The Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay will receive more than $725,000 to continue its work on Kids Creek, an impaired stream in the Grand Traverse Bay watershed. The grant, from the Environmental Protection Agency's Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, will include green infrastructure (rain gardens, pervious pavement, bioretention swales) and stream bank stabilization projects to improve water quality and reduce stormwater and sediment inputs to Kids Creek. A two-mile portion of the creek is on the State Impaired Waters list due to human-caused activities, all related to stormwater runoff.

The Watershed Center has been working on Kids Creek-related projects since July 2003, and more than $3.4 million in public and private funding has been invested. Much of the project in the last few years has coincided with the preparation for and construction of the new Cowell Family Cancer Center on the northern part of Munson Medical Center's campus.