Policy adoption of ecosystem services for a sustainable community: A case study of wetland assimilation using natural wetlands in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

Academicians and government officials have advocated incorporating ecosystem services into environmental policy-making processes. The State of Louisiana has adopted policy guidelines for using natural wetlands to assimilate nutrients in secondarily treated municipal effluent, thus utilizing ecosystem services of natural wetlands. We describe a case study for the city of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, to discuss policy guidelines and assess ecological and financial benefits of this approach. In addition to water quality improvement, wetland assimilation provides additional ecosystem services, including increased vegetative productivity, surface accretion, and carbon sequestration. Financially, using wetland assimilation at Breaux Bridge generated an economic savings of $1.8 million in capital costs and annual savings of $72,116 for operation and maintenance costs, resulting in nearly $3 million savings over the lifetime of the project, due to its low capital expenditures and high energy efficiency, compared with a sand filtration method. When considering rapidly depleting non-renewable resources (e.g., fossil fuels) and challenging financial situations of small communities across the nation, wetland assimilation can be an important factor in designing sustainable communities.