Other water pollution research generally specifies BOD and TSS in levels; practices vary for fecal coliforms. The point estimates imply that the benefits of the Clean Water Acts municipal grants exceed their costs if these unmeasured components of willingness to pay are three or more times the components of willingness to pay that we measure. The curve 1 describes the bid function of one type of consumer. 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. Online Appendix E.3 discusses interpretations of our housing estimates under alternative pass-through numbers. Standard errors are clustered by watershed. These comparisons also highlight features of the Clean Water Act that are not widely recognized and could lead it to have lower net benefits than some other environmental regulation. The Clean Water Act first appeared in American legislation in 1948 with the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. In years before a grant, the coefficients are statistically indistinguishable from zero, have modest magnitude, and have no clear trend (FigureIII). Secure .gov websites use HTTPS The only econometric analysis we know of such policies tests how the French policy of jointly taxing industrial air pollution and subsidizing abatement technologies affected emissions, using data from 226 plants (Millock and Nauges 2006). Column (3) include all homes within 1 mile, and column (4) includes homes within 25 miles. 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. 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 census long form has housing data and was collected from one in six households on average, but the exact proportion sampled varies across tracts. The usage of water ranges from basic household needs to agricultural purposes. 3 Pages. The Clean Water Act targets industry by focusing on the chemical aspects of polluted water. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. The estimate in column (4), including homes within a 25-mile radius of downstream rivers, is small and statistically insignificant but actually negative. 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. The Clean Water Act targets point sources like industry, municipal and state governments, and agriculture. 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. The water can be sea water, sewage water or any other dirty water. We use the following equation to assess year-by-year changes in water pollution: \begin{equation} Standard errors are clustered by watershed. The Clean Water Act was produced as a means for the EPA to implement pollution control programs alongside setting water quality standards for all contaminants in surface waters. Two studies report that concrete structures of treatment plants are expected to have a useful life of 50years, but mechanical and electrical components have a useful life of 1525years (USEPA 2002, 11; American Society of Civil Engineers 2011, 15). The Clean Water Act and Water Pollution, VI. Please click here to see any active alerts. Panel A shows modest evidence that in the years after a plant receives a grant, the values of homes within 0.25 mile of the downstream river increase. 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. From Exxon to BP: Has Some Number Become Better than No Number? 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 ." 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). Resources for the Future, Public Policies for Environmental Protection, The Impact of Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers: A Synthesis of the Conceptual and Empirical Literature, Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers: Principles and Practice, Analysis of National Water Pollution Control Policies: 2. 1251 et seq. Data include decennial census years 19702000. Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act Section 812 of the 1990 Amendments (Public Law 101-549) requires EPA conduct scientifically reviewed studies of the impact of the Clean Air Act on the public health, economy and environment of the United States. The Clean Water Act fight polluted water by adopting a strategy that targets point sources of water pollution. In 1969 Ohio's Cuyahoga River was so fouled by industrial pollution that the river caught on fire. We considered a fourth repository, the Sustaining the Earths Watersheds: Agricultural Research Data System (STEWARDS), managed by the USDA. 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. 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. Non-U.S. studies and more recent U.S. estimates find an even wider range (Gamkhar and Shah 2007). These confidence regions do not reject the hypothesis that the ratio of the change in home values to the grants costs is zero but do reject the hypothesis that the change in home values equals the grants costs. Analysis includes homes within a given distance of downstream river segments. Our topic is clean water and sanitation. Panel B analyzes how grants affect log mean rental values. 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. Third, if some grant expenditures were lost to rents (e.g., corruption), then those expenditures represent transfers and not true economic costs. In the presence of such rents, this analysis could be interpreted as a cost-effectiveness analysis from the governments perspective. We also report event study graphs of outcomes relative to the year when a facility receives a grant: \begin{align} They conclude that nothing has changed since 1975. One possible channel is that wages change to reflect the improvement in amenities (Roback 1982). 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. Pros of legalism are There were much fewer crimes in china and the laws. TableIV reports estimates corresponding to equation (5). That study does not separately identify the effect of the pollution tax from the effect of the abatement subsidy. In 2020, the Clean Air Act Amendments will prevent over 230,000 early deaths. CBO (1985) dictates this time period because it provides the national total state and local spending data underlying this graph. Row 8 equals row 1 divided by 30 times row 6. Point sources are discrete conveyances such as pipes or man-made ditches. Lack civil or criminal penalties for violations. Online Appendix E.2 investigates heterogeneity in grants effects on water pollution and cost-effectiveness. Q_{icy}=\sum _{\tau =1963}^{\tau =2001}\alpha _{\tau }1[y_{y}=\tau ]+X_{icy}^{^{\,\,\prime }}\beta +\delta _{i}+\epsilon _{icy}. We convert the data to calendar years using data from these surveys on the month when each governments fiscal year ends, assuming that government expenditure is evenly distributed across months. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (. Our recreation data also represent all trips, and water-based recreation trips might require different travel distances. The product is a tablet that turns any type of substance into clean substance. Fecal coliforms had the fastest rate of decrease, at 2.5% a year. For instance, the Clean Water Act's grantmaking program has cost the U.S. government about $650 billion total, or about $1.5 million per year to make one mile of river fishable. Column (3) includes all plants and grants with minimum required data (e.g., grants linked to the exact treatment plant even if without latitude or longitude data) and assumes all plants have 25 miles of rivers downstream. The tablet dissolves into the liquid and releases some of the chemicals to purify the water instantly. In this sense, the existence of the Clean Water Act did crowd out aggregate municipal investment in wastewater treatment. Swimmable waters must have BOD below 1.5mg/L, dissolved oxygen above 83% saturation (equivalently, dissolved oxygen deficits below 17%), fecal coliforms below 200 MPN/100mL, and TSS below 10mg/L. This does not seem consistent with our results because it would likely create pretrends in pollution or home values, whereas we observe none. Hence decreases in acidic sulfur air pollution may have contributed to decreases in acidic water pollution. 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. 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. Provide federal assistance to control municipal discharges of wastewater. Each observation in the data is a pollution reading. Alternatively, the most distant travelers might be marginal. Municipal and grant costs are cumulative since 1970. 33 U.S.C. 2001; Steinwender, Gundacker, and Wittmann 2008; Artell, Ahtiainen, and Pouta 2013). Connected dots show yearly values, dashed lines show 95% confidence interval. Hence our preferred housing estimates come from difference-in-differences regressions analyzing homes within a 25-mile radius of river segments that are downstream of treatment plants. First is the choice of policy instrument. The map in Online Appendix FigureVIII shows heterogeneity in the ratio of measured benefits to costs across U.S. counties. Land Rents, Local Productivity, and the Total Value of Amenities, Watersheds in Child Mortality: The Role of Effective Water and Sewerage Infrastructure, 1880 to 1920, Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Water and Wastewater Treatment Infrastructure, Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricists Companion, Subjective vs. 2011; Poor etal. The ultimate entity responsible for local capital costs and operation and maintenance costs is ambiguous because local governments may receive other payments from state or federal governments to help cover these costs. 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. The graphs show no obvious evidence of a mean shift or trend break in water pollution around 1972. Grants and population are both skewed, so large shares of both are in the top decile. In part for this reason, we focus on specifications including basin year fixed effects and the interaction of baseline characteristics with year fixed effects. Connected dots show yearly values, dashed lines show 95% confidence interval, and 1962 is the reference category. 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. Our interpretation is that once the Clean Water Act began, cities became less likely to spend municipal funds on wastewater treatment capital. The Roles of Environmental Regulation, Productivity, and Trade. The positives of the Lacey Act it is one of . \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. The health of many aquatic species (so indirectly, the benefit people derive from a river) may depend nonlinearly on the area of clean water. Dependent variable mean describes mean in 19621972. 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. We also report unweighted estimates. Panels A and B reflect the classic hedonic model, with fixed housing stock. We find some evidence that the net benefits of Clean Water Act grants vary over space in tandem with population density and the popularity of water-based recreation. We report both the double-difference and triple-difference estimators for both outcomes, and obtain qualitatively similar conclusions. The negatives is it is not strongly enforced, violators only pay a small fine, countries can exempt themselves from certain species. For water pollution, however, people can more easily substitute between nearby clean and dirty rivers for recreation. Asterisks denote p-value < .10 (*), < .05 (**). 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. 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. But municipal investments that occurred were closely connected to grants, and point estimates imply that the grant costs in our data accurately represent the actual change in spending. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Adler Robert W., Landman Jessica C., Cameron Diane M.. Angrist Joshua D., Pischke Jrn-Steffen, Artell Janne, Ahtiainen Heini, Pouta Eija, , Boscoe Francis P., Henry Kevin A., Zdeb Michael S., , Carson Richard T., Mitchell Robert Cameron, , Currie Janet, Zivin Joshua Graff, Meckel Katherine, Neidell Matthew, Schlenker Wolfram, , Deschenes Olivier, Greenstone Michael, Shapiro Joseph S., , Faulkner H., Green A., Pellaumail K., Weaver T., , Gianessi Leonard P., Peskin Henry M., , Jeon Yongsik, Herriges Joseph A., Kling Catherine L., Downing John, , Kahn Matthew E., Li Pei, Zhao Kaxuan, , Keiser David A., Kling Catherine L., Shapiro Joseph S., , Kling Catherine L., Phaneuf Daniel J., Zhao Jinhua, , Leggett Christopher G., Bockstael Nancy E., , Lipscomb Molly, Mobarak Ahmed Mushfiq, , Muehlenbachs Lucija, Spiller Elisheba, Timmins Christopher, , Muller Nicholas Z., Mendelsohn Robert, , Muller Nicholas Z., Mendelsohn Robert, Nordhaus William, , Olmstead Sheila M., Muehlenbachs Lucija A., Shih Jhih-Shyang, Chu Ziyan, Krupnick Alan J., , Peiser Richard B., Smith Lawrence B., , Poor P. Joan, Boyle Kevin J., Taylor Laura O., Bouchard Roy, , Smith Richard A., Alexander Richard B., Wolman M. Gordon, , Smith V. Kerry, Wolloh Carlos Valcarcel, , Steinwender Astrid, Gundacker Caludia, Wittmann Karl J., , Wu Junjie, Adams Richard M., Kling Catherine L., Tanaka Katsuya, , Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
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