2016 CLEAN Center Annual Stakeholder Meeting

The Lower Neuse Basin Association (LNBA) was formed as an information sharing and monitoring organization in 1994 representing holders of NPDES permits equal to or greater than 1.0 mgd or a governmental entity below Falls Lake Dam. The association is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporation. The LNBA entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Division of Water Quality as the first coalition monitoring group that year. Today, the LNBA monitors a total of 56 sites in the Neuse Basin as part of its MOA, provides funding to support the ModMon sampling program in the Neuse Estuary, supports the FerryMon sampling program in lower portions of the Neuse River near the confluence of the Pamlico Sound, and provides assistance to the FluorMod research program that has the potential of identifying organic nitrogen by its source. The LNBA also provides technical resources to its members in providing annual operator training and optimization for wastewater treatment plants.With major fish kills in the Neuse Estuary in 1995 – 96 public outcry led to the adoption of the Neuse Nutrient Strategy (1997, also known as Neuse Rules). Members of the LNBA were compelled to establish a nutrient (nitrogen) trading group in order to meet the total nitrogen limits for point source dischargers. The TMDL load for all point source dischargers in the basin was 1,640,000 lbs (delivery to the Neuse Estuary). The LNBA was restricted geographically from being that trading group because the new organization needed to provide an opportunity to include all regulated point source dischargers in the basin desiring membership in the trading association. Thus the members of the LNBA formed the Neuse River Compliance Association, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporation as the point source trading association of the Neuse River Basin.The history, challenges, and successes of both associations will be discussed and where the future will lead the associations.

Models are increasingly used to make on-farm management decisions and support national agricultural policy formulation, as well as predicting the resulting impacts. This presentation will discuss several related topics focusing on how monitoring can and should be used to support and improve hydrologic and water quality (H/WQ) modeling.First, practical guidance on small watershed monitoring to achieve sampling goals and produce high quality data within financial, personnel, time, and watershed constraints will be discussed. The uncertainty in measured H/WQ data will also be presented along with its impact on model evaluation, research (data reporting), policy, and regulation. Then, the MANAGE database will be described. MANAGE is the only known near-comprehensive compilation of measured load and concentration data from agricultural and forest lands, and it continues to be used in modeling projects and meta-analyses. Finally, the relationships between and deficiencies of measured data and model predictions will be discussed and recommendations made on how to use both to support decision-making.Daren Harmel received a PhD in Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering from Oklahoma State University in 1997. Since 1999, Daren has conducted applied hydrology and water quality research at the USDA-ARS Grassland, Soil and Water Research Laboratory in Temple, TX, and was promoted to Director in 2011. His research interests include: data collection methodology, measurement uncertainty, and land use impacts on water quality and hydrology. He has represented USDA-ARS on the National Water Monitoring Council’s Methods and Data Comparability Board since 2006. Daren currently serves on the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Board of Trustees.

Water quality trading between point and nonpoint sources is widely believed to provide a great opportunity for reducing the costs that regulated sources must pay to meet water quality requirements.  This presentation will summarize some history of emissions trading in the U.S.  The experiences of these projects will be used to highlight how success might be defined, and the characteristics of a “successful” project.

Nutrient pollution is one of the most important problems facing aquatic systems globally. There is much interest in new policy to address the problem, and especially in the use of economic incentives to efficient solutions. I draw on a diverse interdisciplinary literature to identify wicked challenges to use of economic (and other) policy instruments for efficient nutrient pollution control. I also describe why an understanding of economic behaviors at multiple scales and a concern for economic efficiency are of crucial importance to the selection of instruments to address the problem. I highlight the need for an interdisciplinary research agenda, and propose a general equilibrium economic geography paradigm for research on instrument design and choice.

Channel instability can be a significant source of nutrient loading, but it has received relatively little attention in nutrient management planning and reduction strategies. This project is focused on quantifying channel erosion as a source of nutrients across agricultural and urban sectors, and developing tools that managers can use to assess the magnitude of this source and how it might change in the future. We describe preliminary data on phosphorus loading from streambanks in Big Dry Creek in north-central Colorado, and how loading from channel erosion is controlled by interactions between geomorphic processes and stormwater management practices. Quantifying this previously overlooked source of nonpoint pollution and accounting for the influence of stormwater management on channel processes can improve the cost-effectiveness of nutrient management at a watershed scale. Existing point and nonpoint nutrient sources may ultimately find stream restoration a viable and cost-effective option to offset their current nutrient contributions if it is combined with effective stormwater control measures.

This presentation highlights integration across the first five projects of the CLEAN Center. Big Dry Creek was chosen as the study area of interest due to the presence of all types of water users in the basin: three wastewater treatment plants, several upstream municipalities, and downstream agricultural users and stream segments. A set of practices were chosen from projects 1 through 4 which highlight examples of nutrient removal potential within each sector. The integration allows identification of the nutrient sources through baseline scenarios and explores how each sector can contribute to nutrient goals from both nutrient and cost perspectives. Comparing the cost per nutrient load reduction, allows identification of nutrient removal strategies with the biggest bang for the buck, as well as identifying trading potential between sectors. In addition, areas of inter-sectoral integration are emphasized, including a biosolids case study highlighting interactions between wastewater treatment and agriculture, and a case study on the interactive effects of combining stormwater management practices with stream restoration, which introduces the complementarity of other practices in nutrient management.

The Watershed Rapid Assessment Program (WRAP) is used to extract, organize, and analyze data and information at various watershed scales, including HUC 12, HUC 10, and HUC8 levels, for readily available geospatial characteristics as well as water quantity and quality. These characteristics include current and historic land use, population, climate, climate projections, stream discharge, and stream water quality to name a few. The integrated assessment of watershed health is then broken down into six primary attributes; landscape condition, habitat, hydrology, geomorphology, water quality, and biological condition. Utilizing the extracted data, the WRAP tool calculates a number of indicators for these attributes (e.g. median summer nitrate concentration as an indicator of water quality) to create an overall summary of the watershed condition.