|
In September 2001, The Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay received a watershed management planning grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to develop a protection plan for the Grand Traverse Bay watershed. The plan was completed in December 2003 and approved by the DEQ under the Clean Michigan Initiative bond criteria. The plan was then updated in 2005 to meet new EPA criteria for the Section 319 funding program.
The Grand Traverse Bay Watershed Protection Plan provides a description of the watershed (including such topics as bodies of water, population, land use, municipalities, and recreational activities), summarizes each of the nine subwatersheds to Grand Traverse Bay, and outlines current water quality conditions in the bay. Within the initial two-year development phase of the protection plan, water quality threats were identified and efforts to address these issues were researched, developed, and prioritized. The 2005 revisions include additional information on pollutant sources and concentrations, load reduction estimates of various BMPs, measurable milestones to guide implementation progress, and a set of criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of implementation efforts.
|
