WASHINGTON - A proposed system to allow farmers and city wastewater plants to trade pollution credits with one another would likely improve water quality, but U.S. Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas on Wednesday warned that “a spirit of mistrust” between farmers and federal regulators would make such a system difficult to run.
Boozman, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee that deals with water issues, told water experts and other members of the panel that if a “nutrient trading market” is created nationally, farmers would be more willing to take part in it if the market is regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture rather than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates water pollution.
An increase of nutrients - principally phosphorus and nitrogen - from farming, wastewater treatment and storm-water runoff has resulted in the growth of algae blooms. These growths choke oxygen from waterways around the country creating “dead zones” where marine wildlife is killed off.
The panel’s Democratic chairman, Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, said there were 162 such zones in 1980. Now, the number has jumped to 400.
Several states have state nutrient trading markets. The markets allow polluters, who predict that they will emit a lower amount of nutrients than is allowed under the Clean Water Act’s “total maximum daily load” to sell the unused allotment to others. In such a market, the seller gets a credit for the difference between the amount it emits and the maximum allowed by law. The company or farm can sell that credit to another polluter, who is then able to discharge the corresponding amount of nutrients above his daily limit.
Michael Shapiro, deputy administrator for water at the EPA, told the panel that more than 15,000 rivers, streams and lakes do not meet state water quality standards because of excess nutrients. He called nutrient trading an approach with “significant potential.”
Boozman agreed but warned Shapiro that farmers would be hesitant to participate in such a program.
“There is significant potential and serious pitfalls” to using such a market, Boozman said.
Boozman told Shapiro of “skepticism” among members of the agricultural community about the EPA’s ability to be a fair regulator. He suggested using members of state conservation boards or experts from the USDA to police trades, to make sure that trading partners are taking steps, such as planting trees, establishing buffer zones near streams or simple practices like not driving manure spreaders over streams, to meet the nutrient reductions spelled out in the terms of a trade.
“The EPA would not be doing, routinely, any direct verification,” under a nutrient trading scheme, Shapiro said.
Other senators and witnesses at the hearing said they supported the creation of a nutrient trading market, but, like Boozman, said they were worried about the effect on farmers.
“How do we ensure the different sectors are being treated fairly,” Cardin asked Shapiro. “We want to make sure this isn’t a way to make the agriculture sector do more than their fair share.”
Cardin said farmers in his state, which, like Arkansas, is home to a significant number of poultry farms, would need more certainty that their pollution reduction efforts would pay off before trading in a just established market.
“No one is being forced” to trade, replied Shapiro. “A farmer could elect to wait and see what other people do.”
To be successful, agents who verify trades should stay off farmers’ fields and concentrate on whether water quality has improved after a farmer has made a trade based on reduced discharge, said Marty Matlock, executive director at the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Office of Sustainability.
If testing is done on farms, “you’re just chasing ghosts,” he said, because it is difficult to predict how changes in farming practices result in cleaner water.
Business, Pages 27 on 05/23/2013