Market Policies for Control of Multiple Pollutants: Management Issues and Methods of Analysis
Lence, Barbara Jean
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/69986
Description
Title
Market Policies for Control of Multiple Pollutants: Management Issues and Methods of Analysis
Author(s)
Lence, Barbara Jean
Issue Date
1988
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Brill, E. Downey,
Eheart, J. Wayland
Department of Study
Civil Engineering
Discipline
Environmental Engineering
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Engineering, Sanitary and Municipal
Environmental Sciences
Urban and Regional Planning
Abstract
Transferable discharge permit (TDP) programs for managing multiple pollutants may be complicated by the interactive environmental impacts and by the joint treatment costs of the pollutants. Under such systems, pollutants may be managed as several individual commodities, or grouped together and managed as a weighted sum of the various pollutants. This thesis presents approaches for (1) evaluating the cost efficiency of TDP programs in which permits for several pollutants are traded as individual commodities, (2) estimating the cost effective weighting factors for TDP programs in which pollutants are grouped together, and (3) determining the equilibrium distribution of financial burden among dischargers participating in TDP markets for multiple pollutants. These approaches are demonstrated for a water quality management program that controls BOD, phosphorus, and nitrogen discharges in a river basin.
For programs that manage pollutants individually, two market scenarios, representing simultaneous and sequential TDP markets, are developed to provide high and low benchmarks for cost efficiency, respectively. The costs of these scenarios are compared with each other and with that of a uniform treatment approach. These comparisons suggest that a TDP program that manages several pollutants on an individual basis is a cost effective management strategy for conventional pollutants and that any interdependencies that exist among these pollutants in terms of waste treatment costs do not limit the effectiveness of this program.
TDP programs in which pollutants are grouped together reduce the number of permit markets necessary to manage these pollutants. The cost effective weighing factors for such programs are functions of the treatment costs and water quality impacts of the given pollutants and are difficult to determine without complete system information. An approach is developed for estimating these weighting factors for cases where treatment cost information is unknown or uncertain. Programs that manage pollutants as a weighted sum are simulated for five sets of treatment cost data, representing different estimates for the relative marginal treatment costs of the various pollutants. The results of these simulations may be used to identify the cost effective weighting factors that achieve adequate environmental protection and are robust to a range of treatment cost information.
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