Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
Water quality trade program to start in Alabama
Pollution credit system to start in Alabama
by MARY ORNDORFF�News Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON - A new water quality program will allow companies, cities and
farmers in the same watershed to buy and sell pollution credits, a policy that
will get an early start in central Alabama.
The trading system creates an economic incentive to reduce the nutrients and
sediment dumped into a particular water system, federal officials said Monday in
announcing the policy.
"It will use the power of the market to achieve the next generation of
environmental progress in water quality," said Christie Whitman, administrator
of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Under the voluntary program, one source could avoid installing an expensive
pollution control device by paying another source in the same watershed to cut
its dumping of the same substance. The EPA would allow the trade only if the
pollution is reduced as a result. Dumpers of most kinds of toxins would not
qualify.
"There is no doubt in my mind . . . (the trading program) will result in cleaner
water at less cost and in less time," Whitman said.
The policy kicks off with $800,000 in federal funds for 11 pilot projects around
the country, including in Montgomery, where regulators try to reduce the
sediment that gets into the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers from farming, natural
runoff and development.
"It's like Christmas all over again for us," said Buddy Morgan, general manager
of the Water Works and Sanitary Sewer Board in Montgomery. "This will make the
states work together better than ever before."
The program was endorsed Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the
American Farm Bureau Federation and the World Resources Institute. One of EPA's
examples was that a farmer could get paid to limit nutrient runoff with a
tilling technique, a cheaper solution than would be required to limit the
discharge of that nutrient at an industrial plant nearby.
An environmental group critical of the program questioned Monday how the
system would avoid "hot spots," or the concentration of pollution in an area
where sources bought credits instead of limiting discharges.
"There are some equity issues, like people living closer to an upstream source
that trades (pollution credits) won't benefit if there is a downstream trade,"
said Joan Mulhern, legislative counsel for Earthjustice.
Morgan, who also is vice president of the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage
Agencies, said he believed the policy would save money for those who are
responsible for safe drinking water.
"We don't see this as an avoidance of the laws," he said. "This is not a
get-out-of-jail-free card."
Virginia Martin
Assistant state editor
The Birmingham News