Wisconsin city partners with farmers to reduce nutrient water pollution.
The city of Madison, Wis., has partnered with the owners of eight large farms in an effort to reduce the amount of phosphorus entering the city’s watershed, and its sewage treatment system, a city sewerage official told participants of the national One Water Summit in New Orleans on Wednesday (June 28).
The project costs about $7 million, Mucha said, which was a bargain when compared with the estimated $104 million the city would have had to spend to upgrade sewage treatment facilities to reduce the amount of phosphorus released back into the environment by one percent.
The result is that the city expects to see a 96 percent reduction in phosphorus from wastewater before it’s released, a level required by recent changes in federal law, instead of the present treatment level of 95 percent.
Wednesday’s sessions started with a brief overview of water issues in New Orleans featuring Jeff Hebert, chief resilience officer for the city of New Orleans; Cedric Grant, director of the Sewerage & Water Board and deputy mayor for the city; Carmen James, vice president of programs with the Greater New Orleans Foundation; and Michael Hecht, president and chief executive of Greater New Orleans Inc., which represents city business interests.
Hebert said that in the aftermath of the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in 2015, his role has been to speed up implementation of resilience improvements throughout the city, in part by assuring that resiliency is integrated into other city agencies, and into the city’s budgeting and capital projects design process.
Grant said that he insisted on retaining his role as vice mayor when he agreed to head up the Sewerage & Water Board in July 2014 because he felt it important to assure that the infrastructure needs of the agency were integrated with the infrastructure efforts under way by other city agencies, which he was already overseeing.
Much of that effort has been in the form of support for water infrastructure programs, both in supporting the city’s efforts to integrate water within the hurricane levee system in ways supported by residents, and in helping gather public comments on the state’s coastal master plan for hurricane storm surge risk reduction and wetlands restoration.
"Before, it was seen as an environmental issue, a ‘lefty’ issue, and we made it a business issue.
In the same way, he said, his organization has helped "depoliticize" water issues, such as coastal restoration, in part through a series of studies showing the jobs and economic benefits that will result from the state’s proposed 50-year, $50 billion coastal master plan.