Measuring
What Matters

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Without Edge-of-Field Nutrient Capture

When nutrients leave agricultural fields and enter our waterways, the problem doesn't disappear. It moves downstream.

As rivers and lakes become increasingly impaired, communities are left to manage the consequences through wastewater treatment, drinking-water protection, watershed restoration, dredging, algae management, monitoring, and other costly interventions. And those costs continue to rise.

The public ultimately pays for pollution it did not create.

Publicly funded treatment and remediation programs require ongoing investment. As impairment grows more difficult and expensive to manage, those costs are passed through to communities in the form of higher taxes, utility costs, public expenditures, and increasing demands on limited government resources.

The cycle looks like this:

And the cycle repeats year after year.

Downstream treatment manages the consequence. It does not prevent the nutrient from leaving the field.

Without scalable edge-of-field infrastructure, communities remain heavily dependent on downstream solutions to address pollution that could potentially be intercepted much closer to its source.

The Cost Isn't Just Financial

The cost of nutrient pollution extends beyond public budgets.

Impaired rivers and lakes can affect:

• Drinking-water resources
• Fisheries and aquatic ecosystems
• Recreation and tourism
• Property values
• Local economies
• Community quality of life

The longer nutrients continue entering a watershed, the greater the challenge of restoring it.

Every year we wait, communities continue paying to manage the consequences.

Impact With Edge of Field

Prevent the Problem Before It Becomes a Downstream Cost

Edge-of-field nutrient capture changes the equation.

Instead of waiting for nutrients to enter rivers and lakes and then paying to manage their consequences, nutrients can be intercepted closer to where they leave the land.

• Capture upstream.
• Measure the result.
• Remove the nutrient.
• Recover what can be reused.
• Reward participation.

The model becomes:

From Public Cost to Shared Value

A scalable edge-of-field system creates the possibility of changing nutrient pollution from an ongoing public expense into a measurable environmental service.

• Farmers can be compensated for participating.
• Communities can benefit from cleaner waterways.
• States can gain measurable reductions that can support nutrient-credit programs.
• Captured nutrients can potentially be recovered and returned to agriculture.
• And public resources can increasingly be directed toward preventing pollution rather than continually managing its consequences.

The goal isn't to eliminate downstream treatment. It is to reduce the amount of pollution that ever reaches the downstream system.