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Water Quality Demonstration Trade

Year Awarded: 1997
Awarded: $422,000
Team Leader:  Forum for Kalamazoo County

This team created a national network (the Great Lakes Trading Network – GLTN) to facilitate and share information on water quality trading activities. Team members established a framework, organization, and procedures for water quality trading, and they promoted their market-based solution to water quality problems in the Great Lakes basin. The team also assisted the development and application of a state-wide trading program in Michigan to reduce phosphorus and sediment loadings into the Kalamazoo River Basin.

The GLTN has grown to include most of the active and developing trading organizations in the Great Lakes and the U.S. In the years following this team’s work, the GLTN has become recognized as the national forum for water quality trading programs in the U.S.