Today, as part of the Trump Administration’s commitment to protecting America’s waters through smart partnerships and market-based approaches, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with The Water Research Foundation (WRF) to accelerate progress on reducing excess nutrients in the nation’s waterways.
“EPA believes that if we can empower farmers with proven market-based and watershed-centered technologies and approaches they need to better manage nutrients from livestock manure, we can accelerate meaningful progress on the country’s longstanding excess nutrients challenge,” said EPA Office of Water Assistant Administrator David Ross. “EPA is pleased to partner with The Water Research Foundation to advance nutrient recovery science and innovation, support on-farm demonstrations and installations, and help make the connections needed across the nutrient value chain to maximize environmental and economic results.”
The MOU builds on successes achieved through the Nutrient Recycling Challenge, a competition launched by EPA with WRF and others to develop affordable technologies to recycle nutrients from livestock manure. Through the new MOU, EPA and WRF will collaborate with the agricultural community to build capacity and awareness of programs and tools that support watershed and market-based approaches to nutrient management. To accomplish these goals, the MOU aims to:
- Facilitate greater collaborations between the regulated water community, technology developers and providers, and agricultural producers;
- Match innovative manure and nutrient management technologies with on-farm testing sites, funders for technology demonstrations, and third-party evaluators;
- Enable producer-to-producer information exchange regarding technology performance; and
- Develop and disseminate information on specific topic areas related to manure management and resource recovery and reuse.
“Excess nutrients in our waterways continue to be one of the most pressing water quality issues in the U.S.,” said Robert C. Renner, CEO of The Water Research Foundation. “WRF is pleased to work with EPA and take a collaborative, science-based approach to identifying and demonstrating promising solutions.”
Under the Trump Administration, EPA has made tackling nutrient issues in water resources across the country a key water priority. In December 2018, EPA and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a letter to state co-regulators encouraging increased engagement and a reinvigoration of state, tribal, and federal efforts to reduce excess nutrients in waterways, with a focus on market-based and other collaborative approaches. Addressing excess nutrients in the nation’s waterways also is a key priority of a larger interagency effort to better coordinate and focus federal resources on some of the nation’s most challenging water resource concerns.
To view the MOU, visit https://www.epa.gov/npdes/animal-feeding-operations-afos#technology
To learn more about what EPA is doing to address excess nutrients, visit: https://www.epa.gov/nutrient-policy-data/what-epa-doing-reduce-nutrient-pollution
To learn more about WRF, visit www.waterrf.org
