Environment Maryland Research & Policy Center, Inc.
$50,000 / 2012 / Environment
Toward continued support of the Restore the Chesapeake Bay campaign. The focus of the campaign is to provide research-based reports that call attention to relevant problems of urban and farm runoff pollution, organize press conferences, and mobilize grassroots support for effective policies to reduce pollution.
Environmental Integrity Project (EIP)
$150,000 / 2012 / Environment
For continued support of the Brooklyn/Curtis Bay/Hawkins Point Environmental Justice Campaign. EIP will conduct additional research to determine the precise locations of air pollution sources, such as emissions from petroleum storage tanks, ships, and equipment at the Port of Baltimore. EIP will also continue to negotiate permits with Constellation Energy to secure binding terms for the new coal ash landfill in the Curtis Bay area, and work to address heavy diesel traffic pollution infiltrating the neighborhoods.
Maryland Environmental Service
$88,800 / 2012 / Environment
For project management activities to help facilitate the design and construction of a thermophilic anaerobic digester near the Eastern Correctional Institution Cogeneration facility in Somerset County, in an effort to convert excess poultry litter into methane biogas, a form of renewable energy. This facility will provide an alternative use of poultry litter and provide a source of clean, renewable energy “scalable” to the available feedstock.
Maryland League of Conservation Voters Education Fund
$10,000 / 2012 / Environment
To strengthen Maryland’s environmental voice by educating voters on priority public policy issues. These issues include open space funding, transportation, offshore wind energy, and storm water management. The league will rely extensively on email alerts, its website, blogging, and social networking, in an effort to engage its base of 241,000 online environmental activists.
Midshore Riverkeeper Conservancy
$20,000 / 2012 / Environment
Toward support of the Water Quality Monitoring Program, for the Choptank River, the Tred Avon River, the Miles and Wye rivers, and the Eastern Bay. More than 50 trained volunteers are engaged in the extensive water-monitoring program, which tests 84 sites bi-monthly to detect hot spots, illegal discharges, farm runoff, septic tank leakages, erosion sediment, and algae blooms. Findings are included in the conservancy’s second annual report and incorporated into the Phase II Watershed Implementation Plan for Talbot, Kent, and Caroline counties.