Pollution-Control Guide Offers New Strategy - guides made available for watershed-based trading - Brief Article

National Wildlife, August-Sept, 1999

Despite 25 years of progress in cleaning up waters fouled by factory and wastewater treatment plant discharges, more than half of the nation's 2,000 watersheds remain polluted, mainly by runoff from city streets, agricultural lands, construction sites and logging areas.

With Congress and state legislatures unwilling to regulate such runoff, more and more states are adopting an innovative approach -- called watershed-based trading -- to tackle the problem. As part of its Saving Our Watersheds program, NWF has issued a guide to help citizens' groups understand these trading schemes and work to improve them.

Trading works this way: Instead of installing additional control technology at their own plants, polluters opt for a less expensive alternative to control polluted runoff elsewhere in the same watershed. They might pay farmers to create buffer strips or install fences to keep cattle away from streams, for example, or pay loggers to restore damaged streamside areas that otherwise would be subject to erosion.

For more information about the publication, 'A New Tool For Water Quality: Making Watershed-Based Trading Work For You,' check NWF's web site at www.nwf.org or contact the northeast office at 58 State Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05602. Phone: 802-229-0650.