Berks County Towns, Groups Win $1.34M in DCNR Park Grants

Eight park, trail and planning projects in Berks County won a combined $1,343,200 in the state's annual outdoor recreation grant round, according to the grants list the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources dated Oct. 7. Five of the awards go to local governments: South Heidelberg Township, Wyomissing Borough, Washington Township, Shoemakersville Borough and Cumru Township. The other three go to organizations rather than governments, Berks Nature, the Schuylkill River Greenway Association and the Student Conservation Association, for trails in Cumru, Lower Alsace and Robeson townships and for tree planting in Reading. The County of Berks itself has no award on the list.

The program is the Community Conservation Partnerships Program, which DCNR says "builds connections between Pennsylvanians and the outdoors by supporting recreational improvements" and awards about $50 million a year, with typical grants of $50,000 to $500,000, to county and municipal governments, municipal agencies, 501(c)(3) nonprofits and, in limited cases, for-profit businesses, per the program page. Statewide, the Governor's Office announced "$81 million in new Community Conservation Partnerships Program (C2P2) grants" for "306 projects across 60 counties," with the money coming "from the Keystone Fund, Environmental Stewardship Fund, and additional sources."

The Berks awards

The amounts, project descriptions and fund codes below are taken from the Berks section of the grants list. "Key - Community" is the list's label for the Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Fund's community grants; ESF is the Environmental Stewardship Fund; PRT is the federal Pennsylvania Recreational Trails Program Fund. We left out the boilerplate about ADA access, landscaping and a project sign that ends the construction entries; the two planning awards end with "Work to include an electronic written report" or "summary report."

Recipient	Where	Amount	Project	Fund
South Heidelberg Township	South Heidelberg Township	$350,000	Heidelberg Run West Park: pickleball, basketball, bocce and multi-use courts, internal loop trail, stormwater measures, lighting	Key - Community
Wyomissing Borough	Wyomissing	$250,000	Restoration of 1,600 feet of stream in Wyomissing Park: streambank stabilization, riparian buffer, boardwalks, trails, pedestrian bridges, ADA parking	Key - Community
Student Conservation Association, Inc.	Reading	$250,000	Urban and community forestry coordination, tree planting, youth and young-adult workforce program	ESF
Washington Township	Washington Township	$199,000	Washington Township Park rehabilitation: pedestrian walkways, playground equipment with safety surfacing	Key - Community
Shoemakersville Borough	Shoemakersville	$100,000	Shoemakersville Park: pavilion, pedestrian walkway, parking area	Key - Community
Cumru Township	Cumru Township	$81,800	Comprehensive Recreation, Park, Open Space and Greenway Plan (an electronic written report)	Key - Community
Schuylkill River Greenway Association	Robeson Township	$69,300	Schuylkill River Trail: rehabilitate about 1.15 miles from Seyfert Drive to New Gibraltar Road, plus stormwater measures	ESF
Berks Nature	Cumru and Lower Alsace townships	$43,100	Solution Trail: build about 1.3 miles of trail	PRT

The total is our arithmetic: $350,000 + $250,000 + $250,000 + $199,000 + $100,000 + $81,800 + $69,300 + $43,100 = $1,343,200.

Two more awards touch Berks but are shared with other counties, so we have kept them out of that total. Under a "Berks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery" heading, Stroud Water Research Center Inc. gets $249,900 from the Keystone Tree fund to plant about 25 acres of streamside forest buffers and tend about 20 acres of recent plantings "along waterways in the Schuylkill River Watershed in Berks, Chester, and Montgomery counties." In the list's "Statewide/Regional" section, the Schuylkill River Greenway Association gets $585,000 coded "ESF and HA," the Environmental Stewardship Fund and the Pennsylvania Heritage Area Program, to manage the heritage area, support the 2027 Schuylkill Watershed Congress and "facilitate development of the Schuylkill River Trail in Berks and Schuylkill counties." The $1,343,200 figure counts Berks-only awards; adding the shared Stroud award gives $1,593,100.

Neither the grants list nor DCNR's program page states the local match these grants require. DCNR's funding sources page names the Keystone fund, the Environmental Stewardship Fund and the federal trail and land funds but does not describe where their money comes from.

Two names for one creek

DCNR's list describes Wyomissing's project as "Restoration of 1,600 feet of Wyomissing Creek within Wyomissing Park in Wyomissing Township, Berks County." There is no Wyomissing Township in Berks County; the grantee is the borough. The borough's own release, which carries an Oct. 20 dateline but is posted on the site as Oct. 16, calls the stream "Parklands Creek" and the site the Parklands, and says the land was farmland "surrounding Wyomissing Creek" before the borough owned it in the 1970s. The work described is the same in both documents. The release does not give a total project cost, a match amount or a construction schedule, and says timelines "will be shared as the project advances."

The grant lands as Wyomissing works through a hard budget. Council heard $14,800,658 in 2027 capital requests, including $3,065,463 for parks, while staff put the general fund's structural deficit at $2.4 million to $2.7 million a year, per our report on the September budget meetings.

What the other towns' records show

South Heidelberg's award is the largest in the county, and the township's own records carry a different number: its July 28 minutes record the manager reporting $250,000 for the park, $100,000 less than DCNR's list, and the township has not explained the gap, as noted in our Oct. 20 meeting preview. That agenda listed an "HRW Park Renovation Project Update/Grants/Path" under the manager's report. The park grant sits alongside the $1 million state RACP grant for the township building covered in our police-station report.

Cumru's $81,800 pays for a plan, not construction. The list describes the deliverable as "an electronic written report"; a comprehensive recreation plan sets out a municipality's park, open-space and greenway priorities. The DCNR award letter was on the commissioners' Oct. 20 agenda, per our preview.

Washington Township's $199,000 for walkways and playground equipment is separate from the $230,000 state Local Share Account grant it planned to apply for, to buy an asphalt roller, on its Oct. 22 agenda, covered in our hearing preview. Local Share Account grants are a different state program, not DCNR's.

None of the eight awards goes to the county park system; what those parks offer is in our county parks guide. The list does not say what each recipient must put up as its own share, so watch the five municipalities' agendas for the grant agreements and the local dollars each commits.

Sources

• 2026 Community Conservation Partnerships Program Grants List, October 7, 2026 (PA DCNR, PDF, 31 pages)
• Governor Shapiro and DCNR Secretary Dunn Invest $81 Million to Improve and Expand Pennsylvania Trails, Parks, and Public Lands, October 7, 2026 (Governor's Office)
• Release - Borough of Wyomissing Awarded $250,000 for Parklands Creek Restoration, Oct. 20, 2026 (Wyomissing Borough)
• Community Conservation Partnerships Program Grants (PA DCNR)
• Grant Funding Sources (PA DCNR)