An Alternative Solution Financial and Environmental Success Through Water Quality Trading

MSA engineers worked in close concert with the City to examine all phosphorus-reducing alternatives and settled on the creation of a Water Quality Trading (WQT) Program. The program is unconventional in that it fuses wastewater, agricultural and water resources engineering, with key stakeholders being local landowners and farmers who all hold equal accountability in a successful outcome. To achieve the Water Quality-based Effluent Limitations (WQBEL) goals, MSA and the City of Brodhead embarked on a methodological study of all area watersheds, identifying two impactful locations.

$932k Capital Investment

1,090 lbs/yr Phosphorus Decrease

Through the improvement of these locations, the WQT program reduces the municipality’s total phosphorus load by 1,090 pounds per year, more than five times the requisite phosphorus reductions.

It also generates 390 annual pounds of WQT credits to meet current and future compliance goals. Most importantly, it upholds water quality and vastly minimizes harmful phosphorus loads entering the Sugar River watershed.