The Somerset Solution
The concept of nutrient neutrality was supposed to protect our wetlands and ensure new housing could go ahead in a sustainable way. It isn't working. Somerset Council has a solution though...
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Andrew Lee - editor
Have the wheels come off nutrient neutrality? The concept first arose from an environmental legal case in the Netherlands. The idea was simple enough. Excess phosphorous in our water comes primarily from two sources, dairy farming and human effluent.
So nutrient neutrality proposes a solution to keep things in balance. In order to have approval for new housing developments, which will cause extra phosphorous pollution, developers must take action elsewhere to reduce phosphorous in the environment by the same amount.
This they can do by buying up land and planting it with reed beds or by buying dairy farms and taking them out of production. Other options include taking arable farmland out of production, although this tends to be less efficient in terms of land use.
Some councils in Somerset have taken the initiative, notably Somerset West & Taunton District Council. Here they bought up there own stock of land that could be planted up with reed beds and passed on as “credits” to developers so they could meet their nutrient neutrality balance.
The first and most obvious problem with nutrient neutrality is that it doesn’t actually make things better, it simply maintains the status quo.