 2018 for the protection of water, wildlife and recreation on this key restoration landscape. | More details | ||
| Wild Fish Conservancy | Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund | 2020 | $25,000.00 | Central Sound ; North Sound; ; Central, Eastern, and North Puget Sound, Salish Sea | Taking Back Our Sound | Water Resources/Watershed Protection | Washington | https://wildfishconservancy.org/ | Since 2017, Wild Fish Conservancy has led and facilitated the Our Sound, Our Salmon campaign, a broad-based grassroots coalition, with the shared objective of ending commercial open water finfish aquaculture in Puget Sound to improve water quality, protect threatened and endangered species, and restore greater ecosystem health. In 2018, with partial support from the Rose Foundation, this diverse coalition successfully advocated for a landmark law phasing out all Atlantic salmon net pen aquaculture in Washington by 2022. Following the legislation the coalition continued to work together to drive important policy changes to better regulate this industry through the phase out including actions to protect water quality and prevent the spread of pathogens to wild stocks. In 2020, WFC is continuing to lead the Our Sound, Our Salmon campaign in an urgent, new initiative, Taking Back Our Sound, to prevent the net pen industry from expanding in Puget Sound by transitioning their permits and leases to allow for the commercial propagation of highly-domesticated steelhead not prohibited by Washington's recent law. Employing a broad outreach strategy, WFC will work to renergize and grow the highly-effective OSOS coalition and direct the campaign's momentum toward efforts to stop this expansion by preventing the renewal of Cooke Aquaculture's leases. On behalf of the public, WFC will use our scientific and legal expertise to submit a technically rigorous application to lease all public lands currently used by the company that effectively argues protecting these public waters for the restoration of water quality, salmonids, orcas, and the greater ecosystem is ecologically, scientifically, and financially in the best interest of the public. WFC will work in collaboration with the coalition to replicate our legislative success and demonstrate widespread public support necessary to demand the State lease these lands back to the public, ending net pen aquaculture in Puget Sound. | More details | |
| Wild Orca | Orca Fund | 2020 | $10,000.00 | Salish Sea ; Puget Sound; ; The core project team is based in Puget Sound/Salish Sea. Grassroots supporters covers the entire range of the SRO and Chinook salmon spawning habitats. Project directed efforts would be within the core Salish Sea habitat, where most SRO work occurs. | SRO Health Crisis: Engaging and Educating the Salish Sea Community to Advance Policy Solutions | Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Washington | https://www.wildorca.org/ | The Southern Resident Orcas (SRO) are on the brink of extinction. Research from the Orca Scat Project—University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology—shows insufficient Chinook salmon leads to poor health; increased stress, early mortality, miscarriages, and young calves struggling to thrive. Studies suggest that poor nutrition amplifies the effects of toxic pollution in the Salish Sea. Put simply, to save the SRO, we must save the salmon—and that means addressing long-standing water quality issues impacting the entire salmon lifecycle, and their food web. It’s essential that these landmark studies from UW and other research groups are highlighted and discussed more prominently in the public domain. But too often, research lives in an insiders’ bubble, and fails to make the intended real-world policy changes. Scientific literature can be highly indigestible, with complex math and statistics, making it inaccessible to most lay readers. This work requires interpretation and translation to make it more accessible to multi-stakeholder audiences, from the public to policymakers. Wild Orca’s Project proposes a full review of the science and research findings from UW, as well as other emerging science, data such as habitat use and trends, and water quality. A suite of talking points, position papers, and policy briefs will build a clear picture of the SRO’s need for a resilient food web in the Salish Sea, less exposed to toxins and pollutants. Wild Orca will utilize this translational science to create tools for outreach and education, for grassroots advocacy, campaigns and media engagement; and to facilitate discussion with key elected officials and other decision-makers, to influence policy, regulation and practice in favor of recovering SRO and their prey. Policy solutions will advocate for an increase in natural production of wild salmon, through restoration of key spawning habitats, and improving water quality throughout the Salish Sea watershed. | More details | |
| WildPlaces | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Central Valley | General Support | Environmental Education ; Water Resources/Watershed Protection ; Climate Change & Energy | Tulare County | California | http://www.wildplaces.net | To develop online and virtual activities that embrace Two Spirit and indigenous ceremonial practices and prepare community leaders to implement stewardship projects on the Tule River. | More details |
| Wolf Creek Community Alliance | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $5,000.00 | Sierra Nevada | General Support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Nevada County | California | http://www.wolfcreekalliance.org/ | To continue a 16- year water quality monitoring program to improve creek access and water quality and promote projects to restore and protect the Wolf Creek Watershed. | More details |
| Zero Waste Humboldt | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $3,000.00 | North Coast | General Support | Environmental Health & Justice ; Environmental Education ; Habitat/Wilderness/Preservation | Humboldt County | California | https://zerowastehumboldt.org/ | To increase capacity for grassroots organizing and recruit and train new leaders to promote proactive waste prevention strategies in businesses, partner organizations, local government, schools, and youth groups in Humboldt County, including establishing a local Zero Waste Business Certification Program, and increasing citizen science monitoring. | More details |
| Zero Waste Humboldt | California Environmental Grassroots Fund | 2020 | $330.00 | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | California | https://zerowastehumboldt.org/ | Grassroots Fund Build Your Roots Mini-Grant | More details | |||
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