DEP Approves Harrisburg Wastewater Treatment Plan To Meet Chesapeake Bay Cleanup

The Department of Environmental Protection has approved Harrisburg Authority’s plan for a new wastewater treatment plant upgrade and its plan to use nutrient trading credits to further reduce nitrate pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.

“We encourage municipal authorities to use this innovative, market-based system of credit trading in order to meet increasingly stringent federal water quality standards,” said DEP Southcentral Regional Office Director Rachel Diamond.

Nutrient credit trading is a market-based program that provides incentives for entities to earn nutrient reduction credits by going beyond legal obligations to remove nutrients from a watershed. The credits can be traded to help others more cost-effectively meet their nutrient reduction obligations or goals.

As part of the authority’s Act 537 sewage facilities plan, the estimated $35 million upgrade to the sewage treatment plant will allow the authority to meet most of the federally mandated nutrient limits required as part of Chesapeake Bay compliance standards.

The remaining portion of the nitrogen reduction will be met by the purchase of nutrient credits equaling an estimated 150,000 pounds of nitrogen per year. However, the Act 537 Plan notes, "the long term cost and availability of credits is not assured, (and) the cost of credits may decline in the future, or the cost to buy credits may exceed the cost of constructing facilities at some point."

The authority must complete the upgrade to the plant to meet final effluent limits in 2013.

For more information, visit the Harrisburg Authority Act 537 webpage.