News Update
EPA, Water Research Foundation collaborate to advance nutrient management efforts
Staff report
Enviro-Net
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed a memorandum of understanding with the Water Research Foundation to accelerate progress on reducing excess nutrients in the nation’s waterways.
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.
EPA claims to has made tackling nutrient issues in water resources across the country a key water priority. In December 2018, EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture 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.
Addressing excess nutrients in the nation’s waterways is a key priority of a larger interagency effort to better coordinate and focus limited federal resources on some of the nation’s most challenging water resource concerns.