Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

13. Environmental Protection Agency · Notable

Issue a rule promoting nutrient trading

Attempted

429 13. Environmental Protection Agency

“A rule to promote and shape nutrient trading that utilizes a carrot-versus-stick approach when dealing with nutrient compliance.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    The 2026 Unified Agenda carries RIN 2040-AG02, "Market-Based Approaches under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Program" (EPA/Office of Water), at Proposed Rule Stage, CFR citation 40 CFR 122.21, flagged Deregulatory under Executive Order 14192, with an NPRM timetabled for 01/2027 and a final rule for 08/2027. The abstract is the rule this Quote asks for: EPA notes that "the NPDES regulations do not explicitly address market-based approaches" and that trading has run on guidance alone, and says the agency "is proposing to clarify how water quality trading and other market-based approaches may be used by NPDES permitting authorities in permits to meet applicable water quality standards". Water quality trading under the NPDES program is the mechanism through which nutrient trading is done; the entry does not use the word "nutrient". Nothing has published; an agenda entry is `attempted` and never more (playbook §3b).

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Corrected 2026-09-01. The 2026-08-27 note said that “water quality trading … remains a set of guidance memoranda rather than the carrot-not-stick rule the Quote asks for”. That was true of the Federal Register and false of EPA’s agenda: 2040-AG02’s own page says Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No, RIN Data Printed in the FR: No, so the entry appears only on the full reginfo.gov agenda and not in the abbreviated Federal Register version the first search read. The earlier event was replaced, not added to.
  • The judgment made here: the Quote asks for “a rule to promote and shape nutrient trading”, and the entry is a rule to shape water quality trading under NPDES. Nutrient trading is the dominant form of water quality trading and the entry’s own premise — that trading has no regulatory footing — is the gap the Quote names, so this is read as the ask’s object rather than a subject-area near miss. Whether the eventual proposal is “carrot versus stick” is for the NPRM to show; an agenda entry counts as attempted and never more, either way.
  • Water quality trading has been run under EPA’s 2003 and 2019 policy memoranda. Neither was reissued in this window.
Action
issue
Object
nutrient trading rule
ID
1112