Iowa League of Cities Launches Water Quality Registry

On March 28, Nyemaster Goode Attorney Dustin Miller worked with the Iowa League of Cities, the USDA Office of Environmental Markets and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to provide stakeholders training relating to the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Exchange.

This registry utilizes the existing Regulatory In-Lieu Fee & Bank Information Tracking System (RIBITS) to allow cities and industries to quantify and log nutrient reduction practices to achieve future regulatory and financial incentives. The project was a culmination of more than four years of work with a variety of stakeholders from the agricultural, municipal, industrial, environmental and academic sectors.

This registry launch follows the release of a new water quality trading policy memorandum from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in February 2019. The EPA held a webinar on March 5, 2019, to review the new memorandum, and the Iowa League of Cities’ project was featured as an indicator of the direction in which the EPA is steering states to be supportive in the development of environmental markets.