Citizen group gets EPA grant Clean Water Action Council received its third technical-assistance grant By Monique Balas News-Chronicle The regional branch of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday renewed a $50,000 grant to Clean Water Action Council, a local environmental watchdog group. The grant is the third successive grant CWAC has received from the EPA's Region 5, which has awarded 28 such grants since 1989 to local, community-based organizations in its six-state area that are dealing with massive environmental projects. "It's one of the things provided for in the Superfund law," said Mick Hans, media-relations officer at the Chicago-based EPA Region 5 headquarters. "The law does recognize that community groups are not necessarily staffed or have the technical expertise to contend with government and scientists." Director of CWAC Rebecca Katers said the money will go toward the efforts of her group and six other local environmental organizations concerned with cleanup of polychlorinated biphenyls in the Fox River. For example, they battle the paper companies responsible for the release of PCBs about the payment plans for the cleanup. "The idea is to allow us to match some of the resources that the corporations have," Katers said. "We are a small nonprofit staffed by volunteers. Then we post information online, so some of the grant money will be used to maintain our Web site." She said hiring experts such as a toxicologist, engineer and geologist are key to helping CWAC understand the technical aspects of the cleanup process. The grant also will go toward organizing public programs and other public-relations efforts, such as mass mailings. "It's a huge region we're having to deal with, so it's very expensive to get information out," Katers said. She said $50,000 of the grant must be matched with $12,500 of donated time; she and her staff work almost entirely on a volunteer basis. "It's nice to have a grant, because this is going to continue for so many years," Katers said, "tracking the whole project, writing the material, maintaining the Web site, and it does cover some of my time as the coordinator."