clean water act pros and cons

Nutrients were not targeted in the original Clean Water Act but are a focus of current regulation. Our recreation data also represent all trips, and water-based recreation trips might require different travel distances. In this sense, the existence of the Clean Water Act did crowd out aggregate municipal investment in wastewater treatment. We deflate operating and maintenance costs and rents at a rate of 7.85% (Peiser and Smith 1985).23, Column (1) of TableVI includes only owned homes within a 1-mile radius of the downstream river segments; column (2) includes homes within a 25-mile radius; and column (3) adds rental units. Even without the hedonic estimates of the next section, one can combine cost-effectiveness numbers with estimates from other studies of the value of clean waters to obtain a cost-benefit analysis of these grants. We discuss a range of pass-through estimates including these for cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis. Data include years 19622001. These graphs also suggest that existing evaluations of the Clean Water Act, which typically consist of national trend reports based on data from after 1972, may reflect forces other than the Clean Water Act. The offer function is the firms isoprofit curve in the trade-off between home price and attribute j. Electricity-generating units and other sources do contribute to thermal pollution in rivers, but increasing temperature is an outlier from decreasing trends in most other water pollutants. 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. TableVI separately lists three types of costs: federal expenditures on capital, local expenditures on capital, and operation and maintenance costs. The curve 1 describes the bid function of one type of consumer. Fourth, to obtain regression estimates for the average housing unit and provide an efficient response to heteroskedasticity, we include GLS weights proportional to the number of total housing units in the plant-year observation and to the sampling probability.17. The tablet dissolves into the liquid and releases some of the chemicals to purify the water instantly. CBO (1985) dictates this time period because it provides the national total state and local spending data underlying this graph. All values in billions (|${\$}$|2014). Each of the four pollutants which are part of these fishable and swimmable definitions declined rapidly during this period. The basis of the CWA was enacted in 1948 and was called the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, but the Act was significantly reorganized and expanded in 1972. The tables separately list the different components of costs, and Section VII.C discusses possible effects of these costs on local taxes or fees. This is potentially informative because increased taxes, sewer fees, or changes in other municipal expenditures are likely to be concentrated in the municipal authority managing the treatment plant, whereas the change in water quality is relevant for areas further downstream. Second, because the difference-in-differences specification used for home values does not use upstream areas as a counterfactual, it involves the stronger identifying assumption that areas with more and fewer grants would have had similar home price trends in the absence of the grants. Column (2) includes plants in the continental United States with latitude and longitude data. Alternatively, the most distant travelers might be marginal. We find similar trends for the pollutant they study in lakes, though we show that other pollutants are declining in lakes and that most pollutants are declining in other types of waters. These estimates divide treatment plants into 10 deciles of the number of housing units in 2000 within 25 miles of downstream river segments. Graphs show year fixed effects plus a constant from regressions that also control for monitoring site fixed effects, a day-of-year cubic polynomial, and an hour-of-day cubic polynomial, corresponding to equation (1) from the text. Drinking water treatment falls under a separate set of regulations, the Safe Drinking Water Act. Search for other works by this author on: University of California, Berkeley and National Bureau of Economic Research. State Clean Water Administrators Release Clean Water Act Success Estimates appear in Online Appendix TableVIII and discussion appears in Online Appendix E.3. Water is a critical source that is utilized by most living things on Earth to support it ways of live. In total over the period 19722001, the share of waters that are not fishable and the share not swimmable fell by 11 to 12 percentage points. The gradual effect of the grants is unsurprising since, as mentioned earlier, the EPA estimates that it took 2 to 10 years after a grant was received for construction to finish. Clean Water Act Cons. The usage of water ranges from basic household needs to agricultural purposes. Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act 1990-2020, the Second - US EPA Many travel demand papers use small surveys that report distance traveled to a specific lake or for a narrow region. \end{equation}, \begin{equation} These estimates are within a standard deviation of one, so fail to reject the hypothesis that the municipal wastewater investment exactly equals the cost listed in the grant project data.20. 33 U.S.C. 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. Has Surface Water Quality Improved since the Clean Water Act? River miles * pct. We also report event study graphs of outcomes relative to the year when a facility receives a grant: \begin{align} Identification from a national time series is difficult, since other national shocks like the 19731975 and early 1980s recessions, high inflation and interest rates, and the OPEC crisis make the 1960s a poor counterfactual for the 1970s and 1980s. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Dollar values in |${\$}$|2014 millions. WHAT'S AT STAKE? Regressions with linear trend and trend break specifications underscore these findings, subject to the caveats mentioned earlier about the linear approximations and the long post period. Cost-effective regulation equates marginal abatement costs across sources, which requires regulating all sources. 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). Volume II, Clean Water Construction Grants Program News, Handbook of Procedures: Construction Grants Program for Municipal Wastewater Treatment Works, The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act, 1970 to 1990, A Benefits Assessment of Water Pollution Control Programs Since 1972: Part 1, The Benefits of Point Source Controls for Conventional Pollutants in Rivers and Streams: Final Report, A Retrospective Assessment of the Costs of the Clean Water Act: 1972 to 1997: Final Report, Progress in Water Quality: An Evaluation of the National Investment in Municipal Wastewater Treatment, The National Costs to Implement TMDLs (Draft Report): Support Document 2, The Clean Water and Drinking Water Infrastructure Gap Analysis, ATTAINS, National Summary of State Information, Water Pollution: Information on the Use of Alternative Wastewater Treatment Systems, From Microlevel Decisions to Landscape Changes: An Assessment of Agricultural Conservation Policies, American Journal of Agricultural Economics. In the presence of such rents, this analysis could be interpreted as a cost-effectiveness analysis from the governments perspective. The 1972 U.S. Clean Water Act sought "to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters." This article quantifies changes in water pollution since before 1972, studies the causes of any changes, and analyzes the welfare consequences of any changes. The year in these data refers to each local governments fiscal year. Fecal coliforms had the fastest rate of decrease, at 2.5% a year. Each grant decreases dissolved oxygen deficits by 0.7 percentage points, and decreases the probability that downstream waters are not fishable by 0.7 percentage points. A few points are worth noting. When we fit the change in home values, we do so both for only the balanced panel of tract-years reporting home values, and for all tract-years. The historic law was designed to protect all of our waters - from the smallest streams to the mightiest rivers - from pollution and destruction. The federal government paid 75% of the capital cost for most construction projects awarded through September 1984, and 55% thereafter; local governments paid the rest of the capital costs. Notably, almost half of this decline in state and local wastewater treatment capital spending occurred before the Clean Water Act. The cost-effectiveness estimates for fishable regressions are based on Online Appendix TableVI, row 13. The product is a tablet that turns any type of substance into clean substance. 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. 8 Reasons the Clean Water Rule Fails to Protect People and - EcoWatch Cropper and Oates (1992) describe the Clean Water Act as the only major environmental regulation of the 1970s and 1980s that does not have health as its primary goal. The Clean Air Act covers essentially all major polluting sectors. We also discuss trends in three other groups of water quality measures: industrial pollutants, nutrients, and general measures of water quality (Online Appendix TableIV).18 All three industrial pollutants have declined rapidly. Effects of Clean Water Act Grants on Water Pollution: Event Study Graphs. Row 6 is calculated by multiplying each grant by the parameter estimate in TableII, column (1), and applying the result to all waters within 25 miles downstream of the treatment plant. Other sources note that these time series trends are consistent with aggregate crowding out (Jondrow and Levy 1984; CBO 1985). Flint, Michigan, has recently had high lead levels in drinking water due to switching its water source from the Detroit River to the Flint River. 2013). Municipal spending data from Annual Survey of Governments and Census of Governments. The Dirty 31: Is Your State Arguing Against Clean Water? Misperception would be less important if most benefits of surface water quality accrue through recreation or aesthetics, since failing to perceive water pollution through any means would mean its effects on recreational demand are limited. However, it leaves it up to EPA. The hedonic price schedule provides information about willingness to pay for amenity j because it reflects the points of tangency between consumer bid curves and firm offer curves. The Clean Water Act fight polluted water by adopting a strategy that targets point sources of water pollution. Online Appendix FigureVI shows national trends in federal versus state and local spending on wastewater treatment capital over 19601983.21 State and local spending on wastewater treatment capital declined steadily from a total of |${\$}$|43 billion in 1963 to |${\$}$|22 billion in 1971 and then to |${\$}$|7 billion annually by the late 1970s.

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