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WaterNews for January 28, 2003WaterNews is a weekly on-line publication that announces publications, policies, and activities of the US Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water. In This Week’s WaterNews:
Innovative Solutions for America's Water InfrastructureWater pipes are bursting. Who’s going to fix them? On Friday, Jan. 31, 2003, EPA is hosting a national public forum in Washington, DC to discuss water and wastewater infrastructure in the United States. EPA’s goal is to bring together stakeholders, including those from business, government, and academia, to exchange information and views on management and sustainable financing of the nation’s water and wastewater infrastructure. This meeting is open to the public. For more information http://www.epa.gov/water/infrastructure/GapForum.htm. Advancing Water Security and Protecting Public HealthIn accordance with the “Public Health Security and Bio-Terrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002,” EPA is working with water utilities to protect vital infrastructure and public health. On January 6,EPA issued a set of instructions that will help drinking water utilities submit to EPA (in a secure manner) their self-assessment of vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks. Once a drinking water system certifies completion of its vulnerability assessment to EPA, it is required, within six months, to certify completion of its emergency response plan. For additional information, log on to http://www.epa.gov/safewater/security/. National Water Quality Trading Policy Receiving Rave ReviewsThe Washington Times Editorial - Pint for Pint Cheers to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for giving potential polluters a chance to trade pints of clean water for pints of even cleaner water through its recently announced Water Quality Trading Policy. This innovative policy permits pollution to be better controlled by the setting up of a market mechanism in which reductions in pollutants receive a value and can be traded. "It allows one source to meet its regulatory obligations by using pollutant reductions created by another source that has lower pollution control costs," according to G. Tracy Mehan, assistant administrator for water in the EPA. Part of the problem is that, unlike point sources of pollution, such as water-treatment facilities, non-point sources, such as small farms, are essentially unregulated when it comes to water pollution. That is despite the fact that they can discharge tons of nutrients (primarily nitrogen and phosphorous) and sediments. However, by regulating their pollutants, such as by planting a stand of grasses that soak up nutrients or using non-till farming practices, farmers create a surplus of pollution-control credits, which can then be traded or sold to others. Pollution-control credits are also created by those dischargers already far exceeding existent pollution-control standards. And that's one of the caveats, that existent EPA water-quality standards be met. Another is that all parties trading discharge credits be in the same watershed. Moreover, such trades cannot be used to delay the implementation of basic water standards. The trading policy has two great advantages — flexibility and local control. Once the basic parameters are in place, volunteering entities — whether developers, municipalities or even specially designed trusts — can enter agreements for any of the regulated pollutants. And, since the trades are within the same watershed, so are the benefits — instead of abstract delight from atomic reductions, participants will be able to see (or even better, see through) the result. This system already has been used to great effect in several trials around the country, particularly on Long Island Sound and in North Carolina's Tar-Pamlico Basin. In the latter case, recently examined by the Regulatory Studies Program at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, instead of spending $7 million on technical upgrades to reduce pollutants, the state is achieving the same results by spending $1 million on reducing non-point pollutants. That's not too surprising, given the flexibility and efficiency allowed by the arrangement. Similar water-trading policies were studied by the Clinton administration, which estimated that the resulting nationwide cost savings would range between $658 million and $7 billion. It's not clear why the policy wasn't implemented then, but it's delighted environmentalists and conservationists. For instance, in a recently released scorecard on the Bush administration's environmental policy, the Political Economy Research Center gave the policy an A+. Innovative as the policy is, the true action will have to come from the grass-roots. The water-trading policy is certainly something that states and local governments should take a clear-eyed look at. Wall Street Journal Editorial - “The Color of Water” The EPA is finally enforcing the Clean Water Act with the most powerful green force known to man: money. New policy rules, issued last week, will allow industrial plant owners to pay unregulated polluters not to pollute. It's called water quality trading, which a dozen states have experimented with to good effect. The EPA is now taking this burst of free-market logic national, which promises to clean up waterways better than the diminishing returns of command-and-control regulation. Shoveling cash into additional water treatment technology is increasingly expensive, and in any event doesn't solve the problem of pesticide run-off from farmland. "There's evidence that along the coastline we're losing ground," Bruce Yandle of George Mason University's Mercatus Center told us. There's a "dead zone" at the mouth of the Mississippi River, possibly caused by nutrient overloading. A similar problem plagues the Chesapeake Bay. And almost half of the rivers and lakes tested reveal too much pollution, notwithstanding 30 years of EPA diktats. So EPA officials are now sensibly going to look for ways to make cleaner water profitable by allowing local governments, businesses and others to "trade" their pollution rights in a way that produces less costly but broader cleanup. Instead of imposing expensive technology mandates, cleanup plans can now include the option of paying Joe Farmer to keep his cows out of the local creek, or plant grasses for a "riparian buffer zone" that stops pollution from washing into the waterway. North Carolina, for example, has already been using the power of the almighty dollar to solve a nutrient buildup problem in the Tar-Pamlico River basin. The problem isn't the water treatment plants -- all of which met permitted discharge limits even while dead fish were washing ashore in 1989. "The loadings from agricultural activities were just too large all by themselves," says a recent Mercatus study. Thanks to trading, the Tar-Pamlico basin is meeting nutrient reduction goals on or ahead of schedule and for less money. Nationwide, the Clinton Administration put the annual savings in cleanup costs at somewhere between $658 million and $7 billion. It all makes so much sense that even some professional environmentalists like it. The World Resources Institute, for one, calls it "win-win" for the environment and economy. On the other hand, the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council are all in their familiar outrage mode. The "poor" and "minority communities will bear the brunt of this misguided policy" because they are the "least likely" to be able to resist "corporate polluters," avers the NRDC's Nancy Stoner. Of course they will sue. But notice how little substance there is to that NRDC critique. It's merely a political soundbite dragging in race, class and Big Business. Opposition to even something this reasonable exposes just how partisan the NRDC and Sierra Club have become. They are assailing the Bush EPA even though the first "Draft Framework" for a national trading system was issued by the Clinton Administration in 1996. Clean water matters less to Ms. Stoner than does teeing up an issue for the next election. A far more reasonable criticism focuses on the possibility that "hotspots" of concentrated pollution will develop around some industrial plants or cities, even as total water quality improves. But the EPA isn't going away, and neither are its overall water quality standards. Local communities will also have a strong hand in developing any trading system for their watersheds. Fresh thinking in government is so rare that it deserves to be saluted, especially when it can help produce fresher water. Subscribe to WaterNewsPlease forward this message to your friends and colleagues who share an interest in water-related issues and would like to hear from EPA's Office of Water. To subscribe to the WaterNews listserve: Send an email message, leave the subject line blank, and address it to: In the body of the message write: Subscribe WaterNews firstname lastname (Please leave one blank space between each word, do not include any other message, and use A welcome message will appear in your email box once you are officially subscribed. Following your welcome message, you will begin to receive WaterNews once a week. If you encounter difficulties subscribing to this list server or if you would like to be taken off the WaterNews list server at any time, please send your E-mail address to Gloria Posey at Posey.Gloria@epa.gov. We welcome any comments that you may have.
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