It didn’t take long after last month’s announcement of the Healthy Pond Collaborative moving to Manatee County for a number of communities to contact us about help with their ponds. One of the first to reach out to the HPC Manatee was Fresh Meadows, a community in Palmetto built back in 1990-1993 consisting of 156 [...]
The strong popular response to the growing number of microforest projects in communities from Parrish to Venice continues to present more opportunities for the replacement of inefficient turf grass with high-performance microforests to help improve the quality of our local waterways. Microforests absorb much more stormwater and filter more excess nutrients than turf grass. In [...]
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently announced in a press release a Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that allocates nearly $3 billion of funding over 5 years to NOAA. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo announced funding opportunities to address the climate crisis and strengthen coastal resilience and infrastructure. Targeted investments will be in the [...]
Thanks to a very successful pilot pond program funded by a grant from Ed Chiles and Elizabeth Moore that helped enhance over a half mile of pond shoreline in Manatee County communities last year, START has been awarded a three-year $100,000 grant from Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation to create the Healthy Pond Collaborative Manatee. [...]
Due to the exceptional expansion of START’s Healthy Pond Collaborative as outlined above and the growing popularity of our Microforest Program, we are reorganizing our Board of Directors to make the following changes: 1. Dr. Charles Reith is now Vice President of Operations 2. The new Executive Committee will consist of: A. Sandy Gilbert, CEO [...]
Forecasters at Colorado State University (CSU), the University of Arizona and Accu-Weather are all predicting that the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season will be slightly higher than the yearly average for the past three decades. CSU includes in its outlook the chance of at least one major hurricane tracking into the Caribbean. This is an area [...]
We want to thank our many supporters who donated to START in the recent Giving Challenge sponsored by the Community Foundation. You contributions were doubled during the Challenge helping START fund more of our water quality programs along the Suncoast. Whether you are a regular reader of our Monthly E-Newsletters, a resident in one of [...]
