Open AccessFLEXIBLE TECHNOLOGY AND THE COST OF IMPROVING GROUNDWATER QUALITY
Author(s) -
Sunding David,
Zilberman David,
Rausser Gordon,
Marco Alan
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
natural resource modeling
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.28
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1939-7445
pISSN - 0890-8575
DOI - 10.1111/j.1939-7445.1995.tb00197.x
Subject(s) - flexibility (engineering) , renting , business , water quality , quality (philosophy) , environmental economics , groundwater , agriculture , natural resource economics , environmental planning , water resource management , risk analysis (engineering) , environmental science , economics , engineering , civil engineering , geotechnical engineering , management , ecology , philosophy , epistemology , biology
Contamination of groundwater by agricultural and industrial chemicals is a significant public health problem in the United States and other nations. In recent years, regulations regarding acceptable groundwater quality, particularly for drinking water, have proliferated in response to heightened public awareness of health risks. To minimize the burden on the economy of providing high‐quality water, it is necessary to be creative with regard to cleanup strategies. Making treatment technology flexible can reduce the cost of improving groundwater quality by avoiding unnecessary duplication of fixed costs. We consider two types of flexibility. The first is mobility of treatment technology among locations within a single water delivery system. We calculate the costs of compliance with drinking water quality regulations when treatment technologies are fixed and when they are mobile between locations, and show that mobility has significant economic advantages. The second type of flexibility is mobility among water delivery systems, which we capture through a regional rental market for treatment devices. We show that, under certain conditions, rental markets for treatment technology can lower the costs of improving water quality.