The Environmental Protection Agency is looking at a market-based attempt to reduce water pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton explains:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection Agency is looking at a market-based
attempt to reduce water
pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton explains:
The EPA says a market-based approach to reducing water pollution would
save the government
billions of dollars in enforcement measures and result in cleaner
rivers and lakes.
It would work like this… companies that clean up wastewater beyond
the EPA standards would
get credits. Then those companies could sell their credits to
companies that cannot meet EPA
standards.
Some environmentalists worry that system will legitimize polluters, so
long as they can pay the
price.
But the EPA’s Tracy Mehan calls the trade a means to an end…
“And the end is the attainment of water quality standards. That is part
of the landscape under
the Clean Water Act already, or the watershed, if you will. In other
words, our policy does not
allow any trading that would exceed those water quality standards.”
But targeting water pollution is complicated. It can come from farm
fields or pesticides from your
neighbor’s lawn.
They’ll have to figure out how to measure that before a water pollution
credit market can be
established.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.