ElectroCell Technologies continues to take a leadership role in the development of the Chesapeake Bay nutrient credit trading program/plan, as a member of the workgroup which is bringing the states and EPA together to address the remediation of conditions in the Bay. The World Resources Institute (WRI), based in Washington DC, recently hosted a meeting of the Chesapeake Bay Nutrient Credit Workgroup. The five states which border the Bay have trading programs in various stages of development. Pennsylvania is the leader, with an open credit auction, through which ElectroCell has sold credits, making it the first technology company in the US to have sold quantified nutrient reductions in the form of monetized units. ElectroCell CEO Buzz Hoerr has 15 years of clean water advocacy experience as Chair of the Vermont Citizen Advisory Committee on the Future of Lake Champlain.
Mr. Hoerr addressed the recent WRI meeting on the subject of Best Management Practices, noting that BMP’s are an inconsistent method at best. BMP’s, including no-till cultivation, stream setbacks, and other passive actions, are important conservation tools. But under some circumstances, water overwhelms these passive methods. In 2010, for example, the Susquehanna Valley and other watersheds that feed the Chesapeake experienced twice the normal rainfall amounts, much of it in heavy, short-term pulses like Hurricane Irene.
The result is a multi-year influx of excess nutrients, which form an 85-mile long plume of sediment flowing into the Chesapeake Bay (pictured in green, above). According to Mr. Hoerr, relying on passive BMP’s and accounting for nutrient reductions based on theoretical models, not reality, will not solve the problem.Mr. Hoerr noted that ElectroCell treatments sequester nutrients in the bottom of pits and lagoons, and we measure those reductions in every tanker load spread on fields. One EPA regulator commented that the only way they can sleep at night is knowing the nutrients never got on the ground in the first place. It’s time for EPA, the Bay Foundation and other NGO’s to realize the old ways are not working. We need new methods that are truly accountable. This is the only way we’re going to solve this problem.
