A First Step Towards Estimating the Economic Impact of Nutrient Loading in the Mississippi River | 2022

In partnership with the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative (MRCTI), Earth Economics has completed Phase 1 of a study funded by the Walton Family Foundation that takes important steps towards quantifying—for the first time—the cost of excess nitrogen and phosphorus in the Mississippi. This project mapped the various pathways by which different sectors of the economy bear costs as a result of excess nutrients in the river, and identified existing data that can be used to estimate those costs.

Key factors that explain the magnitude and distribution of the costs borne by governments, residents, and businesses who depend on water from the Mississippi include:

  • Over 2.6 million people rely on drinking water sourced from the Mississippi.

  • There are over 370 food and beverage manufacturers near the Mississippi that may use river water or discharge to the river.

  • Of the 93.7 million acres of cropland in the 10 river-adjacent states—an area nearly the size of Montana—75 percent is found in just Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri.

Phase 2 of the study will take the next step to acquire the necessary data and estimate the costs of nutrient loading in the Mississippi in the Quad Cities (IA, IL), and New Orleans, LA; St. Louis, MO; Quincy, IL; and Twin Cities, MN were chosen as alternates. The communities were selected because they rely on the river for drinking water, are located both up- and down-river, are near upriver nutrient dischargers, have both food and beverage manufacturers and agricultural drivers of nutrient loading, have high social vulnerability and/or climate risk scores as assessed by FEMA’s Natural Resource Index, and represent a variety of community sizes and demographics.

Earth Economics and MRCTI will be moving the project to Phase 2 and proceeding with estimating the cost of excess nutrients in the chosen pilot communities. This effort is seeking funding and will kick off as soon as possible, because the first step in finding solutions to a problem like nutrient loading is understanding how much it costs and who bears that burden.

 

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