Nutrient Trading
WATER POLLUTION TRADING: PAYING TO POLLUTE OUR WATERWAYS
But the environmental justice implications of water pollution trading are among the most troubling aspects of this approach. Industrial polluters that buy credits are often located in poorer communities and communities of color. By allowing these polluters to avoid controlling their own discharges and continue to dump waste into local waterways by relying on credits, water pollution trading schemes threaten the drinking water and public health of these nearby, vulnerable communities.
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(Posted by Bill Dennison)
Nutrient trading is the buying and selling of nutrient reduction credits that have a monetary value for the reduction of either nitrogen or phosphorus loading to the waterways. The concept of nutrient trading is to unleash free market forces for nutrient reduction strategies, similar to the approach used with carbon trading to address global warming.
Nutrient trading is a relatively new concept in ecosystem restoration that has been initiated for the Chesapeake Bay. Using the new Google analysis tool (‘ngrams’), nutrient trading only appears in the literature around 1990, but has increased rapidly, with a doubling of citations roughly every three years. There is excitement about nutrient trading as a new approach, and this excitement is evident in the various policy statements explaining nutrient trading. Along with this excitement, there is considerable skepticism also evident, and the issue is often emotive.
The Senior Bay Scientists and Policymakers group has reviewed the status of nutrient trading as applied to Chesapeake Bay restoration. We found that there are a variety of different definitions for nutrient trading being used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state agencies, and that there is a lack of data and case studies to support or refute assertions about nutrient trading. The fact that nutrient trading is complicated, emotive and data poor makes this approach one that deserves close scrutiny and scientific rigor. Within the Senior Bay Scientists and Policymakers group, our nutrient trading report is a carefully crafted consensus between fairly intense and polarized viewpoints and it took quite a bit of effort to strike this balance.
Read MoreNutrient Trading—Promise or Pitfall?
(Posted by Dawn Stoltzfus.)
With the watershed states (Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, W. Virginia and Delaware) and D.C. working to significantly reduce pollution to meet the Chesapeake Bay TMDL, nutrient trading is a hot topic. Some see trading as a way to reduce the challenging costs of Chesapeake Bay cleanup, and it looks good on paper—but there are serious scientific concerns about its practicality and water quality benefits, particularly with trades between nonpoint sources (like agriculture and stormwater runoff) and point sources (like wastewater treatment plants). Difficulty in accurately measuring trading’s effectiveness also seems like a big obstacle.
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