Standard errors are clustered by watershed. Row 8 equals row 1 divided by 30 times row 6. Connected dots show yearly values, dashed lines show 95% confidence interval. Each of the four pollutants which are part of these fishable and swimmable definitions declined rapidly during this period. Clean Water Act Cons. 2013). The negatives is it is not strongly enforced, violators only pay a small fine, countries can exempt themselves from certain species. The Clean Water Act targets industry by focusing on the chemical aspects of polluted water. This does not seem consistent with our results because it would likely create pretrends in pollution or home values, whereas we observe none. Fecal coliforms had the fastest rate of decrease, at 2.5% a year. That study does not separately identify the effect of the pollution tax from the effect of the abatement subsidy. Overall, this evidence does not suggest dramatic heterogeneity in cost-effectiveness. Market-Based Emissions Regulation When Damages Vary Across Sources: What Are the Gains from Differentiation? 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. Row 7 equals row 1 divided by 30 times row 5, since it assumes water quality improvements accrue for 30years. Fishable readings have BOD below 2.4mg/L, dissolved oxygen above 64% saturation (equivalently, dissolved oxygen deficits below 36%), fecal coliforms below 1,000 MPN/100mL, and TSS below 50mg/L. But because residents who live upstream of treatment plants can benefit from clean water downstream of treatment plants (e.g., by traveling for recreation), upstream homes could benefit from grants. The largest ratios of estimated benefits to costs are for areas where outdoor fishing or swimming is common (ratio of 0.53), for high-amenity urban areas (ratio of 0.40), and in the South (ratio of 0.84). As the modification to the Federal Pollution Control Act of 1972, the Clean Water Act of 1977 is the most important federal law that protects the sanitation of water, which includes lakes, rivers, and coastal areas. 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. Most of these estimates are small and actually negative. The year in these data refers to each local governments fiscal year. FigureIV shows event study graphs, which suggest similar conclusions as these regressions. State Clean Water Administrators Release Clean Water Act Success The census long form has housing data and was collected from one in six households on average, but the exact proportion sampled varies across tracts. 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. This implies that the marginal implicit price of an amenity at a given point on the hedonic price schedule equals the marginal willingness to pay of the consumer who locates on that point of the hedonic price schedule. Online Appendix E.2 investigates heterogeneity in grants effects on water pollution and cost-effectiveness. Lack civil or criminal penalties for violations. Water is one of the resources on the Earth that is becoming more and more scarce and the . Finally, we can recalculate the ratios in TableVI considering only subsets of costs. We also report a range of sensitivity analyses, which are broadly in line with the main results. 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. We emphasize a few caveats in interpreting TableIV. 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}. 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. Most analyses of recent U.S. water quality regulation count little direct benefit from improving human health (Lyon and Farrow 1995; Freeman 2000; USEPA 2000a; Olmstead 2010).29. Muehlenbachs, Spiller, and Timmins (2015) relate fracking to home values and drinking water. \end{equation}. Panel A estimates pass-through modestly above 1 since it excludes the required municipal copayment. Abstract. This article assembles an array of new data to assess water pollutions trends, causes, and welfare consequences. Column (4) includes imputed home values for the nonmetro areas that were not in the 1970 or 1980 census.24, Clean Water Act Grants: Costs and Effects on Home Values (|${\$}$|2014B|$\mathrm n$|). Notes. River miles * pct. 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. A lock (LockA locked padlock) or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. The Office of Water (OW) ensures drinking water is safe, and restores and maintains oceans, watersheds, and their aquatic ecosystems to protect human health, support economic and recreational activities, and provide healthy habitat for fish, plants, and wildlife. What are pros and cons of the clean water act? - Answers Point sources are discrete conveyances such as pipes or man-made ditches. \end{align}, To estimate the pass-through of Clean Water Act grants to local expenditure, we regress cumulative municipal sewerage capital expenditures, \begin{equation} 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. Leads decrease of about 10% a year may be related to air pollution regulations, such as prohibiting leaded gasoline. Panel A reports estimates of how grants affect log mean home values. 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. 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. 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. In this sense, the existence of the Clean Water Act did crowd out aggregate municipal investment in wastewater treatment. 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. Connected dots show yearly values, dashed lines show 95% confidence interval. Time of day controls are a cubic polynomial in hour of day. Wetlands, Flooding, and the Clean Water Act - Resources for the Future The Clean Water Act, passed with bipartisan support, was a historic milestone establishing a fundamental right to clean water. Panel B shows no evidence that homes within 25 miles of the downstream river increase after a treatment plant receives a grant. 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. Column (4) implies that each grant increases mean home values within 25 miles of affected waters by 0.024 percentage point. 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. (1972) 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. 8 Reasons the Clean Water Rule Fails to Protect People and - EcoWatch Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Many travel demand papers use small surveys that report distance traveled to a specific lake or for a narrow region. 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. The last 5% of trips might account for disproportionate surplus because they represent people willing to travel great distances for recreation. The statistic we use reflects the binary cutoff of whether a majority of readings are fishable. Implemented in response to growing public awareness and concern for controlling water pollution in the U.S., the Clean Water Act followed the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, and preceded the Endangered Species Act of 1973, making it part of a period of landmark . 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. This predictable spatial variation in the net benefits of water quality variation suggests that allowing the stringency of regulation to vary over space may give it greater net benefits (Muller and Mendelsohn 2009; Fowlie and Muller forthcoming). 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. Official websites use .gov Considering all owner-occupied homes within 25 miles of the river, the estimated ratio of the grants aggregate effects on home values to the grants costs is 0.26. Notes. However, it leaves it up to EPA. 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. In the years after a grant, downstream waters have 12% lower dissolved oxygen deficits, and become 12% less likely to violate fishing standards. The grants we study actually subsidize the adoption of pollution control equipment, which is a common policy that has undergone little empirical economic analysis. Q_{icy}=\sum _{\tau =1963}^{\tau =2001}\alpha _{\tau }1[y_{y}=\tau ]+X_{icy}^{^{\,\,\prime }}\beta +\delta _{i}+\epsilon _{icy}. Propensity score for appearing in the balanced panel of cities is estimated as a function of log city population, log city total municipal expenditure, city type (municipality or township), and census division fixed effects, where city population and expenditure are averaged over all years of the data. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. The annual cost to make a river-mile fishable ranges from |${\$}$|1.5 to |${\$}$|1.9 million.19, Cost-Effectiveness of Clean Water Act Grants (|${\$}$|2014 MN). 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. Pros of legalism are There were much fewer crimes in china and the laws. Column (2) includes plants in the continental United States with latitude and longitude data. These estimates divide treatment plants into 10 deciles of the number of housing units in 2000 within 25 miles of downstream river segments. From Exxon to BP: Has Some Number Become Better than No Number? Advantages and Disadvantages of Water Quality Data Submission Tools Moreover, the share of industrial water discharge that was treated by some abatement technology grew substantially in the 1960s (U.S. Census Bureau 1971). This map assumes the same hedonic price function and reflects spatial heterogeneity in housing unit density.25 The map shows that the ratio of measured benefits to costs is larger in more populated counties. With mounting public demand, Congress passed what remains one of the most popular and effective environmental laws our nation has ever had, the Clean Water Act. Rows 2 and 3 are aggregated from GICS microdata. Incomplete information would be especially important if pollution abatement improves health. But Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006 threw protections into question for 60 percent of our nation's streams and millions of acres of wetlands. The analysis includes plants that never received a grant (which have all event study indicators 1[Gp,y = 1] equal to 0), plants that received a single grant (which in any observation have only a single event indicator equal to 1), and plants that received more than one grant (which in any observation can have several event indicators equal to 1). Our interpretation is that once the Clean Water Act began, cities became less likely to spend municipal funds on wastewater treatment capital.
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