Decomposition and multilevel techniques for water quality control

The advantages of a system of effluent charges to control water quality and abate pollution are discussed. A decomposition and multilevel optimization approach that is capable of handling large‐scale and complex nonlinear systems is reported to be successfully applied to problems of water quality control. A simple example is introduced to demonstrate the methodology of the multilevel approach. A summary of computational experience in comparing the multilevel approach with the Dantzig‐Wolfe and quadratic programing methods as applied to the Miami River data is given.