Brandywine-Christina Healthy Water Fund Preliminary Feasibility Study

Abstract
The Brandywine-Christina Healthy Water Fund (the Water Fund) is being developed under a grant from the William Penn Foundation (WPF/the Foundation) through a partnership between The Nature Conservancy in Delaware (TNC) and the University of Delaware’s Water Resources Agency (WRA). The ultimate goal of the Water Fund is to restore the Brandywine-Christina watershed to fishable, swimmable, potable status on an expedited timeline. To meet this goal, the Water Fund will incentivize investments in water quality conservation by a variety of beneficiaries and leverage those investments with new and existing funding sources to dramatically increase the amount, pace, and coordination of overall conservation investments in the Brandywine-Christina watershed. In addition to funding the development of the Water Fund, the Foundation awarded approximately $2.5 million in grants in 2014 to several nonprofits (including the Brandywine Conservancy, Brandywine Valley Association, Natural Lands Trust, and Stroud Water Research Center, which are collectively called the WPF Cluster Partners) to implement a variety of conservation strategies in the Brandywine-Christina watershed, including land protection and restoration, stream restoration, buffer plantings, and agricultural BMPs. This work is highly complementary of the Water Fund and is part of the Foundation’s Delaware River Watershed Initiative—an unprecedented conservation effort to improve water quality in the entire Delaware River Basin.
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