The Great Lakes Protection Fund is pleased to announce grant awards totaling more than $2.5 million made to project teams working to improve the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem.

At its June, 2013 meeting, the Board of Directors awarded 4 grants that further the Fund’s mission to identify, demonstrate, and promote regional action to enhance the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem.

Reducing Phosphorus Loads from Agriculture: Creating a Pay-for-Performance Program Using Field-Specific Information 
A grant of up to $957,000 was awarded to a team (comprised of 34 organizations) led by Winrock International to design and pilot a novel pay-for-performance program that will aggregate the conservation actions of farmers in a watershed and create a mechanism to reward those farmers for the amount of phosphorus they remove from surface waters. Ultimately, this team’s work will lead to reductions of harmful algal blooms in the Great Lakes by reducing levels of phosphorus in basin streams and rivers.

This award furthers the Great Lakes Governors’ priority to control pollution from diffuse sources into water, land and air.

Implementation and Evaluation of Accurate Dairy Feeding 
A grant of up to $690,000 was awarded to a team (comprised of 20 organizations) led by AgModels, LLC to reduce excess nutrients released to the Great Lakes by developing, testing, and marketing a novel feed management and nutritional accounting system that will streamline dairy operations and reduce nutrient waste. The team will pilot this system on large dairy farms throughout the Great Lakes region in the U.S. and in Canada.

This award furthers the Great Lakes Governors’ priority to control pollution from diffuse sources into water, land and air.

Real-Time Energy Impact Monitors for Residential, Industrial and Policy Use 
A grant of up to $557,000 was awarded to a team (comprised of 9 organizations) led by Wayne State University to refine, test, and market a novel technology that will reduce the emission of mercury and other air pollutants by power plants into the Great Lakes basin. This technology, pioneered in a separate Fund-supported project, interacts with the power grid to determine in real-time the fuel sources being used to generate electricity and the emissions from those sources, and changes the timing of electricity use to access cleaner energy sources and reduce emissions. This project will explore the potential for embedding the technology into ‘smart’ appliances and building systems, integrating into the electric vehicle market, and incorporating into energy standards and programs.

This award furthers the Great Lakes Governors’ priority to continue to reduce the introduction of persistent bioaccumulative toxics into the Great Lakes ecosystem.

Using Active Management of Drain Networks to Improve the Great Lakes Ecosystem 
A grant of up to $355,000 was awarded to a team (comprised of 7 organizations) led by The Nature Conservancy to explore the development and application of a novel, automated, real-time drain tile management system for reducing the impacts from water that leaves farm fields via drain tiles. The team will examine the technology, explore the opportunities in the Great Lakes basin, identify the physical settings where “smart drain management” can reduce nutrients and improve stream flow regimes, and identify a potential market for services. The technology and business strategies investigated in this project will be able to significantly reduce nutrient and sediment levels, and improve hydrologic flows in the Great Lakes and its tributaries.

This award furthers the Great Lakes Governors’ priority to control pollution from diffuse sources into water, land and air.

To read more about these awards and our active portfolio of projects, please visit the Funded Projects section of glpf.org.