The subtitle is "Fertilizer runoff is making us sick. States can step in to regulate farmers." It's interesting that we're hoping states, not the federal government, will do the dirty work of telling farmers that they are making people sick.
Here is the end of the article:
Differential treatment of agricultural polluters cannot continue. Requiring polluters to pay has been the backbone of substantial and persistent water quality gains in other sectors. Yes, such measures will raise the cost of meat, dairy and grain products, they will result in lost exports (though fewer than in our current trade war), and they will affect some farmers’ bottom lines. But without them, costs will continue to fall on families returning from a day at the beach with stomach aches, on households whose members unknowingly drink contaminated water, on pet owners whose animals suffer the effects of toxic water and on consumers who must pay for bottled drinking water.
Voluntary adoption is a flawed policy. To achieve swimmable and fishable water for all Americans, we must go beyond it.
This is the basic message from the theory of the negative externality that is ((I hope) covered in every sophomore level principles of micro course ever taught. One way to make farmers pay is a pollution tax and another is water quality trading (cap-and-trade). Farms have been involved with water quality trading for a long time as a low cost alternative to point source dischargers. For example, a regulated factory would be encouraged to purchase a pollution permit from a farmer who reduces pollution in lower cost ways. All it would take to expand this sort of program would be to cap nonpoint source pollution (i.e., agriculture).
