The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that eight organizations will receive more than $1.7 million in funding from the EPA’s Transboundary Watershed Grant Program, including two tribal efforts in Southeast Alaska.

The program aims to help fund monitoring of transboundary watersheds and reduce mining pollution in U.S.-British Columbia transboundary watersheds.

The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska was awarded $267,713 to support its work advancing the tribes’ water quality database and monitoring program in four transboundary watersheds over the next three years, including the Stikine River.

The grant also will assist the council’s work to improve the coordination of knowledge sharing and produce a comprehensive “state of the watersheds” report that would summarize the health of Alaska-B.C. transboundary watersheds, the risks posed by B.C. mining operations, and opportunities for improved monitoring and multinational governance.

The Ketchikan Indian Community was awarded $264,084 to conduct four years of water quality monitoring in the Salmon River transboundary watershed in coordination with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game will receive $126,615 to collect biological data and sediment element profiles on four Southeast transboundary rivers — the Taku, Stikine, Unuk and Salmon rivers — to document baseline trends of juvenile Dolly Varden and periphyton (algae, bacteria and other microbes that are a crucial food source for aquatic life), as well as sediment concentrations for comparison with existing data sets, expanding upon past monitoring efforts.

Other selected organizations for grant funds included tribal and state programs in Washington state, Idaho and Montana.

The grants are part of a larger effort by the EPA to address water quality impacts from “proposed, active and legacy mining activities in the Canadian province.”