Estimates of Industrial Waterborne Residual Control Costs: A Review of Concepts, Methodology, and Results

Abstract

This paper focuses on a series of studies that have attempted to estimate the costs of industrial water pollution abatement and that have been conducted or sponsored in the United States by the Environmental Protection Agency. These studies are critically examined and recommendations for their improvement are made. Social costs which include damages associated with various levels oi residual discharge, however, are not reviewed. Water pollution abatement costs resulting from control of pollutants discharged by households, by agricultural activities, by trade and by service sectors, are not included in this review. Nor have we presented here an analysis of water pollution abatement cost estimates prepared for various limited geographic areas in the United States, such as specific river basins. Exclusion of such cost studies from this review has a limited, if any, affect on our findings, because most of the costing methodologies used in those studies are very similar, or even identical, to cost estimates reviewed here. This, in turn, indicates that the national water pollution control cost estimation procedures discussed here are readily applicable to smaller geographic areas such as states, counties, or river basins, as indeed is the case.