Achieving Nutrient and Sediment Reduction Goals in the Chesapeake Bay An Evaluation of Program Strategies and Implementation (2011) / Chapter Skim
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5 Strategies for Meeting the Goals
5 Strategies for Meeting the Goals
Pages 125-166
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From page 125... ...
to implement practices by 2025 that will ultimately reduce nutrient and sediment loads by the amount necessary to attain the Bay water quality criteria. Reaching these goals will not be easy, however, and will require substantial commitment and, likely, some level of sacrifice from all who live and work in the Bay watershed.
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From page 126... ...
Additional challenges discussed in this section include costs and political and public will. Shifting Drivers of Bay Water Quality and Ecosystem Response The Chesapeake Bay's ecological integrity and, hence, economic and social value has deteriorated because the ability to prevent excess nutrients and sediment from being discharged into the Bay has not kept pace with the generation of nutrients and sediment from rapid population growth and intensification of agricultural operations.
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From page 127... ...
Population growth, development, and wastewater management combine to produce the observed impacts of urban and suburban development on water quality. The population of the Chesapeake Bay watershed grew from 8.1 million in 1950 to almost 16 million in 2000 (Claggett, 2007)
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From page 128... ...
That is our total environmental ‘footprint'. Common sense tells us we can help the Chesapeake Bay and the planet by reducing either per capita impacts, or the number of capitas.
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Agricultural Production and Land-Use Changes. Shifts in agricultural production and land use often occur because of external pressures, and these changes have implications for nutrient management in the Bay watershed.
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over the past five years in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed is projected to have increased annual nutrient loads by 5 million lbs nitrogen and 2 million lbs phosphorus (Table 5.1)
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However, uncertainty exists in predicting TABLE 5-1 Estimated Increase in Nutrient Export in Farm Runoff from Growing an Additional 0.25 Million Acres of Corn in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Nitrogen Export in Phosphorus Export in Runoff Runoff Land Acreage Shift to Area Average Change Average Change (103 ac)
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Annual mean temperatures in the Bay Watershed are projected to increase by 1ºC during
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From page 133... ...
. Climatic variations can dramatically change the Bay's response to nutrient management actions.
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Even if nutrient and sediment reductions are distributed across the Bay jurisdictions based upon their relative contributions, the shares of the overall cost borne by any jurisdiction's residents, businesses, and taxpayers are likely to vary depending upon the specific sources within the jurisdiction's boundaries and the location of the jurisdiction within the watershed. Much of the public cost will be absorbed by taxpayers as local governments deal with upgrades to wastewater treatment plants and 4 See http://archive.chesapeakebay.net/blueribbon.htm.
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From page 135... ...
Costs in Urban Areas Efforts to control nutrients and sediments in the Bay watershed have had, and will continue to have, significant effects on the way municipalities and industries manage their land, wastewater, development, and redevelopment. The seven Bay jurisdictions have identified ambitious plans necessary to meeting the wasteload and load allocations required by the TMDL (EPA, 2010a)
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From page 136... ...
. The Chesapeake Bay WIPs identified costs of urban stormwater BMPs (including retrofitting and low impact design [LID]
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As a result, residents of the other states may question why they should finance programs designed to help water quality in the Bay itself. Residents of Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia likely are more concerned about water quality within their own boundaries than for downstream water bodies including the Chesapeake Bay.
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From page 138... ...
When specific business sectors or communities expect that costs of environmental policies will affect them disproportionately, they see a direct benefit from lobbying elected officials and voicing their opposition. Challenges to the Chesapeake Bay TMDL have been heated (e.g., Agricultural Nutrient Policy Council, 2010; American Farm Bureau, 2010; ESA Policy News, 2010; Harper, 2010; Stuart, 2010)
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From page 139... ...
is the measuring stick for success of the TMDL, but Bay area citizens may require more visible, tangible evidence of water quality improvement. Because of lag times between the implementation of land-based nutrient and sediment control practices and improvement in Chesapeake Bay water quality (see Box 1-3)
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From page 140... ...
Because many of these strategies have policy or societal implications, the strategies are not prioritized but are offered to encourage further consideration and exploration among the CBP partners and stakeholders. Finally, the committee discusses the importance of modeling and monitoring to help meet the goals and recommends the formation of a Chesapeake Bay modeling laboratory as a strategy to improve the scientific and modeling support for the CBP.
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From page 141... ...
Reducing nitrogen and phosphorus in animal feed presents a promising nutrient management opportunity that can effect lasting reductions in nitrogen and phosphorus loads to the environment. A reduction in the quantity of nitrogen and phosphorus excreted by livestock can also be accomplished by supplementing livestock diets with enzymes to enhance digestion (Keshavarz and Austic, 2004; Knowlton et al., 2002)
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From page 142... ...
EPA (2010e) recommends that manure or fertilizer not be applied to any soil in the Chesapeake Bay watershed with a "phosphorus saturation" value above 20 percent.
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From page 143... ...
Transport of manure from nutrient-surplus to nutrient-deficit areas can address imbalances as long as the nutrients are appropriately applied on receiving lands to avoid potential losses to water and air. Manure transport out of the Bay watershed is of long-term benefit and is occurring through subsidized initiatives of poultry integrators, with poultry litter that is dried, ground, and compacted into small, less bulky pellets (pelletized litter)
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From page 144... ...
In many respects, agriculture in the Bay watershed is similar to agriculture in Denmark, where trends toward larger and more specialized farms with high animal production in the western parts of the country are spatially separated from specialized crop production in the eastern parts of the country. Nutrient management legislation was enacted in Denmark in the 1980s as part of the European Union's "Environmental Action Plan" and "Water Framework Directive" (De Clercq and Sinabell, 2001)
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. peake Bay Watershed, a lack of a response in phosphorus concentrations to management measures was attributed to legacy phosphorus and its resilience in lakes and estuaries, which may delay the full effects of such action plans (Maguire et al., 2009)
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. Further, farmers in the Bay watershed would be placed at a competitive disadvantage compared with those outside the watershed unless such changes were imposed nationally or unless financial support programs were put in place.
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Watershed-based permitting can lead to cost savings as a consortium of permittees organize to distribute pollutant load allocations and contribute to monitoring and tracking efforts in their local or regional watersheds. An in-depth discussion of innovative stormwater management and regulatory permitting, including watershed-based permitting, is provided in Urban Stormwater Management in the United States (NRC, 2008)
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From page 148... ...
estimate that urban and suburban development in the Bay watershed could increase by more than 60 percent by 2030, and residential turfgrass coverage increases with urbanization. Therefore, implementing strategies to reduce the nutrient loads from residential fertilizer application could increase the likelihood of achieving the overall CBP nutrient reduction goals.
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Swanson, personal communication, Chesapeake Bay Commission, 2011)
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The treatment requirements for non-potable reuse for irrigation are not significantly greater than those already applied in most WWTPs in the Bay watershed, but the costs of distribution systems to supply reclaimed water to lands with large irrigation needs represent a significant barrier. More than 2 million individual homeowner septic systems are estimated by the Watershed Model to contribute 4 percent of the nitrogen load to the Bay (Figure 1-6)
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From page 151... ...
In those cases, advanced treatment technologies may be beneficial and remove up to 50 percent of the nitrogen at the edge of the leach field if operated and maintained properly. Enhancing Individual Responsibilities To meet its nutrient and sediment reduction goals, the CBP must not only address large public or collective sources, such as sewage treatment plants, public lands and infrastructure, and agricultural and industrial entities, but everyday actions by watershed residents that are generally not regulated by law.
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The Chesapeake Bay has realized benefits from large decreases in NOx emissions from the Bay airshed resulting from the provisions of the Clean Air Act and its amendments, but the atmosphere is still a major source of nitrogen entering the Bay. Thus, more stringent controls on NOx emissions from all sources will benefit both the Bay and watershed residents, and benefits will exceed costs, primarily because healthcare costs attributed to air pollution will decrease (Birch et al., 2011)
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From page 153... ...
Nutrient and sediment load reductions and associated water quality improvement goals are most likely to be achieved if staff and monetary resources available to a given jurisdiction are targeted to a prioritized list of watersheds and their associated receiving waters. Priorities should reflect both the opportunities for nutrient and sediment reductions, such as hydrologically active areas of high nutrient or sediment source availability, and the costs of BMPs appropriate for such locations.
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From page 154... ...
An adaptive management strategy can improve the effectiveness of a targeting program. If targeted monitoring reveals that nutrient and sediment load reductions are not achieved by control practices implemented in targeted watersheds, then evaluation of practice effectiveness and effectiveness of financial incentives for motivating practice adoption can be undertaken within the limited targeted area and the program adapted as appropriate (see also Chapter 4)
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. Nutrient credits from agricultural nonpoint sources may be fewer than expected because of requirements that the agricultural sources achieve minimum levels of nutrient reduction before credits are generated (King and Kuch, 2003)
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Taken together, these challenges suggest that nutrient offset or credit trading is not a panacea for reaching nutrient reduction goals at lower cost. Removal of institutional constraints that restrict supply and demand at federal and state levels will be required if states are to implement effective trading programs (King and Kuch, 2003; Shabman and Stephenson, 2007)
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Identifying sufficient funds to support an ambient monitoring program capable of detecting potential changes in local water quality in response to BMP implementation can be difficult for individual private entities, small municipalities, and even states.
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If applied in the Bay watershed, collaboration between landowners and state or federal agency representatives or university scientists would be needed to develop monitoring plans and to install equipment. One example of a successful local government collaboration to provide financial support for ambient water quality monitoring is the Southern California Stormwater Monitoring Coalition (SMC)
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However, the models that collectively make up the Chesapeake Bay Model (i.e., the Airshed Model, the Watershed Model, and the Bay Model; see Box 1-1) are central to the proper allocation of restoration resources, evaluation and planning, and the ongoing adaptive management of the Bay in a changing future.
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, which used a USDA model designed to simulate changes in nutrient loading resulting from conservation practices on crop land in the Bay watershed, reported discrepancies with the CBP Watershed Model, including the amount of agricultural nutrients that reach the Bay. The LimnoTech report has fueled a growing backlash against the Bay TMDL and spurred several members of the House Agriculture Committee to conclude that the CBP models used to develop the TMDL are "fatally flawed" (Blankenship, 2011)
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From page 161... ...
Such a laboratory could also be central in designing and improving the CBP monitoring programs, evaluating the consequences of adaptive management experiments, helping to understand where and why pollution controls did not perform as effectively as planned, identifying science gaps, and evaluating the consequences of climate change. Finally, it would be the place where sound technical analysis and advice could be obtained by managers for the inevitable changes that will be necessary as nutrient and sediment reductions are implemented and the resulting responses of the Bay ecosystem are evaluated.
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From page 162... ...
Through a Chesapeake Bay modeling laboratory, disciplinary scientists and engineers and modelers could collaborate to quantify lag times in the Bay watershed and translate the phenomena into operational calculation frameworks. Additional intensive monitoring in small watersheds could be conducted to quantify the time scales of contributing mechanisms.
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From page 163... ...
Additionally, if significant lag times between implementation of land-based BMPs and nutrient loads reductions are determined, the research could help maintain public support for continued efforts and investments in Bay recovery. CONCLUSIONS Reaching the long-term CBP nutrient and sediment reduction goals will require substantial commitment from each of the Bay jurisdictions and likely some level of sacrifice from all who live and work in the watershed.
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From page 164... ...
The committee did not attempt to identify every possible strategy that could be implemented but instead focused on approaches that are not being implemented to their full potential or that may have substantial, unrealized potential in the Bay watershed. Because many of these strategies have policy or societal implications that could not be fully evaluated by the committee, the strategies are not prioritized but are offered to encourage further consideration and exploration among the CBP partners and stakeholders.
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From page 165... ...
Although nutrient trading among point and nonpoint sources is often cited as a mechanism to reach nutrient reduction goals at lower cost, its potential for reducing costs is limited. Stormwater utilities offer a viable funding mechanism to support stormwater management efforts of municipalities.
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From page 166... ...
A Chesapeake Bay modeling laboratory would bring together academic scientists and engineers with CBP modelers to examine various competing models with similar objectives and work to enhance the quality of the simulations. An important component of the work of a modeling laboratory would be the integration of monitoring with modeling efforts.
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