Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:20:47.220Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Benefit-Cost Analysis for Drinking Water Standards: Efficiency, Equity, and Affordability Considerations in Small Communities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2021

Robert S. Raucher ,
Scott J. Rubin ,
Douglas Crawford-Brown  and
Megan M. Lawson
Robert S. Raucher
Affiliation:
Stratus Consulting Inc.
Scott J. Rubin
Affiliation:
Public Utility Consultant
Douglas Crawford-Brown
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Megan M. Lawson
Affiliation:
Stratus Consulting
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The federal Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), as amended in 1996, enables benefit-cost analysis (BCA) to be used in setting federal drinking water standards, known as MCLs. While BCAs are typically conceived of as a tool to inform efficiency considerations by helping to identify MCL options that maximize net social benefits, in this paper we also illustrate how important equity and affordability considerations can be brought to light by suitably applying BCAs to drinking water regulations, especially in the context of communities served by relatively small water systems. We examine the applicability and relevance of health-health analysis (HHA), and provide an empirical evaluation of the risk tradeoffs that may be associated with the MCL established for arsenic. We find that the cost-associated risks may offset a nontrivial portion of the cancer risk reduction benefits attributed to the MCL (e.g., the additional adverse health impacts from the costs may be roughly half as large as the number of cancer cases avoided). This reveals the relevance of using the HHA approach for examining net benefits of MCLs in small drinking water utilities, and raises issues related to whether and how these cost-associated health risks should be considered in BCAs for drinking water standards.

Keywords

drinking water regulationBCArisk assessmentaffordabilityhealth-health analysisuncertainty
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , 03 January 2011 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis 2011

References

Backlund, E., Sorlie, P.D., and Johnson, N.J.. 1999. A comparison of the relationships of education and income with mortality: The national longitudinal mortality study, social science and medicine. Social Science & Medicine 49:1373–1384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauman, K. 1998. Direct Measures of Poverty as Indicators of Economic Need: Evidence from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. U.S. Census Bureau Population Division Technical Paper No. 30.Google Scholar
Bauman, K. 1999. Extended Measures of Well-Being: Meeting Basic Needs, U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Reports No. P70-67.Google Scholar
Boushey, H., Gundersen, B., Brocht, C., and Bernstein, J.. 2001. Hardships in America: The Real Story of Working Families. Economic Policy Institute.Google Scholar
CDC. 2005. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Available: http://www.cdc.gov/BRFSS/technical_infodata/surveydata/2005.htm.Google Scholar
Chapman, K.S. and Hariharan, G.. 1996. Do poor people have a stronger relationship between income and mortality than the rich? Implications of panel data for health-health analysis. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 12:51–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chu, H. and Crawford-Brown, D.. 2006. Inorganic arsenic in drinking water and bladder cancer: A meta-analysis for dose-response assessment. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 3(4):316–322.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, R.M. and Stevie, R.G.. 1978. Meeting the drinking water standards: The price of regulation. In Safe Drinking Water: Current and Future Problems, Russell, C.S. (ed.). ISBN 0-8018-2181-9. Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C., pp 271–317.Google Scholar
Cromwell, J. and Rubin, S.. 2008. Development and Demonstration of Practical Methods for Examining Feasibility of Regional Solutions for Provision of Water and Wastewater Service. AwwaRF Project #4075. A Tailored Collaboration Research Project sponsored by Renew Lehigh Valley and the Awwa Research Foundation. Denver, CO.Google Scholar
Energy CENTS Coalition. 1999. Minnesota’s Energy Gap: Unaffordable Energy and Low Income Minnesotans.Google Scholar
FCC. 2005. Telephone Penetration by Income by State. Federal Communications Commission, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Federal Register. 2006. Small Drinking Water Systems Variances – Revision of Existing National-Level Affordability Methodology and Methodology to Identify Variance Technologies that are Protective of Public Health. 71(41). March 2.Google Scholar
Harberger, A.C. 1980. On the use of distributional weights in social cost-benefit analysis: Reply to Layard and Squire. The Journal of Political Economy 88(5):1050–1052.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keeney, R.L. 1994. Mortality risks induced by the costs of regulations. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 8:95–110.Google Scholar
Lawson, M., Crawford-Brown, D., Rubin, S., and Raucher, R.. 2009. Health status, income, and measures of household financial distress: New empirical evidence.Google Scholar
Lin, C.C., Rogot, E., Johnson, N.J., Sorlie, P.D., and Arias, E.. 2003. A further study of life expectancy by socioeconomic factors in the national longitudinal mortality study. Ethnicity & Disease 13:240–247.Google ScholarPubMed
Lutter, R., Morrall, J.F. III, and Viscusi, W.K.. 1999. The cost-per-life-saved cutoff for safety-enhancing regulations. Economic Inquiry 37(4):599–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
NDWAC. 2003. Recommendations of the National Drinking Water Advisory Council to U.S. EPA on Its National Small Systems Affordability Criteria. Available: http://www.epa.gov/safewater/ndwac/pdfs/report_ndwac_affordabilitywg_final_08-08-03.pdf.Google Scholar
NRC. 1999. Arsenic in Drinking Water. National Research Council. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
NRC. 2001. Arsenic in Drinking Water: 2001 Update. National Research Council. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
OSHA. 1992. Air Contaminants Proposed Rule. Federal Register 57:26002 Occupational Safety and Health Administration. June 12.Google Scholar
Ottem, T., Jones, R., and Raucher, R.. 2003. Consolidation Potential for Small Water Systems – Differences Between Urban and Rural Systems. White Paper for National Rural Water Association. Stratus Consulting Inc., Boulder, CO. Available: http://www.nrwa.org/whitepapers/TOC.htm.Google Scholar
Portney, P.R. and Stavins, R.N.. 1994. Regulatory review of environmental policy: The potential role of health-health analysis. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 8:111–122.Google Scholar
Raucher, R., Cromwell, J., Henderson, J., Wagner, C., Rubin, S., Goldstein, J., Hubber-Lee, A., Young, C., Characklis, G., and Kirsch, B.. 2006. Regional Solutions to Water Supply Provision. AwwaRF Project #2950. Denver, CO.Google Scholar
Rogot, E. and Sorlie, P.D.. 1992. A Mortality Study of 1.3 Million Persons by Demographic, Social, and Economic Factors: 1979–1985 Follow-Up. National Institutes of Health. July.Google Scholar
Rubin, S. 2001. Criteria to Assess the Affordability of Water Service. White Paper for National Rural Water Association. Available: http://www.nrwa.org/whitepapers/TOC.htm.Google Scholar
Rubin, S., Raucher, R., and Lawson, M.. 2008. The Relationship between Household Financial Distress and Health: Implications for Drinking Water Regulations. White Paper for National Rural Water Association. Available: http://www.nrwa.org/whitepapers/TOC.htm.Google Scholar
Sunstein, C.R. 2001. The Arithmetic of Arsenic. Chicago John M. Olin Law and Economics, Working Paper No. 135, and AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, Working Paper 01-10. August 31.Google Scholar
U.S. EPA. 2000. Arsenic in Drinking Water Rule Economic Analysis. EPA 815-R-00-026. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Developed by Abt Associates, Bethesda, MD. December.Google Scholar
U.S. EPA. 2001. 40 CFR Parts 141 and 142, National Primary Drinking Water Regulations, Arsenic and Clarifications to Compliance and New Source Contaminants Monitoring, Final Rule, Federal Register. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.Google Scholar
U.S. EPA. 2002. Affordability Criteria for Small Drinking Water Systems: An EPA Science Advisory Board Report. EPA-SAB-EEAC-03-004. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of the SAB. December. Available: http://www.epa.gov/safewater/pws/affordability.html.Google Scholar
U.S. EPA. 2006. Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water Website on Affordability. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Available: http://www.epa.gov/safewater/pws/affordability.html.Google Scholar
U.S. EPA. 2008. Factoids: Drinking Water and Ground Water Statistics for 2008. Office of Water, EPA 816-K-08-004. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. November. Available: http://www.epa.gov/safewater/data.Google Scholar