Venice receives stormwater management, public education grant

The City of Venice will receive $245,000 for Best Management Practices that target local beaches and coastal areas. The project will include improvements to stormwater management as well as public education and outreach. The practices will improve water quality in the Gulf estuary as well as Donna and Roberts Bay in the Myakka River watershed.

The funding comes from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which has been awarded more than $6 million in grant funding from the United States Environmental Protection Agency to assist local governments with the protection and restoration of Florida's waterbodies. The funding program, Section 319 Nonpoint Source Pollution Grants, provides money to implement projects and Best Management Practices that reduce runoff and restore Florida’s impaired waters.

These grants help fund important projects that specifically address nonpoint source pollution. Nonpoint source pollution comes from oil, pet waste, pesticide, herbicide, fertilizer, sediment and other contaminants that end up on the ground naturally or from human activity. Rainwater picks up these contaminants as it washes over yards, sidewalks, driveways, parking lots, roads and fields and deposits them into our surface waters as nonpoint source pollution.