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Restoration Activities
Case: New Bedford Harbor, MA

November 2010 Update 

The New Bedford Harbor trustee council has completed 29 restoration-related projects since 1998. In addition, the Council has funded and implemented 3 additional projects and is working with applicants on another 2 restoration projects. To date, over $19.1 million has been expended on restoration projects. Click on the Projects tab at the right to read about individual restoration efforts.

Clean-up of the site, under the direction of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is not yet complete. Because this effort will continue for another 20 years or more, the trustees are carefully coordinating restoration with clean-up. Restoration actions that are not directly dependent on the progress of the clean-up have been evaluated for near-term implementation. The trustee council, through each of its four funding rounds, has been working with citizens, businesses, academic institutions, state and local governments, and non-profit organizations to develop and select restoration projects for the New Bedford Harbor environment.

Restoration activities are designed to restore natural resources that were lost, injured, or destroyed by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) releases in New Bedford Harbor. Priorities for restoration include marshes and wetlands, water quality, living resources, habitats, and shellfish and endangered species. Because it has already funded two recreation projects the council no longer considers recreation areas as a restoration priority. The Round IV Federal Funding Opportunity provided guidance under B. Program Priorities that “unlike previous funding rounds “recreation areas” is no longer considered to be a Council restoration priority. The guidance went on to say the “the Council believes that sufficient funding has already been provided through previous funding rounds for recreational areas.

The council initiated Rounds I and II to receive ideas for restoration projects. In Round I, these ideas formed the alternatives for the council’s Restoration Plan/Environmental Impact Statement (RP/EIS). The environmental assessment for Round II provided the analysis for the submitted restoration ideas. For Round III and IV, the council requested that the public submit applications for restoration project grants. Restoration projects selected for funding would be awarded through grants or cooperative agreements. Environmental assessments were prepared for Round III and IV. The RP/EIS and the environmental assessments are located in the Case Documents tab to the right.

A summary of the funding rounds follows:

Funding Round Initiated (Federal Register) Record of Decision Signed Ideas/Applications Submitted Ideas/Applications Selected Initial Funding Amount
I October 1995 September 1998 56 11 $4.2 million
II August 1999 January 2001 35 17 $9.3 million
III February 2005 June 2006 15 6 $5.7 million
IV January 2009 Pending 15 Pending Pending

A summary of the restoration projects funding to date:

Restoration Priority No. of Restoration Projects Total Funding Locations Results
Recreation Areas 2 $4,515,000 New Bedford Riverside and Taber Parks
Living Resources 3 $3,078,000 New Bedford, Acushnet, Dartmouth Fairhaven Acushnet River fish passage: 4.4 miles. Shellfish restoration
Plans/Studies 5 $243,000 New Bedford Acushnet River watershed, Buzzards Bay Wetland inventory, monitoring boat, open space plan, artificial reef study
Water Quality 2 $229,000 New Bedford, Fairhaven Sconticut Neck water quality study, hurricane barrier study
Habitat 14 $8,170,000 Acushnet, Fairhaven, Freetown Land protection: 646 acres protected. Eeelgrass restoration: 4 acres transplanted
Marshes/Wetlands 5 $1,297,000 Dartmouth, Fairhaven Padanaram marsh: 6.5 acres restored. Ongoing: Marsh Island, Winsegansett marsh Terminated: Nonquitt marsh
Endangered Species 3 $1,564,000 Buzzards Bay Restoration and management of tern colonies on nesting islands



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Revised: Friday, 19-Nov-2010
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