Posted February 25, 2014
A coalition of government officials and environmental advocacy groups have created a national network on water quality trading in an effort to show how water quality can be improved at a lower cost through market-based approaches, according to a Bloomberg BNA article available here.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s water quality trading program is “essentially a cap-and-trade program, with the total maximum daily load allocation for nonpoint and point sources serving as the cap against which various sources trade pollutant credits. These allocations are then incorporated in to NPDES permits for point sources.”
The trading program allows “point source dischargers such as publically owned water facilities or power plants to pay nonpoint sources such as farm operations to reduce certain pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus.”
While there are several trading programs at the state and local levels, the “national network will provide a single forum for consolidating principles and practices of trading programs that worked and lessons from programs that failed.”
Alexandra Dunn, executive director for the Association of Clean Water Administrators, said that her group signed onto the network because “we want to expose our regulators to as much information about successful trading as we can as well as provide them with opportunities to learn from unsuccessful efforts.”
For more information on the Clean Water Act, please visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
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