Wayne County SWCD was offered a unique opportunity at the beginning of 2013. Our county, a part of the Great Miami watershed, along with the southern Indiana counties of Ripley, Switzerland, Ohio and Dearborn , all part of the Middle Ohio River watershed, were chosen to participate in the Ohio River Basin Water Quality Trading Pilot Program (ORBWQT). Neighboring states Ohio and Kentucky also have counties participating in the pilot program.
The pilot program, developed to implement cost-share funding for agricultural conservation projects, works to offset nitrogen and phosphorous loading from point sources (such as wastewater treatment plants and electric power generating plants) into waterways within the Ohio River Basin. Producers involved with the pilot program "generate" nutrient credits through their application of Best Management Practices (BMP’s) such as cover crops, nutrient management, filter strips, heavy use area protection, etc. on their land. Among several acceptance criteria, in order for land to be enrolled into the pilot program, the BMP could not have been previously applied to the tract of land being offered into the program.
The credits are calculated by running a calibrated watershed model based off of each BMP, soil type, and additional factors. Once figured, credits are held by the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI), who then has the discretion to either sell, reserve, retire, and/or donate credits as part of pilot trades. EPRI is the lead partner in this endeavor, and is based from Palo Alto, California. EPRI, along with the American Farmland Trust, are the two main entities with whom the SWCD worked with this past year getting two local producers accepted into the five-year pilot program and applied Best Management Practice, cover crops, on their land.
We look forward to the next phases of the pilot program, and hope this will lead to a permanent source of additional cost share for our local producers that see the opportunity available in this pilot program