\end{equation*}. None of these ratios exceeds 1, though they are closer to 1 than are the values in TableVI. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. \end{equation}, \begin{equation}
It remains one of our nation's most vital safeguards for the health and safety of our communities and our environment. Primary focus: Establish cooperation between feds and states. C1 - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: C3 - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple, C4 - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special, C6 - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation, C8 - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer, E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal, E5 - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and, E6 - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General, F2 - International Factor Movements and International, F4 - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and, F5 - International Relations, National Security, and International Political, H3 - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic, H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related, H7 - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental, J5 - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective, J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant, K4 - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal, L1 - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market, L7 - Industry Studies: Primary Products and, L9 - Industry Studies: Transportation and, M - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel. Fecal coliforms had the fastest rate of decrease, at 2.5% a year. The historic law was designed to protect all of our waters - from the smallest streams to the mightiest rivers - from pollution and destruction. Notes. Most of these estimates are small and actually negative. Column (1) reports a basic difference-in-differences regression with nominal dollars. Data cover 19622001. Second, measuring cost-effectiveness is insufficient to reach conclusions about social welfare; Section VII discusses peoples value for these changes. Data cover the years 19622001. The positives of the Lacey Act it is one of . The 30-year duration of these benefits is also consistent with, though on the lower end of, engineering predictions. 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. However, it leaves it up to EPA. Smith and Wolloh (2012) study one measure of pollution (dissolved oxygen) in lakes beginning after the Clean Water Act and use data from one of the repositories we analyze. Data on industrial water pollution in the 1960s is less detailed, though manufacturing water intake (which is highly correlated with pollution emissions) was flat between 1964 and 1973 due to increasing internal recycling of water (Becker 2016). 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. Finally, we average this ratio across plants in each county. Focus on balancing cost and health . Standard errors are clustered by watershed. This tells us little about the Clean Water Acts effects, however, since its investments may take time to affect water pollution, expanded during the 1970s, and may be effective even if not obvious from a national time series. 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. 2001; Jeon etal. Cumulative grants include grants in all previous years, not only census years. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) final " Clean Water Rule " issued on Wednesday reduces the agencies' jurisdiction to protect waters that have been covered under the Clean Water Act (CWA) since the 1970s. 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 find large declines in most pollutants that the Clean Water Act targeted. It may be useful to highlight differences in how the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts answer four important questions about environmental regulation. 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. Our interpretation is that once the Clean Water Act began, cities became less likely to spend municipal funds on wastewater treatment capital. The main regression sample includes only a balanced panel of tracts that appear in all four censuses between 1970 and 2000; imputing values for missing homes hardly changes the ratio in column (4). International Spillovers and Water Quality in Rivers: Do Countries Free Ride? The Clean Water Act (CWA) contains a number of complex and interrelated elements of overall water quality management. Although a point estimate of 0.41 for the ratio of benefits to costs does not exceed 1, one should interpret this value in light of the discussion from the next subsection that it may be a lower bound on true benefits. Beginning in 1977, grants provided a higher 85% subsidy to projects using innovative technology, such as those sending waste-water through constructed wetlands for treatment. Online Appendix FigureVII illustrates. The curve 2 describes the bid function for another type of consumer. Because water pollution flows in a known direction, areas upstream of a treatment plant provide a natural counterfactual for areas downstream of a plant. Industrial Water Pollution in the United States: Direct Regulation or Market Incentive? A few pieces of evidence help evaluate the relevance of these issues. Clear protections mean cleaner water. We discuss a range of pass-through estimates including these for cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis. We find weak evidence that local residents value these grants, though estimates of increases in housing values are generally smaller than costs of the grant projects. Grant project costs include federal grant amount and required local capital expenditure. The water can be sea water, sewage water or any other dirty water. Notes. Panel B includes the local copayment, and finds pass-through rates of 0.84 to 0.93 in real terms or 1.09 in nominal terms. Problem with enforcement. Our estimated ratio of the change in housing costs to total grant costs may provide a lower bound on the true benefit/cost ratio of this grant program because we abstract from nonuse (existence) values, general equilibrium effects, potential changes in sewer fees, and the roughly 5% longest recreational trips. Calculations include grants given in 19622000. TableIV reports estimates corresponding to equation (5). As we approach the formal 50 th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act (CWA) next month, the Association of Clean Water Administrators (ACWA), which represents state clean water regulatory agencies, has partnered with EPA's Office of Water to create a " Clean Water Act Success Stories Map ." 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. But if local governments ultimately pay these costs, they could depress home values. Paperless Cons. The tables separately list the different components of costs, and Section VII.C discusses possible effects of these costs on local taxes or fees. Column (3) adds river basin year fixed effects. We impute these values from a panel regression of log mean home values on year fixed effects and tract fixed effects. The graphs show no obvious evidence of a mean shift or trend break in water pollution around 1972. Its mission is to improve environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement. 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. Air is typically unfiltered when it is inhaled, so air pollution is believed to have large mortality consequences that account for much of the benefits of air pollution regulation. Point sources are discrete conveyances such as pipes or man-made ditches. CBO (1985) dictates this time period because it provides the national total state and local spending data underlying this graph. Event study graphs corresponding to equation (4) support these results. This extra subsidy fell to 75% in 1984, and about 8% of projects received the subsidy for innovative technology (U.S. Government Accountability Office 1994). Some of the pernicious substances that have been found in water supply systems across the United States include: Arsenic (declared safe for drinking water by the government at twice the levels recommended by private scientists) Uranium Mercury Lead Manganese Perchlorate - a rocket fuel additive Trichloroethylene - a degreaser used in manufacturing This explanation is less relevant for the slowing trends in continuous variables like BOD, fecal coliforms, or TSS. 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. 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 Panel A, the main explanatory variable excludes required municipal contributions, while Panel B includes them. Standard errors are clustered by watershed. 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. A review of 10 U.S. studies found pass-through estimates between 0.25 and 1.06 (Hines and Thaler 1995). A second general equilibrium channel is that the hedonic price function may have shifted. We use the following equation to assess year-by-year changes in water pollution: \begin{equation}
Row 7 equals row 1 divided by 30 times row 5, since it assumes water quality improvements accrue for 30years. Engineering calculations in USEPA (2000c) suggest that the efficiency with which treatment plants removed pollution grew faster in the 1960s than in the 1980s or 1990s. These estimates are even less positive than the estimates for housing. In Panel B, the year variables are recentered around 1972. Ninety-five percent confidence regions are in brackets. 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. Dependent variable mean refers to years 19621971. These pass-through estimates also speak to the broader flypaper literature in public finance, so named to reflect its finding that federal government spending sticks where it hits. Researchers have estimated the pass-through of federal grants to local expenditure in education, social assistance, and other public services. This early version of the CWA left sanitation planning up to the surgeon general, and allowed the Federal Works Administration to help local and state governments with prevention and cleanup efforts. Graphs show coefficients on year-since-grant indicators from regressions corresponding to the specification of TableV, columns (2) and (4). The map in Online Appendix FigureVIII shows heterogeneity in the ratio of measured benefits to costs across U.S. counties. For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. They conclude that nothing has changed since 1975. Data and code replicating tables and figures in this article can be found in Keiser and Shapiro (2018), in the Harvard Dataverse, doi:10.7910/DVN/2JRHN6. They suggest similar conclusions as Panels A and B. The USEPAs (2000a) cost-benefit analysis of the Clean Water Act estimates that nonuse values are a sixth as large as use values. In the years after a grant, downstream waters have 12% lower dissolved oxygen deficits, and become 12% less likely to violate fishing standards. Under the CWA, EPA has implemented pollution control programs such as setting wastewater standards for industry. Row 5 is calculated by multiplying each grant by the parameter estimate in Online Appendix TableVI, row 13, column (2), and applying the result to all waters within 25 miles downstream of the treatment plant. Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1969 Ohio's Cuyahoga River was so fouled by industrial pollution that the river caught on fire. A second question is scope. Column (2) includes plants in the continental United States with latitude and longitude data. 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.
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