What can you buy for $16 million in the Sierra Nevadas?

The state Resource Agency will find out May 12, 2006, when proposals are due for the “acquisition of land and water rights to protect water quality in lakes, reservoirs, rivers, streams and wetlands in the Sierra Nevada-Cascade Mountain Region.”

California voters created the Sierra Nevada-Cascade Conservation Grant Program when they passed Proposition 50, the “Security, Clean Drinking Water, Coastal and Beach Protection Act,” on November 5, 2002. The program can fund four types of purchases:

1. Working Landscapes: Acquiring agricultural, forest, or grazing land, or other working landscapes, to prevent conversion of that land to uses that could decrease water quality in the region and degrade habitat values, or to convert that land to uses that could improve water quality in the region and habitat.
2. Adjacent Lands: Acquiring land adjacent to or affecting rivers, streams, lakes, or wetlands, that, if not protected, could lead to a decrease in water quality in the region.
3. Water Rights: Purchasing water rights that will protect both water quality and in stream flow, in the region, for resource protection.
4. Management Practices: Acquiring land that mitigates or prevents current or anticipated management practices that contribute to water quality degradation in the region.

Grant proposals are due at the [1] State Resources Agency by May 12, 2006.

Download the guidelines [2] Conservation Grant Program and [3] grant application form.