Economic Support for Decisions on Source Water Protection

Abstract

Quantifying relationships between treatment costs and source water conditions can estimate avoided‐treatment expenditures and determine whether source water protection would be cost‐effective.

Lasting Effects of Wildfire on Disinfection By‐Product Formation in Forest Catchments

“…4). The average annual DOC concentration in our moderately burned catchments (2.9 ± 0.3 mg C L −1 filtered) exceeded the USEPA's disinfectant and DBP criteria (2.0 mg L −1 of total organic C in unfiltered water) (USEPA, 2015), and the elevated C supply may translate into increased coagulation and softening reagents and monitoring costs for water utilities (Jones et al, 2017; Price et al, 2017, 2018).…”

Linking Water Quality to Drinking Water Treatment Costs Using Time Series Analysis: Examining the Effect of a Treatment Plant Upgrade in Ohio

“…Cost functions, like the one we estimated for BMWTP, play a role in building the knowledge base for evaluating SWP programs (Price et al., 2018). However, we did not estimate the incentives of the drinking water treatment plant to invest in SWP.…”

“…To estimate Equation , we needed daily time series data from the BMWTP. Data availability is one of the key limitations for these types of studies (Price et al., 2018). Fortunately, the majority of the BMWTP cost data could be extracted from operator logs, paper records, budget, and invoices obtained from the CCWRD and BMWTP.…”

“…Researchers can, with the appropriate data, estimate functions that relate treatment costs to their determinants, such as production output, input prices, reservoir levels, and measures of source water quality. When these cost functions include source water quality, researchers can calculate avoided‐cost benefits from improved source water quality and can help determine whether source water protection (SWP) would be a cost‐effective component of producing potable water (Heberling et al., 2015; Price et al., 2018). SWP reduces risks by safeguarding drinking water sources from contamination prior to any treatment.…”

“…Price and Heberling (2018) and Price et al. (2018) highlighted several knowledge gaps in the existing literature on how source water quality impacts treatment costs. Among these gaps are limited information about how important water quality measures like TOC, nutrients, algae, and harmful algal blooms (HABs) affect treatment costs and an insufficient understanding of how relationships between treatment costs and source water quality differ across treatment technologies.…”