In 2006, the Trust awarded $444,625 to five projects throughout Maryland through its Pioneer Grants program. For this year's program, the grant recipients focused on innovative approaches to manage agriculture and land development.
In 2005, the Trust awarded $485,500 to five projects, which can be reviewed here. The grant recipients used the program's funding for projects that tested innovative solutions for non-point source pollution reduction.
The Pioneer Grants Program's 2006 Recipients
1) Town of Denton, $150,000
Caroline County, Choptank River Watershed
Project partners will develop a new set of environmentally-sensitive storm water management standards and publish them as part of the town of Denton's new Architectural and Stormwater Pattern Book. In addition, the partners will select some of these innovative, low-impact storm water management techniques and demonstrate them in a real-world setting, a new Elm Street development.
2) Maryland Department of Agriculture, $98,625
Baltimore and Harford Counties; Gunpowder, Anacostia, and Prettyboy Reservoir Watersheds
Livestock in the Chesapeake Bay watershed excrete about 50 million pounds of nitrogen annually, three times more than what's produced by the 16 million people residing in the watershed. Much of this livestock manure is used as fertilizer on croplands, where some of its nutrients volatilize into the air, leading to odor and other issues, or run off into the waterways, leading to water quality problems. In this project, experts will demonstrate the use of a new type of manure injector that will incorporate more of the manure into the soils. They will assess the cost efficiency and benefits to air and water quality of this technique.
3) Maryland-Delaware Forage Council, $75,000
Frederick, Harford, Baltimore, Caroline, Talbot, and Wicomico Counties: Pocomoke, Choptank, Monocacy, and Gunpowder Watersheds
Forage grasses and legumes harvested as hay can remove 1.5 to 3 times more nutrients from the soil than crops like corn or soybeans, and can therefore, help solve the excess nutrient problem in manure "hot spots" within Maryland. Project leads will establish a program to assist Maryland hay growers in marketing their hay to horse farms that currently buy hay out-of-state (mainly from Canada). A group of hay growers will work cooperatively to pool supplies of similar types and quality of hay necessary to meet the needs of Maryland's larger horse farms. In order to compete against and offer advantages over out-of-state hay, this group will offer quality tested hay.
4) University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, $75,000
Frederick and Washington Counties, Monocacy and Upper Potomac Watersheds
This project will design and implement a feed management certification system for dairy cows in Western Maryland. Dairy cows are often fed at higher rates than necessary, resulting in larger quantities of nutrient-rich manure than necessary, which in turn, contributes to the excess manure problem in certain areas of Maryland. This project will establish farmer to farmer networks and mentoring networks for feed nutritionists and veterinarians in the new field of "precision feeding."
5) University of Maryland Cooperative Extension, $46,000
Queen Anne's County, Wye River Watershed
The container/greenhouse nursery industry is one of the fastest growing agricultural sectors in Maryland. Though not even accounting for 1 percent of the total agricultural acreage, this industry captures 16 percent of agricultural sales. Fertilizer rates can be 10-20 times that of crops like corn, and due to over-irrigation, 22 percent of nutrients are estimated to run off. Most irrigation systems are on timers and do not account for actual plant water needs. In this project, scientists at the University of Maryland will test a low-cost wireless irrigation monitoring and control system that will irrigate based on actual plant water requirements, resulting in reduced irrigation volume and nitrogen and phosphorous runoff.
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