Pollutant trading reduces nonpoint source pollution
By Russell N. Clayshulte, Chatfield Watershed Authority manager
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What is water quality trading? Water quality trading is an innovative approach to achieve water quality goals more efficiently. Trading is based on the fact that sources in a watershed can face very different costs to control the same pollutant. Trading programs allow facilities facing higher pollution control costs to meet their regulatory obligations by purchasing environmentally equivalent (or superior) pollution reductions from another source at lower cost, thus achieving the same water quality improvement at lower overall cost. From the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency |
Pollutant trading programs are incorporated into four watershed plans in Colorado – Chatfield, Bear Creek, Cherry Creek and Dillon – and will be used in many other watersheds in the near future.
These trading programs are powerful tools to help manage nonpoint source loads for specific water quality parameters. The programs also provide flexibility in maintaining point source wasteload allocations to protect the beneficial uses of Colorado’s waters; and they establish guidelines and provide economic or development incentives to entities that reduce nonpoint source loads in a watershed in exchange for a point source credit.
The watershed benefits with a net reduction in pollutant loading of one or more of the target water quality parameters. Generally, trading between source types (point and nonpoint) is for a single pollutant such as total phosphorus. However, the future of Colorado trading programs will also include “off-set parameter trades,” for example a reduction of mercury will result in a phosphorus credit.
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Before and after photographs of the same site at a Chatfield Watershed Authority trade project. Severe sediment erosion in lower Massey Draw contributed phosphorus loads to the reservoir. After construction, phosphorus loads were reduced by 60 percent during runoff events. |
A case in point: the Chatfield Reservoir Control Regulation (State Regulation #73) establishes trading provisions for point-to-nonpoint source trades. These provisions simplify and expand options for point source dischargers to acquire additional wasteload allocations for their wastewater treatment facilities. Trades encourage alternative and creative treatment arrangements for phosphorus concentration reductions. The trading program goal is to allow trades that have a measurable net water quality benefit in the watershed.
The Chatfield Watershed Authority’s current trading program focuses on total phosphorus and uses a 2:1 trade ratio for nonpoint source to point source trades. In other words, the reduction of two pounds of nonpoint source total phosphorus results in one pound of point source credit.
Trade reductions are implemented by using permanent and long-term best management practices designed especially for water quality improvements. The authority and trade credit recipients carefully monitor water quality and provide assurances that trade projects are meeting expectations for pollutant reduction.
The Chatfield Watershed has a total maximum annual load of phosphorus, which includes a finite amount allocated to all existing and future wastewater treatment plants. The Chatfield publicly owned wastewater treatment plants are advanced treatment systems, which already meet low levels of phosphorus in their discharges. As development occurs in the watershed, wastewater treatment plants must expand to meet this growth demand. (Most areas of Douglas County, listed in recent years as one of the country’s fastest growing counties, drains to the Chatfield Watershed.)
Once a wastewater treatment plant approaches its fixed phosphorus wasteload allocation, the operator must obtain additional point source credit before increasing wastewater discharge into the watershed surface or groundwater. The trade program allows for the wastewater treatment plant expansion, while protecting established and regulated water quality beneficial uses. The authority expects trading to become a highly used mechanism for managing phosphorus sources in the watershed. Trade phosphorus is also becoming a very valuable commodity, with the price ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 per pound, depending on the type of trade project.
To learn more about the Chatfield trading program visit www.chatfieldwatershed.org.Do you have a
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