The state has launched a new initiative to make it easier for towns to apply for grant funding for environmental projects, and one of the first towns to benefit is Barnstable.
Barnstable Clean Water Coalition and its partners received $2.765 million from the state’s Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Program. They will use the money to restore 47 acres of retired cranberry bogs in Marstons Mills to their natural wetland state.
According to Courtney Rocha, southeast regional coordinator for the MVP Program, this will help with nitrogen pollution and long-term carbon storage.
“It really is trying to reduce a lot of the nitrogen load affecting much of the Cape,” she said. “The headwaters of the Marstons Mills River deliver about one-third of the excess nitrogen load entering the Three Bays Estuary in the town of Barnstable.”
The project was funded through a new initiative called Environment and Climate One Stop, MVP Program director Kara Runsten said. Now, there is one application for eight different environmental grants.
“So you can think of it kind of like the college Common App, for instance,” she said. “It just makes it easier by being able to apply via one application, and then we on the back end will match them with a correct source of funding.”
But securing grant funding is still highly competitive. The Marstons Mills cranberry bog restoration project wasn’t selected the first time the application was submitted, Rocha said. But it was chosen after the second application, in part because it included plans for community engagement.
“They’re actually hiring people from the community to collect oral stories of the land, pre- and post-colonization,” Rocha said. “There's a lot of Cape Verde history there as well.”
The project also includes plans to work with Barnstable High School students to make videos of the oral histories.
The bog restoration project is expected to be completed in 2028. It’s one of 97 projects that were funded through the Environment and Climate One Stop initiative, totaling more than $45 million.
On the Cape, Barnstable County got $246,659 to develop a regional open space plan. Chatham got $933,780 to build a living shoreline on Jackknife Beach to help with erosion control. Dennis got $140,854 to do data collection and modeling for the replacement of the Loring Avenue Bridge. Falmouth got $300,000 to prepare designs and permit applications for new water mains in the Surf Drive area. Mashpee got $250,000 for the design and permitting to improve fish passage in the Mashpee River. Yarmouth got $54,482 for stormwater remediation.
The Martha’s Vineyard Commission got $387,407 to improve access to the hospital from the Vineyard Haven Steamship Authority ferry terminal, and another $103,174 for planning salt marsh restorations.
On the South Coast, Wareham got $111,000 for a sewer vulnerability assessment and another $250,000 for planning to remove the Parker Mills Pond Dam, and Fall River got $1 million to study restoration options for Sucker Brook Wetland.
