2019 Quinnipiac River Fund Grant Awards 

Photo by Ian Christmann

Support for scientific research, monitoring and pollution reduction efforts in river and surrounding watershed

New Haven, CT (April 22, 2019) – The Quinnipiac River Fund has awarded $138,000 in grants to study the Quinnipiac River and its wildlife, reduce pollution, and increase access and recreational opportunities. Eleven competitive grants were awarded to organizations working in Greater New Haven.

The Quinnipiac River starts west of New Britain and flows through Wallingford and North Haven before spilling into New Haven Harbor and Long Island Sound. The river has a long history of pollution from industry and urban development.

The Quinnipiac River Fund was established in 1990 with a mission to improve the environmental quality of the river, New Haven Harbor and the surrounding watershed. It is a permanent fund at The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, and its grants and distributions are recommended each spring by an Advisory Committee and approved by The Community Foundation's Board of Directors. The grants support studies of the water quality and ecology, studies of pollution, public access to the river, land use planning, land acquisition around the river, habitat restoration, advocacy, education, and other relevant projects. For more information about the fund and its supported projects, visit http://www.thequinnipiacriver.com.

2019 Grant Awards

$4,500 to ART 25, a New Haven arts group, to support a summer employment program for New Haven youth that will help reduce pollution entering in the Quinnipiac River. The employed youth will stencil messages at stormwater drains warning not to dump polluting materials.

$16,800 to Canal Dock Boathouse, Inc. to support boating events, club boating programs, and vendor-operated rentals of kayaks and paddle boards on the New Haven Harbor and on the Quinnipiac and Mill rivers.

$3,000 to the City of Meriden, to support a Public Works Department pilot program to retrofit hooded outlet protection on ten existing storm water catch basins that are in storm water systems that discharge into the Quinnipiac River or one of its tributaries.

$13,000 to Land Use Leadership Alliance (LULA), to support policy, planning and regulatory training for natural resource protection, stormwater runoff, watershed protection, and shoreline resiliency to municipalities in the Quinnipiac River Watershed.

$10,000 to New Haven Land Trust, to support the protection and care of the Quinnipiac Meadows and Long Wharf Nature Preserves, as well as to support efforts to acquire additional preserve property and increase outreach programming, volunteer events, and Schooner programs that engage the local community with the Quinnipiac River and its surrounding environments.

$17,000 to Quinnipiac University, to support monitoring, identifying and quantifying known pollutants from industrial outflows along the Quinnipiac River, specifically industrial areas in Wallingford and North Haven.

$15,000 to River Advocates of South Central CT to support the recruitment and training of a permits observer corps to monitor local land use commissions and screen for testimony local land use permits, as well as assist in monitoring of state level permits affecting water quality.

$16,000 to Southern Connecticut State University, to support an examination of the seasonal variation in the composition and quantity of microplastic particles from wastewater treatment facilities discharging treated wastewater into the Quinnipiac River.

$17,300 to University of New Haven, to support the sampling of cyanobacterial communities in the Quinnipiac River in order to identify and monitor known bloom-forming species that may also produce toxins.

$8,400 to Yale University to support the monitoring of marsh surface elevations as well as the salinity and vegetation in one lobe of the marsh, and to support measurement of soil salinity and vegetation cover in marsh-bordering areas at the Quinnipiac Meadows Preserve.

$17,000 to Yale University to support to support the measurement of mercury in bottom sediments and in fish from ponds spanning the Quinnipiac River watershed to determine where it exceeds safety thresholds.