Tag: nutrient management

Exploring a Regional Watershed Authority for Jordan Lake

Tori is a fellow in the 2018 Leaders in Environment and Finance (LEAF) program. As part of this fellowship, Tori spent summer 2018 at Triangle J Council of Governments, where she helped investigate the administrative and financial aspects of alternative nutrient pollution management models and the legal barriers to implementation faced.

Despite disagreement over how nutrient pollution should be managed in the Jordan Lake watershed, stakeholders tend to agree on one thing: the Jordan Lake Nutrient Management Strategy, commonly known as the Jordan Lake Rules, have room for improvement. Many institutions in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors are working to figure out how to mitigate further degradation of water quality in Jordan Lake, in part by looking into alternative financial and governance options for a better regulatory framework. One of these institutions, Triangle J Council of Governments, has examined the framework of a regional watershed authority. Continue reading

Financing Nutrient Management in North Carolina

The EFC Enters Third Year of Considering Financing Strategies for Nutrient Management in the Jordan Lake Watershed.

In 2016, the North Carolina legislature commissioned a six-year nutrient management study to be done through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the purpose of reevaluating the nutrient management strategies for the Jordan Lake and Falls Lake watersheds.

The Environmental Finance Center (EFC) is one of more than a dozen teams working on the study, and our work is focused on the legislative directive to “review the costs and benefits of existing nutrient management strategies,” so that the State can modify such strategies in order to “share costs on an equitable basis. The first three years of the six-year study are focused on Jordan Lake, and the last three years will be focused on Falls Lake. Continue reading