Can the free market clean up The Bay?
By now, most people have heard about "carbon footprints." That's the amount of carbon dioxide produced by a person's daily activities, such as driving a car. The bigger the print, the more the global warming pollution.
But folks also have "nitrogen footprints." This is the amount of nitrogen pollution caused by a person's activities that is washed by rain into the Chesapeake Bay, creating algae blooms and low-oxygen "dead zones." Fertilizing your home's lawn leaves a nitrogen footprint. So does switching on a light, because coal-burning electric power plants release nitrogen air pollution that drifts down into the bay. And so does munching a hamburger, because runoff of farm manure is one of the biggest sources of nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake.
A rising number of people and companies across the country are volunteering to buy carbon offsets. They basically pay for bumper stickers or ads proclaiming one is "carbon neutral." The money is donated to nonprofit organizations that plant trees or create projects meant to reduce carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere.
Soon, people in the Chesapeake Bay region will have the option of buying nitrogen offsets. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently awarded a $500,000 grant to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to work with partners in figuring out how it would work. You can read an article about the future program in this month's edition of the Bay Journal.
Beth McGee, senior scientist at the nonprofit organization, said that the foundation might soon put a "nitrogen footprint" calculator on the organization's website. Then a person could plug in how much they drive, fertilize their lawn and do other things in their daily life. The calculator would spit out a figure estimating how much they should pay to become nutrient neutral. The person could donate the money to an organization (yet to be formed) that would spend the money on a project to reduce pollution into the bay, such as planting rows of trees and grasses along streams on farmland to serve as filters to stop fertilizer runoff.
"Let's get people aware of their nitrogen footprint, just as people are aware of their carbon footprint," McGee said. "If you look at the carbon (offset) funds, they are millions of dollars every year that corporations are investing not because they have to, but because they choose to." A nutrient offset fund could work the same way and funnel millions into cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, she suggested.
Some carbon offset programs have proven highly controversial. Check out my blog entry last September about "Orwellian offsets" that are impossible to verify. Some are more public relations schemes than concrete pollution-reduction projects that reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In a few cases, carbon offset funds donate money to wind farm developers years after the wind turbines are financed and constructed. This helps the profits of developers. But it does nothing to absorb CO2.
How would nutrient offsets avoid this credibilty problem? McGee said the key would be transparency. The foundation and its partners would have to make sure the public could check out the projects to make sure they really exist. And the partners would stake their credibility on making sure the money creates new pollution reduction projects that would not have happened without the offset funds.
"We are well aware of the public perception of these carbon funds, and we are working to make sure everything we do is transparent," McGee said. "Maybe we could take photos of the projects. And we could do monitoring to show measurable changes and improvements."
Another question about offset programs is their voluntary nature. Some skeptics suggest it would be better for the government to just require companies and people to reduce their nitrogen pollution, instead of allowing them to participate in voluntary programs. In theory, the state could ban lawn fertilizing, for example. The legislature could pass laws forcing companies to measure and pay for their nutrient footprints.
McGee said the voluntary offset program would be an addition to pollution control laws -- not a replacement for them. Factories and sewage treatment plants that already have nitrogen discharge limits in their permits would still be forced to meet these limits. But if the companies wanted to go above and beyond the limits to improve their image, they could pay into the offset fund to do so. For individuals, right now there are no laws limiting nutrient runoff pollution. If people want to volunteer to pay into a fund to help fight pollution, they can.
Where would the money go? Mostly to agricultural pollution control programs that, for example, pay farmers to build fences to keep animals out of streams, plant alternative crops and use less fertilizer.
Brad Heavner, director of Environment Maryland, said the nutrient offset concept sounds promising and deserves more study. "On first blush, I think we have to be pursuing all sorts of creative strategies like this," Heavner said. "It depends on who's participating. If it's an average person, right now you're not thinking about ways to minimize your nutrient pollution runoff. So this would be a good thing."
The Sun's editorial board (of which I am not a member) endorsed the concept in this morning's paper, writing that "saving the bay is a good way to do business."
I report on the environment and Chesapeake Bay. A native of West Virginia, I have focused mainly on Maryland's environment since moving here in 1983. Along the way, I've crewed aboard a skipjack in the bay, canoed under city streets up the Jones Fall from the Inner Harbor, and gone deep underground in a western Maryland coal mine. Recently, I have been covering the growth and development transforming the landscape. I love seafood, rambles in the country and good stories. I hope to share some here.
Comments
I love (!) the idea of a nitrogen footprint. I should have thought of It. Bravo. Runoff is a runaway train right now. A huge environmental problem. We have to start thinking of nitrogen as we do carbon. In a way they are two sides of the same coin, of course... Anyway, glad you mentioned the connection between burgers and the nitrogen footprint. When cap and trade. It's always that first step. Let's do it!
Posted by: Pamela R. | July 9, 2008 9:14 PM