April 5 – San Diego Coastkeeper Opens Coastal Champions Award Nominations for 2012

SAN DIEGO, April 5, 2012 – San Diego Coastkeeper, which protects and restores fishable, swimmable and drinkable waters in San Diego County, announces today that it has opened nominations for its annual awards program, Coastal Champions. The awards celebrate the people, businesses and organizations taking initiative in protecting and restoring San Diego County’s waters. On June 8, 2012, from 7:30 a.m. – 9 a.m., on international World Oceans Day, Coastkeeper will announce seven winners who demonstrated leadership in different areas of water protection.

The awards include:

• Runoff Rockstar. This award is for the actions taken to reduce urban runoff through best practices, including but not limited to, low impact development, pollution prevention and urban waste reduction.
• Water Wise. The award goes to the achievements through water-friendly landscaping techniques such as water conservation and the use of methods to promote healthy environmental restoration with native plants and natural growth.
• Marine Conservation. The award recognizes efforts to advocate for, monitor and/or implement ocean conservation programs, techniques and innovations including those dealing with marine protected areas (MPAs) or other conservation areas of concern.
• Find & Fix. This nomination is for the success in a program, project or idea that first finds a pollution problem and then takes action to fix that pollution problem in the community.
• Blue Tech. The nomination goes to exceptional innovation in the development and/or use of technology to protect and restore fishable, swimmable, drinkable waters in San Diego County.
• Lighthouse Award. This award is for a lifetime achievement to advance fishable, swimmable, drinkable waters in San Diego County. This awardee will be selected by San Diego Coastkeeper’s Board of Directors.
• ASBS Award. San Diego has two recognized Areas of Special Biological Significance (ASBS) or biological hotspots in need of special water quality protections, off the shores of La Jolla. The ASBS Award is special recognition in addition to one of the above awards for effort and achievement to improve the water quality of these ASBS in order to protect the wildlife and natural ecosystems in these precious and fragile areas.

Residents who qualify for any of the awards can nominate themselves or others by downloading the PDF form on Coastkeeper’s website. Please check Coastkeeper’s World Oceans Day and Coastal Champions 2012 page for more details on the nominees.

To sponsor the event, name an award, reserve a table or place a recognition on the nomination materials, please contact San Diego Coastkeeper Development Director Megan Baehrens through email at [email protected] or call at 619-758-7743 ext. 103.

For more information on the event, please visit localhost/sdcoastkeeper.