How can farmers paid to protect a local watershed save a huge city billions in infrastructure costs?

I had an opportunity to find out when our team of economists took a field trip to the rolling Catskills some months back. This is where the New York City Department of Environmental Protection is offering financial support to farmers who help maintain water quality for 9.5 million city customers.

It has saved the Big Apple up to $10 billion it would otherwise have to spend on new water filtration plants, along with about $100 million annually to maintain them. Farmers, meanwhile, have been able to use the DEP funding to make improvements to their land and operations, benefiting their own bottom line.

If this works in upstate New York, it’ll work elsewhere, we thought. That should make this an idea worth replicating in other parts of the country.

368 NY farms on board and more joining

The city-funded eco services program, administered by the non-profit Watershed Agricultural Council, finances drainage solutions, manure pads, barnyard construction and other projects that farmers themselves may not be able to afford. Such improvements are critical for keeping phosphates along with Cryptosporidium, giardia and other nasty waterborne diseases out of the Delaware and Catskill watersheds.

It began in 1993 as a way to avoid city water regulations farmers feared would cause economic hardship, instead favoring a more collaborative and sustainable approach.

So far, 368 farms have agreed to Whole Farm Management plans that compensate and empowers growers to be surface-water stewards of New York City’s drinking water. Together they account for 163,500 acres.