Compliance Solutions
We use quantified conservation actions to develop solutions that meet your compliance requirements.
Regulators require entities to address their environmental impact on rivers and streams. With services from The Freshwater Trust, entities can explore nature-based infrastructure solutions that meet these compliance requirements and deliver measurable results to the environment.
We work directly with municipalities, utilities, agencies, and landowners to offer collaborative solutions for improving water quality and maintaining compliance. Our teams can analyze current conditions and design innovative compliance programs to optimize conservation investments.
For compliance programs still under development, our team of scientists, attorneys, and restoration professionals is ready to assist in laying the necessary scientific and policy groundwork to make these programs possible.
Solutions
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Helping facilities understand compliance obligations under the Clean Water Act
The Freshwater Trust works with regulators to ensure we understand and develop compliance solutions that meet obligations and are based on quantified conservation actions. This allows us to better support wastewater treatment facilities, for example, as we help them understand their compliance obligations under the Clean Water Act. We can then provide facilities with options that address their discharge obligations and analyze how different watershed conservation actions can keep them in compliance.
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Exploring compliance options like water quality trading
Regulators recognize that the benefits gained from conservation actions, such as the shade created from planting trees along a waterway, can be quantified into “credits.” Such credits can then be purchased through a water quality trading program.
These programs are highly regulated, and The Freshwater Trust has ample experience working with regulators and entities to make these programs successful, from program design, credit contracts, landowner recruitment, and benefit tracking. -
How does water quality trading help to improve the environment?
We design programs that more than offset water quality impacts at the point of discharge. Additionally, the conservation actions that The Freshwater Trust recommends create additional environmental benefits, including restoring habitat, improving biodiversity, and performing carbon sequestration.
Not only do these natural compliance solutions help the environment, but regulated entities often find that these solutions are less costly for ratepayers than traditional engineered upgrades, especially for complying with limits on impacts such as temperature, phosphorus, or nitrogen. -
How do you track the results to know you’re making a difference?
We monitor and collect data on each site annually, with reporting requirements focused on demonstrating that each action has been installed and maintained correctly. Third-party verifiers visit the site every five years to confirm monitoring reports. We also work with regulators and stakeholders to design decades-long strategies for tracking cumulative benefits over time.
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