NHEP Year 12 Work Plan

The New Hampshire Estuaries Project (NHEP) is part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Estuary Program which is a joint local/state/federal program established under the Clean Water Act with the goal of protecting and enhancing nationally significant estuaries. The NHEP’s Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (Management Plan)for New Hampshire’s estuaries was completed in 2000 and updated in 2005. The Management Plan outlines key issues related to management of New Hampshire’s estuaries and proposes strategies (Action Plans) to protect, enhance, and monitor the state’s estuarine resources. Local stakeholders established the NHEP’s priorities, which include water quality improvements, shellfish resource enhancements, land protection, habitat restoration, and outreach and education. Projects addressing these priorities are undertaken throughout New Hampshire’s 42 community coastal watershed. In addition, the NHEP developed and now implements a comprehensive monitoring program for the coastal watershed. The NHEP collects, compiles and analyzes data for a number of environmental indicators. The NHEP’s communications plan outlines goals and strategies to shape the program’s outreach and communications activities to better support Management Plan implementation. Each year the NHEP prepares its work plan, which describes recent accomplishments and priority activities and projects to be undertaken in the next year to implement the Management Plan. The work plan is developed by the NHEP with input from NHEP’s four project teams. The NHEP Management Committee reviews and approves the work plan each year. The current work plan represents the twelfth year of the NHEP’s activities and involvement in collaboratively protecting, enhancing, and monitoring New Hampshire’s estuaries. Section 1 of this document is a report of the NHEP’s activities for the past year. The section describes actions undertaken by the NHEP to implement goals and activities identified in work plans from the two previous years (Year Ten Work Plan: http://www.nhep.unh.edu/resources/pdf/nhepyearten-nhep-05.pdf; and Year Eleven Work Plan: http://www.nhep.unh.edu/resources/pdf/nhep_year_eleven-nhep-06.pdf); describes how the NHEP’s activities helped support Clean Water Act programs; summarizes meetings and milestones from the last year; lists all ongoing projects supported by the NHEP; and reports on last year’s travel expenses. Section 2 of this document describes activities and priorities to be undertaken by the NHEP as part of the new EPA grant, beginning on October 1, 2007. It identifies the NHEP’s implementation and program goals; describes specific activities to be undertaken by NHEP staff or partners with grant funds to implement the NHEP Management Plan and Monitoring Plan; describes the NHEP’s administrative structure and costs; and presents the overall budget for the Year 12 grant