Farmers may help utilities through water-pollution offsets

Aug 20 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Spencer Hunt The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Faced with a planned federal mandate to cut water pollution from power plants, American Electric Power and other utility companies might simply pay farmers to do the job for them.

In a "water quality trading" test program recently announced by environmental regulators in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, farmers could cut polluted stormwater runoff from their fields and sell the reductions as credits to power companies.

Either way, proponents say, streams, rivers and lakes would be cleaner.

Installing and operating pollution-treatment systems at power plants would be much more expensive, according to officials with the Electric Power Research Institute.

"There are substantial savings," Jessica Fox, senior scientist for the institute's Water and Ecosystems Program, said of the credit concept.

The institute, a nonprofit arm of the electric-utility industry, came up with the idea and helped persuade state and federal officials to support it.

In a written statement, Scott Nally, director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, called the program "another example of the innovative partnerships we are creating in Ohio."

Buying and selling credits is fine, said Anthony Sasson, freshwater conservation coordinator for the Nature Conservancy in Ohio, as long as it cuts pollution in streams.

"It has to show a substantial overall reduction as a result," Sasson said. "You can't just break even."

Farming frequently is cited in government reports as the No. 1 source of the phosphorus and nitrogen pollution that plagues streams and lakes. The compounds, which are found in manure and fertilizers, run off fields during storms.

Power plants release nitrogen from ammonia, which is used in scrubbers and filters to cut air pollution. Nitrogen and phosphorus help grow thick mats of toxic, blue-green algae in lakes. Nitrogen also flows down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to help form a vast, oxygen-depleted dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ohio and other states are working under a federal mandate to come up with phosphorus and nitrogen limits for streams. When those limits would be set is not clear. The U.S. EPA, which first called for limits in 1998, has requested more information to help it review a "framework" for an Ohio EPA plan.

The state is expected to supply that information some time in the next year, said Linda Fee Oros, an Ohio EPA spokeswoman.

Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky are moving quickly on the trading idea. On Tuesday, the Ohio EPA proposed regulations to run the pilot program, set to end in 2015.

AEP's Cardinal station, located along the Ohio River near Brilliant, Ohio, would be among the first plants to participate in the program, said Melissa McHenry, a company spokeswoman.

She said it would cost $52 million to install a system to keep Cardinal's ammonia out of the Ohio River and at least $3 million a year to operate it.

Paying farmers to cut a similar amount of phosphorus, she said, could cost as little as $100,000 a year.

Farmers typically plant buffer strips of grass along ditches and streams instead of using those areas to grow crops. The strips absorb manure and fertilizers washed from fields during storms.

Whether farmers participate depends on whether they can make more money from selling credits than they could growing corn or soybeans.

Larry Antosch, the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation's environmental policy director, said many farmers likely will consider the offer.

"We see it as a good opportunity," Antosch said.

shunt@dispatch.com

@CDEnvironment