Lack civil or criminal penalties for violations. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Finally, we average this ratio across plants in each county. The bottom decile of counties, for example, includes ratios of measured benefits to costs of below 0.01. How the Clean Water Act Protects Your Rivers - American Rivers FigureIV shows event study graphs, which suggest similar conclusions as these regressions. Because water pollution flows in a known direction, areas upstream of a treatment plant provide a natural counterfactual for areas downstream of a plant. Legal attempts at resolution: CIITES pros are it is harder and takes a lot longer to get a permit to cut down trees and it protects 700 other species. It is possible that areas with more pollution data may be of greater interest; for example, FigureI, Panel C shows more monitoring sites in more populated areas. Connected dots show yearly values, dashed lines show 95% confidence interval. The 1972 to 2001 change equals the fitted value Year*29 + Year*1[Year>=1972]*29. The share of waters that are fishable has grown by 12 percentage points since the Clean Water Act. Clean Water Act Pros And Cons - 1085 Words | Cram Year-by-year trends for the other pollutants in the main analysisthe share of waters that are not swimmable, BOD, fecal coliforms, and TSSshow similar patterns (Online Appendix FigureIII). Under the CWA, EPA has implemented pollution control programs such as setting wastewater standards for industry. A blueprint for clean water everywhere, for everyone Our findings are consistent with these general conclusions. Choosing Environmental Policy: Comparing Instruments and Outcomes in the United States and Europe, Contingent Valuation: From Dubious to Hopeless, Nor Any Drop to Drink: Public Regulation of Water Quality. Provide federal assistance to control municipal discharges of wastewater. TableIV reports estimates corresponding to equation (5). The bid function is the consumers indifference curve in the trade-off between the price of a home and the amount of attribute j embodied in the home. Letting States Do the Dirty Work: State Responsibility for Federal Environmental Regulation, Transboundary Spillovers and Decentralization of Environmental Policies, Water-Quality Trends in the Nations Rivers. Our recreation data also represent all trips, and water-based recreation trips might require different travel distances. Open Document. PDF Clean Water Act and Pollutant Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) For this reason, our preferred methodology in Section IV.B to assess how Clean Water Act grants affect water pollution uses a triple-difference estimator comparing upstream and downstream areas. The Clean Water Act Flashcards | Quizlet The curve 1 describes the offer function of a firm, and 2 of another firm. We also observe that each additional grant results in further decreases in pollution (Online Appendix TableVI), which would be a complicated story for the timing of government human capital to explain. Connected dots show yearly values, dashed lines show 95% confidence interval. The cost-effectiveness is defined as the annual public expenditure required to decrease dissolved oxygen deficits in a river-mile by 10 percentage points or to make a river-mile fishable. Notes. Q_{pdy}=\gamma G_{py}d_{d}+X_{pdy}^{^{\,\,\prime }}\beta +\eta _{pd}+\eta _{py}+\eta _{dwy}+\epsilon _{pdy}. Q_{pdy} & =\sum _{\tau =-10}^{\tau =25}\gamma _{\tau }1[G_{p,y+\tau }=1]d_{d}+X_{pdy}^{^{\,\,\prime }}\beta +\eta _{pd}+\eta _{py}+\eta _{dwy}+\epsilon _{pdy}. Another test comes from the fact that the 19802000 gross rent data reported in the census include utilities costs. Graphs show coefficients on downstream times year-since-grant indicators from regressions which correspond to the specification of TableII. The negatives is it is not strongly enforced, violators only pay a small fine, countries can exempt themselves from certain species. Adding population or city revenue controls to the specification of column (4) in TableIV gives estimates of 1.22 (0.30) or 0.91 (0.18) for Panel A, and 0.92 (0.22) or 0.68 (0.13) for Panel B. We interpret pre-1972 trends cautiously, however, because far fewer monitoring sites recorded data before the 1970s (Online Appendix TableI) and because the higher-quality monitoring networks (NAWQA, NASQAN, and HBN) focused their data collection after 1972. The Clean Water Act targets industry by focusing on the chemical aspects of polluted water. Third, these grants could lead to increased city taxes, sewer fees, or other local costs that depress home values. \end{equation*}. Because most grants were given in the 1970s, we observe water pollution up to 10years before and 1525years after most grants. If sewer fees were particularly important, then one would expect rents to increase more than home values do; if anything, the estimates of TableV suggest the opposite. These studies ask: Each grant significantly decreased pollution for 25 miles downstream, and these benefits last for around 30years. Effects of Clean Water Act Grants on Housing Demand. The statistic we use reflects the binary cutoff of whether a majority of readings are fishable. In Panel B, the year variables are recentered around 1972. In the years after a grant, downstream waters have 12% lower dissolved oxygen deficits, and become 12% less likely to violate fishing standards. This implies that coefficients in the graph can be interpreted as the pollution level in a given year, relative to the pollution level in the period before the treatment plant received a grant. Foremost is the requirement in section 303 that states establish ambient water quality standards for water bodies, consisting of the designated use or uses of a Event study graphs corresponding to equation (4) support these results. Standard errors are clustered by watershed. Finally, we can recalculate the ratios in TableVI considering only subsets of costs. We include all capital and operating and maintenance costs in the measure of total grant project costs. Related patterns have been found for air pollution, and suggest that allowing the stringency of pollution regulation to vary over space has potential to increase social welfare. ) is that it reflects the equilibrium of firms that supply housing and consumers that demand housing. The point estimate implies that each grant decreases TSS by 1%, though this is imprecise. This does not seem consistent with our results because it would likely create pretrends in pollution or home values, whereas we observe none. GLS estimates the effect for the average pollution reading rather than for the average plant downstream year. The Clean Water Act of 1972 protects the "waters of the United States" from unpermitted discharges that may harm water quality for humans and aquatic life. The usage of water ranges from basic household needs to agricultural purposes. Standard errors are clustered by watershed. Overall, this evidence does not suggest dramatic heterogeneity in cost-effectiveness. Wetlands, Flooding, and the Clean Water Act - Resources for the Future If approved, it will protect clean drinking water, upgrade water infrastructure, preserve open space and family farms, fight climate change, and keep communities safe from extreme weather,. Other possible general equilibrium channels describe reasons the effects of cleaning up an entire river system could differ from summing up the effects of site-specific cleanups. The Clean Water Act (CWA) establishes the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters. What are pros and cons of the clean water act? - Answers Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act 1990-2020, the Second - US EPA Pass-through of Grants to Municipal Sewerage Capital Spending. It may be useful to highlight differences in how the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts answer four important questions about environmental regulation. Data include decennial census years 19702000. Environmental Bill: The Pros and Cons - The New York Times However, it leaves it up to EPA. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. Other water pollution research generally specifies BOD and TSS in levels; practices vary for fecal coliforms. We recognize the potential importance of nonuse values for clean surface waters and the severe challenges in accurately measuring these values.26 Other categories potentially not measured here include the value for commercial fisheries, industrial water supplies, lower treatment costs for drinking water, and safer drinking water.27 Evidence on the existence and magnitude of the benefits from these other channels is limited, though as mentioned already, recreation and aesthetics are believed to account for a large majority of the benefits of clean surface waters. We use the following regression to estimate the effects of Clean Water Act grants on water pollution: \begin{equation} Dissolved oxygen deficits and the share of waters that are not fishable both decreased almost every year between 1962 and 1990 (FigureII). Notes. Column (2) includes plants in the continental United States with latitude and longitude data. We calculate the present value of rental payouts as |$rentalPayout\frac{1-(1+r)^{-n}}{r}$|, where rentalPayout is the change in total annual rents due to the grants, r = 0.0785 is the interest rate, and n = 30 is the duration of the benefits in years. Column (1) shows estimates for homes within a quarter mile of downstream waters. The basis of the CWA was enacted in 1948 and was called the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, but the Act was significantly . As in most event study analyses, only a subset of event study indicators are observed for all grants. The increases are small and statistically insignificant in most years. Panel B analyzes how grants affect log mean rental values. Grant project costs include federal grant amount and required local capital expenditure. The wastewater treatment plants that are the focus of this article also receive effluent permits through the NPDES program, so our analysis of grants may also reflect NPDES permits distributed to wastewater treatment plants. Second, measuring cost-effectiveness is insufficient to reach conclusions about social welfare; Section VII discusses peoples value for these changes. As mentioned in the introduction, other recent analyses estimate benefits of the Clean Water Act that are smaller than its costs, though these other estimates note that they may also provide a lower bound on benefits. In 2020 the EPA narrowed the definition of 'Waters of the United States', significantly limiting wetland protection under the Clean Water Act. Dependent variable mean describes mean in 19621972. Our topic is clean water and sanitation. Time of day controls are a cubic polynomial in hour of day. Estimates come from regression specifications corresponding to TableV, columns (3) and (4). Water is one of the resources on the Earth that is becoming more and more scarce and the . This literature also finds that federal grants that require local matching funds and specify the grants purpose, both characteristics of the Clean Water Act grants, tend to have higher pass-through rates. Column (1) reports a basic difference-in-differences regression with nominal dollars. The last 5% of trips might account for disproportionate surplus because they represent people willing to travel great distances for recreation. Connected dots show yearly values, dashed lines show 95% confidence interval, and 1962 is the reference category. Industrial Water Pollution in the United States: Direct Regulation or Market Incentive? We study |${\$}$|650 billion in expenditure from 35,000 grants the federal government gave cities to improve wastewater treatment plants. The Clean Water Act has protected our health for more than 40 years -- and helped our nation clean up hundreds of thousands of miles of polluted waterways. The map in Online Appendix FigureVIII shows heterogeneity in the ratio of measured benefits to costs across U.S. counties. For example, the USEPAs (2000a,b) estimate of the benefit/cost ratio of the Clean Water Act is below 1, though the EPAs preferred estimate of the benefit/cost ratio of the Clean Air Act is 42 (USEPA 1997).28. A few notes are important for interpreting these statistics. Effects of Clean Water Act Grants on Water Pollution: Event Study Graphs. Notes. We find suggestive evidence that ratios of measured benefits to costs follow sensible patterns, though not all estimates are precise. Alternatively, the most distant travelers might be marginal. We now compare the ratio of a grants effect on housing values (its measured benefits) to its costs. The change in the value of housing is estimated by combining the regression estimates of TableV with the baseline value of housing and rents from the census. Third, if some grant expenditures were lost to rents (e.g., corruption), then those expenditures represent transfers and not true economic costs. \end{equation}. The 30-year duration of these benefits is also consistent with, though on the lower end of, engineering predictions. *The Clean Water Program, which calls for $790 million for municipal-treatment improvements, nonpoint-source-control projects, aquatic-habitat restoration and implementation of management plans. The Dirty 31: Is Your State Arguing Against Clean Water? In this sense, the existence of the Clean Water Act did crowd out aggregate municipal investment in wastewater treatment. We also report unweighted estimates. This analysis, however, is subject to serious concerns about use and nonuse estimates in the underlying studies. Diving Into the Benefits of the Clean Water Act The grants we study actually subsidize the adoption of pollution control equipment, which is a common policy that has undergone little empirical economic analysis. Each observation in the data is a pollution reading. We thank the editor, Larry Katz, along with four referees, Joe Altonji, Josh Angrist, David Autor, Richard Carson, Lucas Davis, Esther Duflo, Eli Fenichel, Michael Greenstone, Catherine Kling, Arik Levinson, Matt Kotchen, Amanda Kowalski, Rose Kwok, Drew Laughland, Neal Mahone, Enrico Moretti, Bill Nordhaus, Sheila Olmstead, Jordan Peccia, Nick Ryan, Daniel Sheehan, Kerry Smith, Richard Smith, Rich Sweeney, Reed Walker, and participants in many seminars for excellent comments; Randy Becker, Olivier Deschenes, Michael Greenstone, and Jon Harcum for sharing data; Elyse Adamic, Todd Campbell, Adrian Fernandez, Ryan Manucha, Xianjun Qiu, Patrick Reed, Vivek Sampathkumar, Daisy Sun, Trevor Williams, and Katherine Wong for excellent research assistance; and Bob Bastian and Andy Stoddard for explaining details of the Clean Water Act. The decline in mercury is noteworthy given the recent controversy of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) policy that would regulate mercury from coal-fired power plants. We assume that housing markets are competitive and that each consumer rents one house.
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