The state Environmental Protection Commission has approved a federal E-P-A grant to address potential algae problems in the Clarinda and Panora public water supplies. The D-N-R’s Steve Konrady (Kon-rad-EE) says they are for the first time teaming up with what’s called the Ecosystem Services Marketing Consortium that includes private companies who pay farmers to use conservation practices.
They pay a credit or an incentive to farmers based on how much carbon they’re able to sequester. Konrady says the companies involved can then sell their products saying they invested in carbon capture.
He says the goal is to target cyanotoxins (Cy-no-tox-ins) in the water that come from blue-green algae.
Konrady says it’s called an emerging issue by E-P-A and first gained a lot of attention when it became a big problem in the Toledo, Ohio drinking water in 2014. Clarinda puts water from the Nodaway River into settling ponds to reduce sediment so they can process it easier in their drinking water plant. The algae problem developed in the settling ponds.
Panora gets their water from nearby Lake Panorama and there’s also the potential for algae blooms.
Konrady says the’re using 500-thousand dollars for this program to start. The contract is only one year, which he says allows them to actively edit it to address the needs of each year kind and can do so for at least five years.
