What is the benefit of the billions of dollars being sought for upgrading wastewater treatment plants?
A These plants are so-called point sources of pollution, focusing huge volumes of treated, and sometimes only partially treated, water going into impaired rivers. Not enough nitrogen and phosphorus is currently being removed during processing, and costly upgrades are essential to reducing the pollution from these sources. Farms, on the other hand, are non-point sources of such pollution due to heavy use of fertilizer and lack of land buffers between farmland and rivers.
