Before, After Santo Domingo Creek, Lancaster County. Courtesy LandStudies, Inc.

The Department of Environmental Protection this week announced a series of grants designed to promote the establishment of a water quality credit trading program and solutions to the legacy sediment problem.

Conservation districts in Chester, Dauphin and Bradford counties will receive $225,000 to assist in certifying credits and implementing best management practices on farm operations to generate credits for the nutrient trading program.

The credits can be sold to developers or treatment facilities faced with the challenge of reducing nutrient loads to meet state and federal permitting requirements. When credits are sold, farmers will be reimbursed for the loads they reduced through best management practices implementation.

Consistent with that approach, the conservation districts in Cumberland and Lancaster counties will take it one step further, bringing together the sewage treatment plants, developers and other sources in need of nutrient reduction credits with the farm community. Cumberland County will receive $200,000 and Lancaster County will receive $150,000 to support this effort, providing a cost-effective solution to meet nutrient loading goals, as well as protect the land and water resources of both counties.

To maintain these aggressive nutrient reduction efforts, a $425,000 revolving fund will be established, providing a framework to continue to support a market for credits generated through conservation practices. The revolving fund will be used only for the installation of credit-generating BMPs. The credit income derived from the sale of these BMPs will replenish the fund for the cost of additional implementation of conservation practices on farm operations, thus creating and sustaining a healthy bank of credits.

The trading program will help Pennsylvania meet its obligations to reduce nutrients and sediments going to the Chesapeake Bay by 38 million pounds a year by 2010.

Legacy Sediments: In addition, Franklin & Marshall College will receive a $130,000 grant that will support research efforts to characterize the occurrence, distribution, nutrient characteristics and environmental impacts of legacy sediments in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Legacy sediment is sediment that has been eroded and stored in valley bottoms during centuries of intensive land clearing, agriculture and milling.

Building on the Agriculture, Communities and Rural Environments initiative, or ACRE, the Governor awarded an additional $700,000 for enforcement through the conservation districts. This effort coincides with DEP's focused effort to ensure compliance with existing prohibitions against unpermitted discharges to Pennsylvania waters under the state's Clean Streams Law.

Funding for all the grants announced comes from the Environmental Stewardship Fund. In executing the contracts for the grants, DEP will specify trading rules for the projects, including ratios, thresholds and baselines.

Visit DEP’s Chesapeake Bay Strategy webpage for more information.

Photo: Santo Domingo Creek, Lancaster County. Courtesy LandStudies, Inc.

Links: Senate and House Hold Hearings on Chesapeake Bay Strategy

Water Credit Trading Moves Forward With Reverse Auction on Conestoga

Pfizer, Community Show Benefits of Nutrient Trading Efforts

4/14/2006