For years, a consortium of government agencies and advocacy groups has struggled for funding to knock down dams and build fish ladders to help restore local fish migrations. That work was jump-started on Tuesday when the federal government came forward with $3 million in stimulus money for six projects on the Ten Mile and Pawcatuck rivers.

When the work is done, fish will be able to migrate all the way up the Pawcatuck from Watch Hill, in Westerly, to Worden Pond, in South Kingstown.

In East Providence, the 30-year campaign by volunteers to lift spawning herring one bucket at a time over the Omega Dam may finally come to an end. A fish ladder will be built there and at two other locations upstream.

In all, the money will open up 13 miles of rivers and streams and 1,640 acres of spawning habitat, including Worden, the state’s largest freshwater pond.

The grants, announced by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, were among awards totaling $167 million for habitat restoration work around the country. They were welcomed warmly in Rhode Island.

“Some people have been waiting for 12 years for Omega Pond,” said Keith Gonsalves, president of the Ten Mile River Watershed Council. “Anything positive is good news.”

Chris Fox, executive director of the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association, said the funds would open access to Worden Pond by 2011, instead of 2018 as originally planned.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is administering the grants, estimated that they will create up to 18 jobs.

Lisa Cavallaro, a habitat restoration specialist for NOAA in Narragansett, said the projects were considered shovel ready, with design and permitting far along.

Fish ladders, large concrete troughs with wooden baffles, will be built at Omega Pond, Hunts Mills and Turner Reservoir on the Hunt River, she said. The Omega Pond fish ladder will be built next year, the other two this year, probably starting in July.

On the Pawcatuck, the Lower Shannock Dam will be removed this summer. Next year a fish ladder will be built at Horseshoe Falls in Shannock and the Kenyon Mills dam will be removed, she said.

The federal grant, from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, is going to the Coastal Resources Management Council. It made the proposals, along with the Army Corps of Engineers, the state Department of Environmental Management, and the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association.

Sen. Jack Reed supported the project in a letter to NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenko. DEM Director W. Michael Sullivan said the work will help restore thousands of acres of fish habitat that were lost as the Industrial Revolution harnessed the state’s rivers and streams to power factories.

plord@projo.com