WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), a senior member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, announced that the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) has awarded $335,000 in funding for two watershed rehabilitation projects at Margaret Creek, a waterway flowing through Athens and Meigs Counties.

Margaret Creek’s dams will be repaired in order to prevent flooding and decreased water quality from watershed run-off.

“Public health and safety is threatened if we don’t maintain our dams,” Brown said. “Structural erosion can lead to flooding and, as we have seen the past few years around Ohio, unmanaged run-off can dramatically harm water quality. These new federal resources will help protect communities in Athens and Meigs Counties from flooding and contaminated water.”

NRCS will provide funding for 150 weakening dams across 26 states, to be used for planning, design, or construction. NCRS estimates that the flood protection provided by these repairs will benefit 250,000 people.

Brown helped pass the Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRDA), which was signed into law in June 2014 and will make Ohio’s dams safer and protect Ohio communities. Of the more than 900 hazardous dams in Ohio, more than 400 are designated as “high-hazard”— dams that would cause significant loss of life and/or significant damage to surrounding properties if they failed—and more than 500 are designated as “significant-hazard”—those dams where failure or poor operation results in no probable loss of human life, but can cause economic loss, environmental damage, flooding of highways or railroads, or impact other concerns.

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