Virridy Receives Walton Family Foundation Grant to Advance Carbon Finance in Watershed Restoration across the Mississippi River Basin
Boulder, CO, December 2023 – Virridy, a global leader in innovative environmental and public health solutions, has received a $500,000 multi-year grant from the Walton Family Foundation to advance transformative watershed management programs by researching the potential for carbon finance innovations in the Mississippi River Basin.
“This initiative represents a major step forward for integrating carbon finance into watershed restoration,” said Alex Johnson, Virridy’s Chief Strategy Officer. “This should be catalytic for environmental resilience and climate change mitigation efforts here in the US, especially those focused on regional water quality issues.”
Virridy is set to initiate a comprehensive pilot project to help scale conservation activities that address critical water quality challenges in the Mississippi River Basin. The river’s mainstem states, where conservation and restoration projects can likely yield the most significant environmental benefits, will be the focus of these efforts. Virridy plans to target those areas anticipating upgrades to existing water treatment infrastructure in response to high levels of instream nutrients and demonstrate how funding from the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) can be accessed to redirect planned investments from ‘gray infrastructure’ improvements over to ‘green infrastructure’ conservation practices that have demonstrable water quality benefits. The company’s approach includes a financial analysis of carbon credit generation potential as a catalyst and sustainable funding source for green infrastructure projects.
Central to this initiative is a series of collaborative engagements and outreach efforts that will build the capacity of regional watershed leaders to use carbon finance in scaling and accelerating watershed restoration. Vital sectors include agriculture, drinking water and wastewater utilities, and conservation.
Multiyear funding will allow Virridy to initiate several local pilot programs within the Mississippi River Basin. These pilots are designed to test and demonstrate the application and effectiveness of carbon-catalyzed watershed restoration in improving water quality and regional resiliency.
These pilots will serve as a blueprint for replicable and scalable solutions in watershed management, showcasing how sustainable practices can be economically viable, environmentally beneficial, implemented rapidly and at scale.
“This initiative will not only demonstrate a new tool for scaling watershed management programs, it exemplifies how economic incentives can be aligned with environmental goals,” said Johnson. “It’s a significant step towards a future where environmental sustainability is integral to regional economic development in the Mississippi River watershed, benefiting local communities, ecosystems, and the broader climate.”
About Virridy
Virridy Inc. develops and deploys technologies to manage water, energy, and agricultural resources in remote, off-grid environments including Africa and North America. The company’s low-cost satellite-connected sensors are compatible with a wide range of fixed infrastructure and support carbon credits, energy incentives, water permitting, and other environmental market commodities.
About the Walton Family Foundation
The Walton Family Foundation is, at its core, a family-led foundation. Three generations of the descendants of our founders, Sam and Helen Walton, and their spouses, work together to lead the foundation and create access to opportunity for people and communities. We work in three areas: improving K-12 education, protecting rivers and oceans and the communities they support, and investing in our home region of Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta. To learn more, visit waltonfamilyfoundation.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.