A new special edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) focuses on helping federal regulators measure the value that U.S. residents place on clean water, just months before the Supreme Court is set to decide a case with significant implications for the Clean Water Act.
A new special edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) focuses on helping federal regulators measure the value that U.S. residents place on clean water, just months before the Supreme Court is set to decide a case with significant implications for the Clean Water Act.
The issue was proposed and co-edited by economist Catherine Kling, faculty director of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, along with two academic colleagues, at University of Massachusetts, Amherst and University of Wisconsin, Madison, and two Environmental Protection Agency economists. The edition, published May 2, should also shed light on discussions around the EPA’s much-revised „Waters of the United States“ regulation, which went into effect in March and has been a source of long-standing political debate.
„We’re not advocating for or against any particular regulation; this is our best effort at science,“ said Kling, the Tisch University Professor of Environmental, Energy and Resource Economics in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. „We’re trying to fully document the benefits as compared to the costs and provide the best, defensible tradeoff numbers that we can so that EPA can make the most appropriate regulations.“
Chris Moore, an EPA economist and co-editor of the special issue, said the EPA can use the new research to improve its economic analyses and estimate more types of benefits from water quality improvements.
„Valuing the social benefits of programs that improve water quality is especially difficult because of the many ways that people rely upon clean water,“ Moore said.
