Chesapeake Bay bridge.jpg
Chesapeake Bay bridge
Though it's miles away, what happens in Pennsylvania's waterways and on its farms has an effect on the Chesapeake Bay, and, as a consequence, an effect on the quality of life for people far from the Keystone State
At this writing, Pennsylvania is behind on its federal mandate for reducing nitrate emissions into the Bay. And in light of threatened federal intervention, the Commonwealth is going to "re-boot" it's mitigation efforts.
But reboot what, exactly?
Of the three targeted reductions, Pennsylvania is on target to meet sediment targets, close to phosphate targets, but woefully behind on nitrate targets.
It is the nitrate targets that require more attention.
The two major remedies so far are municipal projects that deal with human waste and storm sewers, which have been very expensive, and often the cost is borne by municipalities, and agricultural best practices for dealing with run-off.
Such best practices have had most success with phosphates and soil erosion, or sediments.
The Commonwealth re-boot seems to encourage more of those. And most of the projects are initiated by the Commonwealth. To date, that has not been enough.
Nitrates seem to be different problem, and politely put, some are solid and some are airborne. In other words, some are manure and some are flatulence and air-borne methane form the solids).
There is technology available that can mitigate these things greatly, and potential to take the by-products of livestock digestives (oh, the terminology one can't make up) into, among other things, energy.
Today, the private sector innovators really don't have a seat at the policy table.
But here is their pitch: take the total projected commonwealth investment, divide it by the ton of nitrates mandated to be kept out of the watershed, and you have a cost per ton.
A cost-per-ton figure is valuable to both the government and the private sector, because it allows the government to do a cost/benefit analysis that is meaningful.
And it allows the private sector to show a value in their products that can mitigate the problem at the source.
And if you can bid on it, you can bid the cost down, and efficiencies up.
Additionally, evaluating the cost per ton allows smaller farms to form co-ops to address nitrate problems.
There are, of course, concerns:
The solutions now go beyond government control. But if the state pays only on results of privately funded technology, and not the infrastructure itself, the risk is born by the private sector.
There is an instant appeal to simply mandating that all ag concerns clean up their own (politely put) by-products.
But the simple fact is that the problem of the Chesapeake has grown beyond a single farmer, or even, an agricultural concern. Best management practices alone aren't enough.
The states, the feds, or some combination of the two, will end up spending the money.
The question is what works best?
We believe that the private sector, with a seat at the table, bidding down the cost of mitigation, is a missing part of the solution.