Trading on Water

Trading can be a cheaper answer to water quality problems, creating a win-win solution for all. Over the centuries, water has provided society with numerous products and services, including transport, food, drinking water, irrigation, recreation, and protection. The world's lakes, rivers, and oceans have also been used as a dumping ground for by-products of industrial development and residential refuge. Until recently, however, very little attention was paid to water quality. This ignorance of human influence on water quality culminated in such notorious events as Ohio's Cuyahoga River catching on fire in 1969 and the lawsuit against W.R. Grace over contamination of drinking-water wells in Woburn, Massachusetts, which was memorialized in the book and movie A Civil Action. [1] The Cuyahoga fire, in fact, helped spark the rise of environmental movements, the establishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the passage of the federal Clean Water Act in 1972. Water Woes Water quality is a relative term. The quality of water needed for drinking, recreation, fishing, and aquatic habitat is higher than that required for transportation or agriculture. In 1998, 45 percent of assessed U.S. rivers and streams and 54 percent of assessed lakes, reservoirs, and ponds were threatened or impaired for their designated uses. The U.S. coastlines are similarly affected. Ninety-eight percent of the Great Lakes shorelines and 24 percent of the ocean shorelines assessed were listed as threatened or impaired. The causes of impairment include nutrients, siltation, pathogens, metals, toxics, pesticides, organic matter, temperature, and oxygen-depleting substances. [2] The problem is not restricted to just the United States. Across the world, more than a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. In developing countries, water quality problems principally result from untreated sewage and industrial wastes, while developed countries are plagued more by agricultural runoff and industrial effluents. [3] Evidence of water quality impairment is abundant. In 1991, the 600-mile (1,000-kilometer) algal bloom on the Darling River in Australia was the result of modifications and reductions in water flow, pollution from sewage treatment works and industry, agricultural runoff, and lower than expected rainfall. [4] Just as dramatic was the cyanide spill from the Aurul Gold Mine into the Lapus and Somes Rivers at Baia Mare in northern Romania in 2000. This spill made its way to the Tisza River in Hungary, creating a carpet of dead fish before reaching the Danube River in Yugoslavia. [5] More subtly, the decline of the blue crab and oyster fisheries in the Chesapeake Bay in the United States, caused by deteriorating water quality and over-harvesting, stimulated the states and districts draining into the bay to form an agreement in 1983 to restore the bay's biota. Restoration programs consist of nutrient reduction from agricultural lands and wastewater facilities, toxic chemical reduction from industry and other sources, fisheries management, and habitat restoration. [6] Cause and Effects Some water quality problems are local while others have far-reaching consequences. Consider nutrient pollution, for example. Agricultural fertilizer typically contains two nutrients: phosphorus and nitrogen. Phosphorus, which reaches water bodies attached to soil particles, causes algal blooms and eutrophication in freshwater ecosystems. It is typically a local problem. Conversely, nitrogen is highly soluble, entering water bodies through runoff, leaching, and atmospheric deposition, and its effect is generally felt some distance from the actual source of the pollution. The Gulf of Mexico's hypoxic--oxygen-depleted--zone, coined the "Dead Zone," has been attributed to nitrogen from farmland in the Mississippi basin, principally the Missouri River. …