The Environmental Protection Agency has created a forum, “The Coming Together for Clean Water” to discuss a strategy for how to move forward in protecting America's waters. The resulting draft document “Coming Together for Clean Water: EPA's Strategy for Achieving Clean Water – Public Discussion Draft, August 2010” delineates the problems and solutions the EPA has identified, and welcomes public discussion on the issues. See below for some major points:

Problems:

• nutrient pollution

• excess sedimentation

• degradation of shoreline vegetation

• pathogens in rivers and streams

• stormwater runoff

• habitat, hydrology, and landscape modifications

• municipal wastewater

 
Challenges to solving these problems:

• fiscal pressure on states

• limited resources

• demands of economic growth

• climate adaptation

 
EPA's goals:
 
1) baseline for tracking progress 

• National Aquatic Resource Surveys provide baseline for streams, lakes, coastal waters

• EPA will complete first of five Aquatic Resource Surveys to provide a baseline for the state of US water bodies

• make listings of healthy watersheds

• monitoring and assessment reports

 
2) protection of healthy waters 

• metrics for healthy watersheds, through Healthy Watershed Initiative

• strengthen anti-degradation regulations

 
3) restoration of degraded waters 

• will use Chesapeake Bay as an example for Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) pollution reduction plans

• coordinate funding with USDA for nutrient and sediment reductions

• use trading offsets and other market-based tools, to clean up watersheds

• create a tracking system for TMDL

• improvements to stormwater program

• regulations for animal feeding operations

• implement federal land management practices

 
4) reduce pollution entering waters 

• strengthen “National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System” (NPDES) to reduce pollution entering waterways

• sewer overflow control

• green infrastructure

• municipal stormwater permitting

• permit requirements to reduce pesticide discharges

• nutrient reduction strategies

 
5) sustainable technologies and community revitalization 

• green stormwater infrastructure

• water efficiency projects

• energy efficiency projects

 
For a more comprehensive list and explanation of the above, please find the draft here.
 
Mission Markets provides a platform for market-based mechanisms such as water quality trading to help protect and restore America's waters. The Mission Markets Earth platform allows citizens, members of the private sector, and members of the public and non-profit sectors, to buy and sell water quality credits. By bringing together the market for water quality on one comprehensive platform, Mission Markets strengthens the market-based incentives to care for our environment.
 
Please contact the Mission Markets team for more information:
www.missionmarkets.com
www.mmearth.com
 
Clean Up,

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Inc.

Mission Markets operates a private investment exchange facilitating transactions within the social and environmental capital markets. The Mission Markets platform provides companies and organizations with access to funding and impact investors an efficient way to evaluate, invest in and monitor sustainable investment opportunities.

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