The Environmental Finance Center worked with two Maryland communities—the cities of Annapolis and Salisbury— to evaluate their readiness to invest in climate resilience and to develop guidance to help communities lay the groundwork for effective resilience funding.  The project included conducting a crosswalk of each community's key planning and policy documents, evaluating whether the communities have in place key enabling conditions for resilience investment, and developing self-assessment questions that municipalities may use to determine their readiness to inves

2020

EFC worked with partners in the Delaware River Basin to develop a proposal for an upcoming Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) funding opportunity. This process included reviewing the original Delaware Basin RCPP project, providing comments to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) on new RCPP rules, identifying and engaging stakeholders, assessing stakeholder capacity and project feasibility, and developing an implementation plan.

2006

The Environmental Finance Center, through the support of the William Penn Foundation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, launched the Delaware River Watershed Innovative Financing Strategy Project.  The EFC and its project partners convened an expert environmental financing panel and identified innovative and scalable options for financing Delaware River watershed restoration and protection efforts.  The panel’s work resulted in a financing strategy that enabled the William Penn Foundation and its funding partners to allocate capital and funding in a way that is catalytic and ultimately successf

The EPA is developing training materials for environmental watershed planners and hazard mitigation specialists at the state and local level to demonstrate the link between water quality protection, watershed planning, source water protection, and hazard mitigation programs. The materials will help professionals engaged in this work better understand how the concepts are related and can enhance planning efforts and improve outcomes when performed together.

2018 (June)

Over the past three decades, billions of federal, state, and local dollars have been deployed to support water infrastructure projects and other programs that reduce point and nonpoint sources of pollution to the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.

2016-2020

Community-enabled Lifecycle Analysis of Stormwater Infrastructure Costs (CLASIC) is a collaborative effort between seven institutions looking at green and gray infrastructure alternatives for stormwater. The four-year project (2016-2020) was funded at $2M by USEPA under National Priorities: Life Cycle Costs of Water Infrastructure Alternatives grant.

2017 (October)

Changes in the regulatory landscape, coupled with budget-constrained environments, are driving local governments to search for new or evolving strategies and investments that deliver more value than conventional stormwater management practices.

2023 - Present

The Smart Salting: Enhanced Winter Maintenance training addresses salt pollution on parking lots, driveways, and sidewalks. This voluntary, statewide road salt certification program is targeted to private applicators and aims to balance the safety and mobility of people during winter weather months with improving application practices to reduce contamination to local streams, wells, and drinking water reservoirs and prevent damage to infrastructure, the environment, and potentially human health.

2013 (December)

SAGE HAMPTON is a donation funded program managed by Hampton, Virginia's Clean City Commission.  The program supports installation of gardens in roads rights-of-way to help slow and filter stormwater runoff entering local waterways.  SAGE's goals include beautifying the local streetscape, filtering stormwater, boosting community pride and appreciation, and facilitating future economic development by creating a more inviting roadway environment.  EFC helped support the development of an operational guidance document for the SAGE HAMPTON program.

2007 (June)

This paper contains the stories of six watershed organizations considered "successful":  the Charles River Watershed Association, South Yuba River's Citizen League, Amigos Bravos, Blackfoot Challenge, Elizabeth River Project, and Friends of the Mississippi River. Success was gauged by the organizations'  demonstrated accomplishments and by their growth in members and annual budgets.  The stories shared approaches used by organizational leaders to grow outstanding watershed organizations.