The Stink Goes On…
I had the opportunity to participate in New Bern’s Neuse River Bridge run this past weekend. While I didn’t set any records, I did get the opportunity to run across the Neuse River Bridge, a mile bridge that rises to feet. While I was laboring over the rise, I was able to look out at the thousands, if not millions, of dead menhaden that were floating in the estuary.
Normally, this race gives runner’s an opportunity to take in beautiful views of a fall day, a scenic town, and an inviting river. Race day 2013, however, will be remembered for dead fish and the smell associated with their decomposition. In spots, it was gag-inducing.
According to news reports, these conditions have been present since early October in both the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico estuaries. The cause, according to state scientist, is a mold affecting the fish. Others believe low oxygen, due in part to excess nutrients, are contributing to the kill. If the latter is true, it’s an indicator of an ecosystem that’s out-of-balance.
While inconveniencing runners and race organizers, it was lethal to the millions of fish that died since the kill’s inception. At a time when the state regulatory officials seem to be headed toward relaxed efforts at controlling polluted runoff, this fish kill should serve as a reminder that the effort that began back in the early 1990’s to clean up our estuaries is not yet complete
Kill is a sign of Imbalance
News coming from down east last week wasn’t good. Recent weather changes combined with excess nutrient runoff from heavy rains earlier this year that I documented in a previous post have combined to create excess algal growth and low oxygen conditions in the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico estuaries. News reports on both the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico describe millions of menhanden dead and washed ashore.
Fish kills of this magnitude are troubling and typically happen in the late-summer and fall. They indicate that efforts to better control nutrients in the river need to be maintained or increased if we are going to see a more balanced and resilient estuarine ecosystem.
Urban BMPs – Costly but Effective
A recent news item was published on the State’s Ecosystem Enhancement Program’s dedication of a stormwater best management practice (BMP) funded through impact fees dedicated to reducing nutrients in the Neuse River Basin. An article in New Bern’s Sun Journal describes the BMP as treating 1,000 acres of storm water runoff in the City –an impressive sized area. Most urban BMPs are engineered for an area 1/10th that size or smaller.
What’s this have to do with nutrient policy? Since the 2001 inception of the Neuse Stormwater rules to curb nutrient runoff, stormwater BMPs have been the exception rather than the rule for projects that offset nutrients from development in the basin. Instead, nutrient offset providers have preferred to restore streamside forests as a way to reduce nutrients impacts from development. I touched on the reasons for this preference in a recent post – Stormwater BMPs cost more than most other nutrient reduction practices.
While research shows the restoration of forest buffers reduces nutrients, opportunities to restore buffers are limited in some of the state’s watersheds with buffer rules. One example is Jordan’s New Hope subwatersheds where nutrient increasing impacts from development must be offset within limited geographic areas where there are few opportunities for low-cost nutrient reduction practices.
In the future, practices such as those recently dedicated in New Bern will more frequently become the rule rather than the exception unless policy changes allow for more flexible location of nutrient reduction practices.
Wetlands-Nature’s Nutrient Solution
The University of Illinois recently published research further substantiating the value of wetlands. The study looked at the benefits of restoring wetlands for reducing nitrogen verses technological improvements at waste water treatment plants. No doubt that both these mechanisms have water quality benefits. In addition to those, however, restored wetlands provide additional benefits such as added wildlife habitat and carbon storage. Just for their nitrogen reduction benefits alone, “wetlands are a more cost-effective way to mitigate nitrogen pollution than abatement by WWTPs”.
Wetlands More Cost-Effective in Nutrient Removal, but Multiple Payments Would Be of Uncertain Value
Sep. 17, 2013 — Removing nitrogen from the environment “the natural way” by creating a wetland is a long-term, nutrient-removal solution, more cost effective than upgrading a wastewater treatment plant, but it isn’t necessarily socially beneficial to offer landowners multiple payments for the environmental services that flow from such wetlands, according to a study conducted at the University of Illinois.
“In the areas we studied in Bureau County with small wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), it was much cheaper to do pollution control by installing just a few wetlands than it was to have the WWTPs do the upgrades that would be necessary to achieve the same thing,” said U of I environmental economist Amy Ando.
Bureau County was selected for the simulation because it is an area that has waterways with heavy nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, and it is a rural area of the state but with some population density and a couple of WWTPs. “In some ways, it’s a poster child for an environment where a program like this could work,” Ando said. “There is enough farmland to put in some wetlands, but there are also enough people contributing to the WWTPs that are generating nutrients — so there are parties on both sides that could trade with each other.”
The study analyzed the amount of land needed to reduce nitrogen pollution, data on the costs of actual wetland restorations, and other factors such as the opportunity costs to the landowner from no longer farming the new wetland area.
“Wastewater treatment plants can already remove nitrogen, but their current technology is only capable of removing them up to a point,” Ando said. “If they wanted to do more nitrogen removal, they would have to make upgrades. The cost of phosphorus removal isn’t high, but for nitrogen, the upgrades are pretty expensive.”
Ando also explained that, depending on how environmental permit markets are set up, if an area is set aside as a wetland, the landowner could qualify for several incentive programs through pollution trading markets, even if the original purpose of the wetland conversion was only to reduce nitrogen.
“This is a big issue in the design of markets for ecosystem services,” Ando said. “A wetland does a lot of things. It will filter out nutrients, but it also creates habitat for waterfowl, and it might sequester carbon. The cost of installing a wetland is large enough that in some cases no single payment might be enough to convince a farmer to do it, but if they get paid for the full value to society of all three benefits, then they might be willing to do it.
“There’s an almost violent debate among scholars and environmental groups and people who are trying to get these markets into place about whether farmers should be able to stack payments. We were trying to be agnostic and just ask the question, what effects would stacking have on market outcomes?” she said.
Ando said that, under some circumstances, if multiple payments for the same action are not allowed, it can result in inefficiently low levels of conservation activity on parcels of land that generate nutrient removal and other benefits such as wildlife habitat. However, some farmers may be willing to convert farmland to wetland on the strength of just one payment.
“Ideally we want to pay farmers to create a wetland that they would not have done anyway,” Ando said. “But in some cases, they might not need the extra incentive and would have been happy to do it for the nitrogen payment alone. In our study area, we found that allowing multiple payments may or may not make society as a whole better off, depending on the details of the policy situation.”
When questioned about the fairness of stacking credits, Ando said “Fair is a different question than efficient and from cost-effectiveness overall. If multiple payments for a single wetland don’t increase the provision of ecosystem services relative to single payments, then it’s not cost-effective. Some of that money could be used to pay a different landowner and get more services overall. So there might be a trade-off between what seems fair and just and what yields the greatest environmental benefit to society for a fixed amount of money available for payments,” she said.
Article at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130917124819.htm
Nutrient Reduction Costs/Benefits
The multiple benefits of reducing nutrients to our State’s waters include reduced algal blooms, improved aquatic habitat for fish and wildlife, and reduced costs for treating drinking water.
A rub, however, with these benefits is that efforts to reduce nutrient pollution are costly. For example, in 2010 the state estimated that for it to complete the implementation of the nutrient plan to clean up Falls Lake, it would cost nearly $1.5 billion.
Why the high cost for Falls Lake? There are two main drivers. First, the State’s pollution reduction plan is ambitious. It calls for reductions of 77% in phosphorus and 40% in nitrogen – greater than any of the State’s previous plans for other water bodies.
The second reason for the high cost is that some sources cost more to reduce than others. The figure below helps illustrate cost differences for nutrient reduction measures. Some practices such as the retrofitting of stormwater management measures cost more to reduce a pound of nitrogen than other practices (e.g., the restoration of riparian forest). This, combined with the State’s Clean Water Responsibility Act of 1997, which requires nutrient sources to be reduced “in a fair, reasonable and proportionate manner” contributes to the high price tag for the Falls Lake nutrient strategy. I’ll address measures to tackle these costs in a future post.
Source: http://www.wri.org/publication/how-nutrient-trading-could-help-restore-the-chesapeake-bay
Rainfall depletes soil nutrients
I wanted to post this story that was recently in the news. While things have dried out some here lately in the North State, the heavy rains from earlier in the summer have resulted in the runoff or leaching of many things applied to NC farms including fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Not good news for either the environment or farmers.
https://www.wral.com/state-ag-officials-record-rainfall-depletes-soil-nutrients/12789492/.
Paddle Boating in Pea Soup
A recent visit to Raleigh’s Pullen Park revealed a less than pleasant lake for park goers to gaze upon. Though next to Rocky Branch, the lake has no visible inflow from that stream. Runoff from the park is likely to be the main nutrient source for the algae in the lake and there’s no doubt that the season’s heavy rains have a role in its current abundance. Paddle boating anyone?
Bees Good for NC?
I like and keep bees. Their pollination activities are a critical ecosystem service. Our bees, however, are different from those being used in a demonstration project that recently received state funding. My bees, you see, don’t circulate water to reduce the affects of excess nutrient pollution. It remains to be seen if those preferred by the legislature are able to perform that service.
In NC’s recently concluded legislative session, two bills were passed that affected the State’s effort to control nutrient pollution in Jordan Lake. First, Senate Bill 515 further delayed by three years enacting measures that would help reduce levels of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution to the Lake. Instead the legislature passed Session Law 2013-360 to utilize a water circulation technology to try and treat the symptoms of nutrient over enrichment – excess levels of algae in Jordan Lake.
While circulation can help suppress algae, it will not affect longer term watershed measures aimed at reducing pollution levels. Nevertheless, Session Law 2013-360 will fund a demonstration project utilizing Solar Bee. Solar Bee technology uses the sun’s energy to power a circulation system that provides “near-term solutions to targeted water quality problems in fresh-to-brackish waters”. The demonstration is being funded through a $1.3 million grant from the State’s Clean Water Management Trust Fund and will be targeted at the most polluted portion of the Lake – the Upper New Hope subwatershed.
With 2012 water quality samples violating Chlorophyll a standards in the Upper New Hope arm of the lake between 59 and 88% of the time, the technology will be tested in an extremely challenging environment. If it gets deployed as planned, we’ll begin to see if in-lake treatment is part of the solution for improved water quality in Jordan.
More likely, a balanced approach of pollution reduction is needed as a long-term solution to cleaning Jordan Lake. According to the Durham News reports, both EPA and local environmental groups favor an approach that reduces pollution sources. With all this interest from varied perspectives, this demonstration project will certainly be something to keep an eye on.
Delay is not Pollution’s Solution
Since being passed in 2008, six laws have been passed by the NC legislature that have either modified or delayed six of the 13 Jordan Clean-up rules. That was prior to 2013. The latest effort by the legislature seems to be heading toward an additional three-year delay to the Strategy’s implementation. While delaying is better than repealing the clean-up effort, there will continue to be negative effects on the lake from this action.
On a recent trip to Chapel Hill, one lost opportunity for controlling pollution was evidenced in a recently opened Wal-Mart built on over 62 acres of former forest land located on 15-501 in north Chatham County. Since Jordan New Development rules were delayed in the 2012 Legislative Session, this commercial development was able to be constructed without having to control runoff of nitrogen and phosphorus.
The nutrient export from the 62 acres of forest was around 60 lbs of N per year. Nitrogen runoff from the new Wal-Mart site site is likely 10 to 20 times more than that depending on the stormwater controls used at the site. With the delays in Jordan’s nutrient runoff controls on new development, this annual increase in pounds of N will end up in Jordan Lake.
Since 2008, pollution from new development to Jordan has been kept in check largely by the burst housing bubble and the associated recession. In case you hadn’t kept up with recent headlines, the housing market is on the rebound and pressure for developing land is on the rise. Both housing and commercial development will increase over the next 2-3 years and result in more pollution from development to the lake. The plan to prevent that is being delayed yet again and will result in a more challenging clean-up effort over the long-term.
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After checking with the calculation tool, I updated the nutrient estimated increase from this commercial dev’t.
Heavy rains & runoff, then what?
North Carolina has experienced a wet first half of the year with some areas experiencing record breaking rainfall. While some rain may be good for gardeners and farmers, too much of it coming early in the year can cause problems for our estuaries. That’s exactly what researchers are forecasting this year for the Gulf of Mexico as heavy spring rains over the 1,245,000 square mile Mississippi watershed transports pollution to the gulf, contributing to dead zones.
Dead or hypoxic zones are areas where factors, including excess nutrients, lead to excess algal growth which lowers oxygen levels to the point that living organisms have difficulty surviving. Since 1995, the Gulf dead zone has averaged 5,960 square miles. State and federal and governments in the watershed set a goal to reduce the Gulf hypoxic zone to an average of 1,950 square miles by 2015.
High flows in the Mississippi this spring, however, have led researchers to predict that the Gulf dead zone will be large. The Louisiana Universities predict that this year’s dead zone will cover 8,561 mi2. If this were to pass, it would be the largest dead zone recorded since monitoring began.
What’s this have to do North Carolina? Our recent heavy rains have resulted in similar conditions where heavy runoff is making its way toward the estuaries. While researchers haven’t published predictions on the impact of that runoff on NC estuaries, the setup for our State compares with that of the Gulf. That is, the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico’s estuaries will face a higher threat this year of hypoxic conditions from heavy rains and polluted runoff.
Continued heavy rains, however, may help flush much of these pollutants out into the ocean. As we enter the hot, sunny summer, we should find out soon about the impact of these rains on our estuaries.