LOUISIANA DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY | Secretary Aurelia S. Giacometto
A DEPARTMENT OF THE STATE OF LOUISIANA
Established by Section 101 of the Clean Water Act, outlines the goals and policies to restore and maintain water quality, including reducing discharges, protecting fish, shellfish, wildlife and recreation in and on the water, planning waste treatment management, researching and demonstrating treatment technology, and developing nonpoint source pollution control programs.
Vision: Reconnecting the Mississippi River to its delta to protect people, wildlife and jobs. Our Goals: 1.Created a science-based comprehensive plan to restore the Mississippi River Delta. 2.Establish a joint state and federal governance team with authority, capacity and leadership to implement a plan. 3.Secure the necessary funding to implement the restoration projects that will reverse the Mississippi River Delta's decline. 4.Work with communities, scientists, economists and policy makers to expand the understanding of what is possible for restoration, crafting a sustainable future for the Mississippi River Delta.
Water quality trading is an innovative market-based approach to achieving water quality goals for nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen through programs that allow permitted emitters to purchase nutrient reductions from another source. Control costs for any one nutrient can differ from one emitter to another, and water quality trading provides an option for meeting discharge requirements in a cost-effective manner. Properly designed and deployed, the proposed trading program in the Ohio River Basin will allow exchanges of water quality credits for nitrogen and phosphorus. The outcome will be protecting and improving watersheds at lower overall costs. This will be a regional interstate trading project and represents a comprehensive approach to designing and developing credit markets for nitrogen and phosphorus. EPRI will be executing a series of pilot trades between 2012 and 2014 to test the project. The first interstate trading plan is anticipated to be signed by Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky in August 2012.
A report of using the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model to simulate two landscape characteristics (slope and soil texture) and three agricultural management practices (land cover/crop type, tillage type, and selected agricultural land management practices) to evaluate their effects on the water budgets of and sediment yield from agricultural lands. The results of simulations demonstrate the magnitudes of potential changes in water budgets and sediment yields from lands as a result of landscape characteristics and agricultural practices adopted on them. These simulations showed that variations in landscape characteristics, such as slope and soil type, had appreciable effects on water budgets and sediment yields. As slopes increased, sediment yields increased in both the arid and humid environments. However, runoff did not increase with slope in the arid environment as was observed in the humid environment. In both environments, clayey soils exhibited the greatest amount of runoff and sediment yields while sandy soils had greater recharge and lessor runoff and sediment yield. Scenarios simulating the effects of the timing and type of tillage practice showed that no-till, conservation, and contouring tillages reduced sediment yields and, with the exception of no-till, runoff in both environments. Changes in land cover and crop type simulated the changes between the evapotransporative potential and surface roughness imparted by specific vegetations. Substantial differences in water budgets and sediment yields were observed between most agricultural crops and the natural covers selected for each environment: scrub and prairie grass for the arid environment and forest and prairie grass for the humid environment. Finally, a group of simulations was performed to model selected agricultural management practices. Among the selected practices subsurface drainage and strip cropping exhibited the largest shifts in water budgets and sediment yields. The practice of crop rotation (corn/soybean) and cover cropping (corn/rye) were predicted to increase sediment yields from a field planted as conventional corn.
Our financial programs support such essential public facilities and services as water and sewer systems, housing, health clinics, emergency service facilities and electric and telephone service. We promote economic development by supporting loans to businesses through banks , credit unions and community-managed lending pools. We offer technical assistance and information to help agricultural producers and cooperatives get started and improve the effectiveness of their operations. We provide technical assistance to help communities undertake community empowerment programs. USDA Rural Development has a $172 billion portfolio of loans and will administer $20 billion in loans, loan guarantees and grants through our programs in the current fiscal year. We achieve our mission by helping rural individuals, communities and businesses obtain the financial and technical assistance needed to address their diverse and unique needs.
Requires the EPA to set standards for drinking water quality and requirements for water treatment by public water systems; Requires States to establish a wellhead protection program to protect public water system wells from contamination by chemicals, including pesticides, nutrients, and other agricultural chemicals.
This report is an effort to assess the extent of efforts to understand and lessen hypoxia events and to identify opportunities for charting a way forward. Update on progress in determining dynamics of hypoxia in estuaries and coastal waters, and monitoring nutrien fluxes in watersheds and reducing nutrient transport across the landscape.
Section 5022 of WRDA 2007 provides discretionary authority for the Secretary to participate with Federal, State and local agencies, non-Federal and non-profit entities, regional researchers and other interested parties to assess hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.
To urge and request the commissioner of administration and the director of the governor's office of coastal activities to utilize all available funding when considering the implementation of the Gulf hypoxia action plan.