North Iowa Reporter

A $250,000 grant was awarded to the Winnebago County Conservation Board to help the organization with constructing its Environmental Education Center over the course of the next month. 

The grant that was awarded on Aug. 20 to the organization is called a Community Attraction and Tourism (CAT) grant and was awarded by the Enhance Iowa Board of the Iowa Economic Development Authority. The grant will cover approximately 18% of the project, according to the Globe Gazette.

With this grant, the conservation board has raised $1.4 million of their $1.5 million goal and bids for the construction of the conservation board’s Environmental Education Center will start this month, with construction beginning for the center in the fall season. 

“Some of the awards, you ask a certain amount or a certain percentage, and they can give you the whole percentage, they can give you a certain percentage of that or they can just not give you anything at all, so we were lucky that they did give us the full amount,” said Winnebago County Conservation Board Naturalist Lisa Ralls.