The Department of Environmental Protection this week certified two proposals that could generate nutrient reduction credits for sale to developers and dischargers with nutrient reduction obligations.

The Mount Joy Borough Authority trading proposal brings together local sewage treatment plant representatives, developers and other sources potentially needing nutrient reduction credits with the farm community to identify and implement agricultural best management practices that will result in the generation of nutrient load reductions.

In partnership with ARRO Consulting Inc., the borough developed a process to quantify nutrient reductions associated with converting approximately 930 acres of conventionally tilled farmland to continuous no-till which could result in 5,859 nitrogen reduction credits.

The Red Barn Trading proposal offers a different approach to market-based trading by providing a brokering service aggregating farm-produced credits and offering them to regulated wastewater dischargers, developers and others to assist with achieving the pollution reduction needed for compliance.

Red Barn, together with McNees, Wallace & Nurick LLC, developed the proposal to generate nutrient reduction credits by exporting poultry manure out of the watershed to nutrient-starved lands, which could result in 8,246 nitrogen credits generated per year.

These are the first two proposals certified by the department in the nutrient trading program designed to achieve cost-effective water quality improvement in the Susquehanna and Potomac river basins, and to send cleaner water to the Chesapeake Bay.

DEP’s certification allows the proponents to market the credits generated by these certified proposals to those in need of credits, with the assurance that the credits are acceptable to the department for compliance purposes.

Pennsylvania and other states in the 64,000-square-mile Chesapeake Bay Watershed now must meet new, federally-established requirements for nutrient and sediment reduction to remove the nation’s largest estuary from the U.S. Clean Water Act’s list of impaired waters by 2010.

To achieve the targeted reductions, DEP is requiring tougher water quality standards for farming operations and major point sources. Sewage facilities and other industrial dischargers are examining a slate of options that include adopting operational changes, installing nutrient-reduction technology or securing offsets through a new “trading” program that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized for its innovation.

For more information on DEP’s Nutrient Trading Program webpage.

7/2/2006