L.I. Sound gets funding boost to improve health

Financing will help expand aquarium’s education efforts about dangers of plastic

Mystic — U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., came to Mystic Aquarium on Tuesday to announce that $1.76 million in federal funding has been approved for projects designed to help improve the health of Long Island Sound.

This includes $44,000 to help the aquarium expand its education efforts about the importance of keeping plastics and other debris out of the water. That debris sometimes is ingested by fish and marine mammals, injuring or killing them. Some are brought to the aquarium to receive care.

Blumenthal, who credited the state’s entire legislative delegation with securing the funding from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Long Island Sound Futures Fund, said the money will be shared among a large group of organizations and municipalities involved in 20 separate projects. Each group has matched the amount of the grants resulting in $3.4 million of funding for the projects.

The aquarium will use some of its money to expand its long-running education effort for students in Norwich, New London and Hartford, including classroom and distance learning, coastal field studies the students participate in and visits to the aquarium, all designed to boost awareness of the problem of marine debris in the Sound.

In addition, the aquarium will help

educate its 300 stranding network volunteers about how to better identify animals in distress and how marine debris impacts them. Aquarium President Stephen Coan said that hopefully these education efforts will result in fewer stranded and injured seals, turtles and other animals needing to be treated in the aquarium’s animal care center, which Blumenthal visited Tuesday.

Coan credited Blumenthal with being a key figure in helping the aquarium move toward “a more aggressive stance” when it comes to conservation.

Blumenthal told a crowd of aquarium employees that the quality of the Sound’s habitat also is a reflection of “our quality of life.” He added that more broadly, it’s about “our obligation to be good stewards of our planet.”

He said the need for the aquarium to have an animal rescue clinic is due in part to the trash and debris that is being thrown into the Sound and the waters that flow into it.

He pointed out that reducing debris is about more than protecting wildlife, as the Sound is responsible for between $14 billion and $30 billion a year in economic impact. “When we degrade the Sound we’re not only injuring and killing wildlife, we’re harming ourselves economically,” he said.

Blumenthal added that educating people about the impact of marine debris “will help make sure we’re responsible stewards” of the Sound.

Other grants to southeastern Connecticut groups include:

A grant of $250,000 with $477,438 in matching funds that will allow the Lynde Point Land Trust to construct a living shoreline in the Fenwick section of Old Saybrook to protect the nearby community and a 10-acre tidal marsh from storms and rising waters.

A grant of $99,987 with $100,000 in matching funds for the Connecticut Fund for the Environment/Save the Sound to develop engineered designs for fishways at Whitford Pond Dam in Stonington and at Alewife Cove Dam in Waterford.

A grant of $74,133 with matching funds of $80,000 for the Eastern Connecticut Conservation District to prepare an engineering plan for a fishway on the Shewville dam and brook in Ledyard that will help alewife migration.

A grant of $40,862 and matching funds of the same amount for the Nature Conservancy, Connecticut, to develop a plan to reduce nitrogen pollution entering local waters and the Sound with a focus on the area from the Mystic to the Pawcatuck rivers.

A grant of $35,000 with matching funds of $21,500 for the City of New London to assess the condition of its natural resources and watershed health.

A grant of $8,651 with matching funds of $5,973 for Mystic Aquarium, the Denison Pequotesepos Nature Center and the Avalonia Land Conservancy to develop a hands-on environmental education program about the habitat of the Sound for students and families.