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Texas student researchers receive EPA grants

Release Date: 11/13/2008
Contact Information: Dave Bary or Tressa Tillman at 214-665-2200 or [email protected]

People, Prosperity and the Planet program focuses on sustainable energy solutions

(Dallas, Texas – November 13, 2008) Protecting the planet through innovative designs has earned grants from the Environmental Protection Agency for two Texas student research teams.

The two teams from Texas A&M University and Lone Star College-Kingwood were awarded grants from EPA’s People, Prosperity, and the Planet (P3) program.

The Lone Star College-Kingwood team’s grant will support a water management project for a rural Philippine housing development. Kingwood is working with the Houston-Galveston Area Council-Natural Resources Advisory Committee and the University of the Philippines to bring sustainable water and wastewater management to a new community built to house poor residents of the Philippines, and to increase environmental awareness among all the country’s citizens.

Texas A&M University is looking closer to home for water sustainability solutions. Grant recipients there are developing more accurate measurements of stormwater flow on university grounds and the effects of this runoff on downstream waters. Researchers hope to better capture and understand the impacts of urbanization on water quality.

Also included in the list of teams working on P3 projects is the University of Texas at El Paso. The El Paso team is a supporting partner in a Columbia University project to help a Ugandan community develop a sustainable energy supply using oil from the seeds of the hardy and abundant jatropha shrubs.

EPA awards P3 grants every year to researchers whose work is benefiting people, promoting prosperity, and protecting the planet by addressing challenges to sustainability in both the developed and developing world. P3 research projects receive $10,000 in the initial phase of the program, with the possibility of up to $75,000 in the second phase. Eligibility for grants is open exclusively to teams of undergraduate and/or graduate students attending U.S. colleges, universities and other post-secondary educational institutions.

This year, EPA awarded 43 Phase I and six Phase II grants for a total of $880,000 to student teams representing 39 institutions in 23 states.

Additional information about the P3 program, as well as the grant winners and their projects, is available at http://es.epa.gov/ncer/p3/index.html.

To learn more about activities in EPA Region 6, please visit https://www.epa.gov/region6.