04/05/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/05/2024 10:38
WASHINGTON, DC - Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced a $4.8 million investment through President Biden's Investing in America agenda to boost partnerships aimed at improving drought resilience and water availability in the western United States.
This funding, from the Inflation Reduction Act, coupled with previous investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, helps ensure aquatic restoration projects are effective in providing more water in Western landscapes. The funding will also support data collection to improve federal participation in state water rights management processes.
"Roughly 1 in 10 Americans in the West rely on clean water from BLM-managed watersheds, but a warming climate has put these watersheds at risk," said BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning. "The funding announced today will put people to work on our public lands to help reduce the impacts of prolonged droughts on communities and wildlife, better positioning the BLM to safeguard the health of our public lands for current and future generations."
The Biden-Harris administration announced last December that it would join the Global Freshwater Challenge, an initiative to restore over 186,000 stream miles and 1.3 million square miles of wetlands by 2030. As the largest public land manager in the United States, the BLM uses nature-based solutions to restore streams and wetlands and address the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.
BLM's actions today support the Department's overall Restoration and Resilience Framework. The restoration potential of aquatic systems on public lands is significant: BLM estimates that on average, only 25% of floodplain acres across its 21 Restoration Landscapes are healthy, active, and connected to rivers or streams.
The funding from today's announcement will be invested in agreements with BLM partners, including: