NFWF to Administer Funds from Illegal Dredging Settlement
Panama City, FL, July 17, 2013 -- The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) has received a community service payment of $1 million from the settlement of a criminal environmental enforcement action brought by the United States related to the illegal dredging of wetlands in Panama City, Florida.
The community service payment is required to be used by NFWF to fund projects benefitting wetland resources, marine and coastal resources, and the fish, wildlife, and plant species dependent on those resources in Bay County, Gulf County, and Walton County, Florida. Particular emphasis will be given to projects in and around St. Andrew Bay in Bay County.
The community service payment was made by Lagoon Landing, LLC, which was sentenced in federal court in the Northern District of Florida for illegal dredging and wetlands violations in Panama City, Florida. The case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Florida, and was investigated by the EPA Criminal Investigation Division and the Coast Guard Investigative Service, in partnership with EPA Region 4, the U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Coast Guard Station Panama City, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
NFWF, a Congressionally-chartered non-profit organization, is one of the largest private funders of conservation projects in the United States. It is subject to oversight by Congress and is governed by a 30-member board of directors that includes the heads of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In addition to its core mission of conservation grantmaking, NFWF has a longstanding history of administering settlement payments from environmental enforcement cases nationally. Learn how NFWF manages mitigation and settlement funds.