‘Clean water for all’: Finding solutions to nutrient loss

URBANA, Ill. — Water quality is directly connected to human and economic health, and an organization is working to reduce nutrient loss through education and advocacy.

Mila Marshall, Sierra Club Illinois Chapter clean water advocate, was featured in the recent Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy podcast with Todd Gleason, University of Illinois communication specialist, and produced by Nicole Habberback and Rachel Curry.

The Sierra Club’s efforts include promoting environmental awareness, literacy and policies that protect air, land and water while also supporting the economy.

In addition, the organization promotes wetlands as a cost-effective solution for reducing nitrogen and phosphorous pollution.

The Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy’s long-term goal is a 45% reduction in both nitrogen and total phosphorus loads and the short-term goal is to reduce the phosphorus load by 25% and the nitrate-nitrogen load by 15% by 2025. How do you support nutrient loss reduction?

Marshall: The Clean Water team is working with Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s Nutrient Assessment Reduction Plans and this is specifically for municipal wastewater treatment facilities. Thirty facilities have submitted NARPs that identify phosphorous input reductions and other measures that can be implemented.

In that, we identified that wetlands are a tool that could be used for wastewater treatment facilities to accomplish their reductions while also addressing some issues on farmers’ fields.

Most recently, we’ve reviewed Clean Water Act permits, both relating to slaughterhouses, sewage treatment plants and other sources of nutrient pollution.

Also, in my role, my team supports legislation for funding the work on reducing nutrient pollution, both from agriculture and working with the Nutrient Reduction Education Council.

What else can you tell us about the intersection of NARPs and wetlands?

Marshall: NARPs are plans that were and are being developed by municipalities and other operators of major sewage treatment plants. A major sewage treatment plant is one that discharges over a million gallons a day, into surface waters, and they are operating in watersheds that are either impaired by nutrient pollution or have the potential for being impaired by nutrient pollution.

Wetlands can reduce nutrients, and the continuing loss of wetlands is a huge problem. We know that wetlands can take nitrogen and phosphorus out of water polluted by nutrients before it even reaches rivers, lakes, or streams.

How is the Sierra Club supporting these efforts?

Marshall: So, working in this space talking about how it is that wetlands can be a tool for nutrient reduction which is catching on. We’re also working closely with wastewater treatment facilities to help them understand the opportunities that exist with constructed wetlands and wetland mitigation banking and continuing to get the word out on NARPs.

NARPs are managed by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, and so all of those wastewater treatment facility plans are publish and accessible to the public.

We, as the Clean Water team, support educating the public. We have done a series of workshops and seminars, letting people know, starting from the beginning of the Clean Water Act.

Water literacy is extremely important when advocating for the resource and even understanding the science. We know that most people are unfamiliar with the laws that govern our surface water and groundwater, the agencies that have the jurisdiction to enforce or provide permits for pollution, and they are unfamiliar with the public comment or process to speak up against particular policies or interventions by polluters or permit holders.

We’ve focused on educating our volunteers, marketing those educational opportunities to get people familiar with the with the nutrient loss reduction strategy plan, helping them understand how to engage in some of these higher level conversations, that talk about discharges and water quality standards.

We really looking forward to building inroads with farmers to understand their tensions and be better stewards of information flowing from the conservation space over into agriculture.

We would love to see more of these wetland projects come into existence, especially with the Sackett vs. EPA ruling, but that only happens if we talk to each other and listen to each other.

My priority now is learning the farming community, the way wetlands are promoted, the opportunities that exist for farmers and seeing if we can help watersheds become a little bit healthier, promote nutrient reduction, as well as promote installation of wetlands for nutrient mitigation.

Wetlands are the most efficient way to remove nutrients from the water supply before it goes downstream. How do you communicate about it to both rural and urban audiences in that particular context?

Marshall: It’s really critical to place these wetlands where they are going to be the most productive and efficient at removing nutrients, which is why understanding the watersheds and the availability of the space is important.

City folks are very different from rural Illinois in terms of priorities, how people live and even the amount of nutrients that are entering into the system from our everyday lives.

Forty-seven percent of the state’s population lives in one of our 102 counties — Cook County.

Cook County is a bit different when thinking about nutrients because our focus is going to be on discharge from wastewater treatment facilities, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.

A lot of my job with city and Cook County stakeholders is helping them build an appreciation for the water cycle, understanding how our rivers and streams are connected and learning about how it is the movement of those nutrients impacts other communities downstream.

In central Illinois, it is helping people understand the opportunities for being good stewards and promoting, conversations between farmers and wastewater treatment facilities.

What is the most challenging part is wastewater treatment facilities representatives aren’t really good with speaking to the public. If they are talking to the press, something bad has happened.

There’s also a disconnect in terms of public relations, outreach and who wastewater treatment facilities speak to, and oftentimes that is not going to be farmers. With these two different groups of stakeholders, we see an opportunity to bring people together.

We do like to focus on listening more than anything because while we’re promoting conservation intervention and a solution, if we don’t understand why this won’t work or under what circumstances this is unfavorable, then we are promoting something without the full knowledge of how farmers feel that this sort of intervention is going to help or harm them.

We do a lot of listening in order to learn how to translate and communicate what NARPs and the nutrient loss reduction strategy implementation plan can accomplish for the system as a whole.

You list ecology and the intersection between the environment and economy as your focus. What is the intersection between wetlands and the economy?

Marshall: Wastewater treatment facilities are looking for ways to reduce their phosphorus discharges with the least amount of capital. Wetlands are an opportunity to work with farmers that allows for the land to be monetized and those wetland credits to be purchased, adding revenue to a farmer’s budget.

That’s different from being able to say, this is going to take $30 million, and we’re going have to build new infrastructure that may take 10, 20 years to even get the plans and the permits and raise the money to build a new plant or whatever.

I love the idea of working with farmers and the wetlands being a way that they can monetize their land and also solve a problem with it.

One of my favorite workshops that we hosted to help people wrap their minds around how nutrient pollution could cause harm is an event titled, “The River with the Blues,” about the Mississippi River.

We use that to help people understand that it isn’t just our responsibility to keep our water clean here, but we do want to put a face to this harm.

We invited shrimpers and people who have seen a decline in their business or the increased cost associated with having to move around or move further away from where it is that they normally fish and operate to get those, to get shrimps and clams and mussels and all of those things, so that people really could acknowledge.

It’s not just the farmers that are hurt with having low quality water or our industries that are hurt from having low quality water, but even downstream that we are causing harm, but we could also be a part of the solution when we redirect our focus and work collectively while understanding all of these new solutions are going to cost money.

That’s another place that the Sierra Club Clean Water team is really interested in is understanding what financial tools are available both for wastewater treatment facilities as well as farmers.

Also, what types of policy tools need to be created to generate money or capital that these types of interventions such as constructed wetlands can even be piloted with the purpose of nutrient credits.

So, for me, the quality of our water is directly connected to the health of our economy. I would love to see both farmers and dischargers at wastewater treatment facilities find a way forward for clean water for all.