Passamaquoddy, Penobscot tribes awarded EPA water cleanup grants
Photo / Maureen Milliken
Passamaquoddy Tribal Headquarters in Indian Township. The Passamaquoddy and Penobscot nations were awarded EPA grants for water cleanup.
The Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes will get a share of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency $1.5 million grant award to 50 organizations working to address environmental justice issues in their communities.
The two Maine tribes will each get $30,000 — the Passamaquoddy tribe to test Pleasant Point drinking water for contaminates, and the Penobscot to address mercury contamination in freshwater fish from tribal water sources.
While 50% of the grants awarded will support communities with census tracts designated as federal Opportunity Zones, no Maine tribal land was designated an Opportunity Zone. The zones are an economically-distressed community where new investments, under certain conditions, may be eligible for preferential tax treatment.
EPA's Environmental Justice Small Grants program provides support to organizations that otherwise lack the funding and resources to address environmental challenges in underserved communities.
The funding, generally $30,000 for one-year projects, will help organizations in 27 states and Puerto Rico carry out projects that will:
- Educate residents about environmental issues that may impact their health.
- Collect data about local environmental conditions.
- Conduct demonstrations and training to shed light on those conditions.
- Work collaboratively to address environmental justice challenges in their communities.
The grants will enable these organizations to conduct research, provide education and training, and develop community-driven solutions to local health and environmental issues in minority, low-income, tribal, and rural communities. Sixteen of this year’s environmental justice grant projects are in communities that are especially vulnerable to disasters.
“Rural and disadvantaged communities are often disproportionately affected by environmental health risks, and at EPA we are working to reverse this trend,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler in a news release.
“These grants support the President’s initiatives to invest in and revitalize distressed communities. By supporting often overlooked, local organizations that understand the unique challenges that their communities face, we’re better able to put in place long-term solutions to improve the environment and health of underserved areas of the country.”
Unsafe water for humans, fish
The Passamaquoddy tribe will test local drinking water for contaminates and address community concerns about the quality of the drinking water available at the Pleasant Point reservation in Washington County. Community members do not trust that the drinking water delivered to their homes is safe to drink, the release said. They report the water being discolored periodically each year sometimes appearing yellow or brown.
The project will engage community members who volunteer their homes to be used in the drinking water study. Additional project activities include installation of a drinking water fill station accessible to all community members, water testing, multiple community meetings and workshops detailing drinking water needs, development of a drinking water report, and the beginning stages of developing a community action plan to improve drinking water quality.
The Penobscot Indian Nation project aims to address mercury contamination in freshwater fish from tribal water sources. Recent studies have identified harmful levels of toxic pollutants in fish from the tribe’s Penobscot River reservation waters, which lie downstream of industrial dischargers, leading tribal members to shift their sustenance fishing to the isolated tribal lakes. However, fish from these isolated water bodies have been rarely, if ever, sampled for contaminants, the release said.
The project will provide species- and site-specific information on mercury concentrations in fish and crayfish from lakes subject to tribal sustenance fishing rights. Findings from this project will be used to inform the tribal community and to influence behavior to minimize mercury exposure during sustenance fishing. Finally, data on mercury in fish and crayfish will provide the baseline data needed to design a long-term mercury monitoring program that informs policymakers on the effectiveness of current mercury water quality regulations.
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