|
While a cap-and-trade plan for U.S. greenhouse gases is off thetable and out of sight in Washington, a market-based plan forcleaning up water pollution in the Chesapeake Bay has emerged astopic A in the sprawling watershed. While details of how a baywide cap-and-trade system for water aremurky, debate over it is dividing stakeholders intostrange-bedfellow camps and ginning up tensions in thelong-running, federal-led restoration effort. Consider, for example, that U.S. EPA's cap-and-trade plan -- alsocalled water-quality credit trading -- has the support of twogroups that disagree on almost everything else, the Chesapeake BayFoundation and the American Farm Bureau Federation. "People have a visceral response to markets and water qualitytrading," said Dan Nees, senior research associate at theUniversity of Maryland's Environmental Finance Center. "It's reallyunlike anything I've ever seen." At its most basic, the cap-and-trade plan lets water polluters thatclean up their discharges beyond mandated limits profit from theircleanup by selling their excess pollution reductions to otherentities. A farmer, for example, could sell credits for takingsteps to reduce pollution washing off cropland to operators of asewage treatment plant. That scheme could slash the cost of the EPA-led Chesapeake Baycleanup by nearly half, according to a federal study unveiled last week. The system could also become a model for otherrestorations in the Mississippi River, the Great Lakes and otherecosystems. But the plan is opposed by a small but vocal coalition ofenvironmentalists who say the system is ripe for abuse and couldundermine the joint effort by federal, state and local governmentsacross the 64,000-square-mile watershed. The coalition had threatened to sue EPA over the pollution-creditproposal, arguing that the policy would lead to more pollution. Butthe threat dissolved after a top financial supporter of onecoalition member, Potomac Riverkeeper, promised to shut its walletif legal action were taken ( Greenwire , April 20). At stake is the high-profile restoration of the Chesapeake Bay, thenation's largest estuary, whose watershed drains the District ofColumbia and parts of Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania,Virginia and West Virginia. The bay is choking on excessivenutrients -- phosphorus and nitrogen discharged by sewage treatmentplants and fertilizers washing off farms, lawns and parking lots. Picking up where two prior government-led restoration effortsfailed, EPA in 2010 launched the most ambitious cleanup to date,under executive order from President Obama. The agency divided thebay into 92 segments and mandated that states develop and implementplans to achieve specific, numeric targets for reducing nitrogen,phosphorus and sediment that would put the bay on a path to fullrecovery by 2025. Many of the most obvious and egregious sources of industrialpollution have been largely stanched since the passage of the 1972Clean Water Act. Experts agree that achieving further gains will behard-fought and expensive. The Obama administration effort would effectively mandate high-techand expensive pollution-reduction systems at industrial facilitiesand municipal sewage and wastewater treatment plants across thewatershed. And it would force all stakeholders to focus on the moststubborn pollution: fertilizer- and manure-laden runoff fromfarmland. The Clean Water Act is ill-equipped to stanch such "nonpoint"sources of pollution, and agribusiness has sued EPA, arguing thatthe agency, in fact, lacks the authority to do so. Study sees market opportunities Farmers, regulators and most environmentalists agree that anyapproach to cleaning up the bay should include a component that ismarket-based. EPA's water-credit approach comes in response to critics of therestoration effort who say $1 million invested to stop fertilizerrunoff in farming areas would go further to clean up the bay than$1 million invested in more high-tech pollution controls at asingle treatment plant. Proponents say the cost-benefit imbalance among polluters could beharnessed to the bay's advantage by a water credit-trading system. Farmers could implement so-called best management practices --planting cover crops to reduce soil erosion and installingvegetative buffer zones along creeks to soak up pollution -- andgenerate "credits" that could be sold to water utilities in thecity. Under that scheme, its backers say, farmers earn, developers savemoney and the bay wins. "The cost per acre of best management practices in centralPennsylvania are going to be a lot less than, say, in MontgomeryCounty, Maryland," said Mike Mittelholzer, assistant staff vicepresident in regulatory affairs for the National Association ofHome Builders. "In concept, it's definitely an option we'd like tohave on the table." The cost of compliance for treatment plants and other entitieswhose wastes flow from discharge pipes would be cut 49 percentunder the broadest trading scenario, according to a study byconsultant RTI International of Research Triangle Park, N.C. RTIInternational presented its study last week to the Chesapeake BayCommission, a tri-state legislative body that advises lawmakers ofMaryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania on the bay restoration. Thecommission has yet to take a position on trading. The savings cited in the study are possible if credits are allowedto be traded across all six states and between point and nonpointsources, the report says. "Potential cost savings are greatest when trading is allowed acrossthe entire watershed," RTI International economist George VanHoutven told the commission at its meeting last week in Washington. Only limited trading now takes place in small markets in the threecommission states. Even under the most restrictive trading scenario-- in which credits can be traded only within the same drainagebasin and state, from point source to point source -- overallsavings come in at 20 percent, according to RTI's report. The report relies on several assumptions. Among them: The specificamount of pollution reduction achieved by best management practiceson farmland can be established and maintained with certainty. That is important not only to pollution-credit buyers, who willwant to ensure they are getting something real and quantifiable fortheir money, but also to regulators, who are legally obligated toguard against phantom gains. "I think nearly everyone agrees there are some very real issuesthat need to be addressed as we move forward," said Joseph Maroon,a consultant to the commission. Maroon highlighted to the commission last week the difficulties anduncertainties of quantifying nonpoint-source pollution, theverification, certification and monitoring systems that wouldrequire, and the complexities of establishing and policing auniform, cross-state trading market. In a market-based approach to solving these market questions, theU.S. Department of Agriculture recently offered $10 million ingrants to anyone with innovative proposals on how to set up a waterquality trading markets in watersheds such as the Chesapeake Bay ( Greenwire , Jan. 13). But to some environmentalists, the unanswered questions are toofundamental to allow states to continue expanding existing tradingprograms to meet EPA's pollution-reduction mandates. Opponents oftrading want the provision struck from EPA's Chesapeake Bay planuntil solutions are found. "If they're saying trading is not there yet because thesemechanisms and safeguards are not in place, but we should work ongetting those safeguards in place -- well, why don't you let meknow when those safeguards are in place, and then we can talk abouttrading," said attorney Scott Edwards, of the advocacy group Foodand Water Watch. Edwards' group is working to revive the lawsuit that fizzled whenPotomac Riverkeeper dropped out. Michelle Merkel, another attorney with Food and Water Watch, calledit a "fight for the integrity of the Clean Water Act." "It's effectively privatizing our public waterways and allowingpolluters to use them as waste disposal sites," Merkel said. "Thisis about privatization, and that's not something at Food and WaterWatch that we support." Making pragmatism match enthusiasm Proponents of the many variations of cap and trade -- whetherapplied to air or water pollution -- frequently point to itssuccessful application in the interstate fight against acid rain inthe 1990s. The cap-and-trade approach developed by the Environmental DefenseFund and written into the 1990 Clean Air Act mandated cuttingsulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from power plants in half, whileletting industry decide how to do it by buying and selling credits. By 2000, scientific measurements taken in waterways and nationalparks were confirming the program's success. Most agree that quantifying the water quality benefits ofland-management practices on farmland in the bay watershed is farmore difficult than measuring SO2 emissions from smokestacks. On farmland, Edwards said, "there are no measurements; there is noverification, there is no monitoring system in place." The Clean Water Act, he said, does not allow for trading. Anddespite the success of the EPA acid rain program, he added, thereare more examples of failed attempts at cap and trade. (Edwardsargues that Europe's top-down regulatory approach to acid rainproduced better results.) "What you've got here is basically the Wild West of nutrienttrading," Edwards said of the bay trading program. "We'll neverknow if they're reducing their loads or just selling make-believecredits. It's voodoo." Rena Steinzor, law professor at the University of Maryland andpresident of the left-leaning Center for Progressive Reform, isonly slightly more sanguine. "It's going to happen, and when it happens, there are two dangers,"she said. "One is that the system is not well-designed. ... Thesecond is that you build it, and no one comes." Steinzor, a frequent critic of EPA's Chesapeake Bay Program forwhat she sees as its frequent failure to live up to promises,nonetheless says that a credit-trading program could be made towork. "We think it can help and contribute if it's managed verycarefully," she said. The reason the acid rain program was successful, she said, was thatthere were continuous emission monitors at power plants; there isnothing similar in the bay landscape. "The advocates of trading, sometimes their enthusiasm exceeds theirpragmatism," she said. The water pollution system, Steinzor said, would rely on farmers'submitting to regular checks that they are maintaining their landto produce the requisite benefits. Would industrial dischargers,she said, be willing to buy credits if they are held accountablefor failures of the seller to deliver those gains? "If trading is a way to accelerate the application of those bestmanagement practices, that would be grand," she said. "It's a verytrendy, hip, glitzy, hot way of approaching environmental problems,and the danger is that it's implemented in a careless way." Want to read more stories like this? E&E is the leading source for comprehensive, daily coverage ofenvironmental and energy politics and policy. Click here to start a free trial to E&E -- the best way to track policyand markets. Back to Public index page. Advertisement. I am an expert from tllpgcylinder.com, while we provides the quality product, such as China Brass Gas Valve , Portable Gas Burners, Camping Gas Cylinders,and more.
Related Articles -
China Brass Gas Valve, Portable Gas Burners,
|
