Benefits and costs of the IESWTR

Abstract

This new rule's costs are likely to be outweighed by its benefits, including reduced endemic risk from exposure to Cryptosporidium and improved public health. Like the Stage 1 Disinfectants/Disinfection By‐products Rule, the Interim Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule (IESWTR) grew out of the negotiated rulemaking the US Environmental Protection Agency convened in 1992–93 under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The rulemaking sought to develop a consensus approach to simultaneously addressing potential health risks posed by disinfection by‐products (DBPs) and waterborne pathogens. Even though the process was complicated by (1) the possibility of making inadvertent risk–risk tradeoffs between protection from DBPs and protection from pathogens and (2) uncertainties affecting the assessment of both risks, the regulatory‐negotiations committee was able to devise a well‐balanced, staged approach to regulation. A second FACA committee finalized the approach in 1996–97. This article summarizes the microbial side of the benefit–cost analysis and the explicit uncertainty analysis that was used to inform the stakeholders and the negotiators.

Averting expenditures and valuation of damages: two methods for assessing the benefits of water filtration in Israel

“…Dasgupta & Dasgupta (2004) use a contingent valuation approach to assess damages and costs from consumption of contaminated water, also in Delhi. Regli et al (1999) present a cost benefit analysis regarding the expected medical costs of water pollution in the US, an analysis which served as the basis for new water regulation. Gurian et al (2001Gurian et al ( , 2004 evaluate different water regulation alternatives.…”

Measuring the effectiveness of performance-based training

“…This assumption, together with the linear function described above, allows us to predict the effective log removal for any month, based on its 95th percentile turbidity value. A plant whose 95th percentile turbidity value is "NTU" would have the following log Table values based on assumptions used in: 1) Regulatory Impact Analysis for IESWTR, USEPA 1998; 2) Middle values used as described in Table 3, and elaborated on page 154 (Regli et al 1998); and 3) Preambles of proposed and final LT2 rules for providing additional credit for Crytosporidium removal in filtered water turbidity levels less than 0.3 NTU (USEPA 2003(USEPA , 2006 based on research studies by Patania et al (1995), Emelko et al (1999) and Dugan et al (2001). …”

Microbial Risk Assessment of Pathogens in Water

“…This is a question that typically needs answering on the level of the regulator, who can translate this information into a health target for drinking water, considering other factors such as relative contribution of drinking water-transmitted disease to the overall health burden and the economic climate. The health target is the level of tolerable risk for drinking water , which could be expressed as the tolerable risk of infection through drinking water (i.e., risk of infection <10 per person per year [ ]) or the tolerable amount −4 61 of disease (i.e., <10 disability adjusted life years per person per year [ , ]). The health target could be translated into burden −6 31 73 water quality targets for pathogens (analogous to the toxic chemicals).…”