Sources of Uncertainty in Economic Analyses of Management Strategies for Controlling Groundwater Contamination
Sources of Uncertainty in Economic Analyses of Management Strategies for Controlling Groundwater Contamination
复制标题
控制地下水污染管理策略的经济分析中的不确定性来源
DOI：
10.2307/1241883
复制
发表时间：
1986
影响因子：
4.2
通讯作者：
E. Wood
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
W. O. Spofford;A. Krupnick;E. Wood
地下水污染被广泛认为是20世纪80年代和90年代及以后的主要环境政策问题之一(Pye，Patrick和Quarles；OTA；Haimes和Snyder)。虽然已经受到污染的资源占总资源的比例似乎很小，但发生污染的地方通常靠近人口稠密的地区，那里的经济损失可能最大。可能比已经发生的更严重的是尚未发现的污染问题。由于污染物在地下水中的传播非常缓慢，过去的农业和危险废物处理做法的结果将延伸到很长的未来(NRC)。为了回应公众对地下水污染日益增加的担忧，国会在过去十年中通过了几项法律，部分目的是保护地下水(沃克和布里奇曼)。近年来，这些法律大多是针对美国环境保护局(EPA)的。这项立法在制定地下水保护指南方面给予了环保局相当大的自由度，并在为某些类别的地下水选择管理策略方面给予各州相当大的自由度。在这种情况下，对替代战略的经济分析为指导政策提供了有用的信息。对于管理战略的经济分析，无论是NetBenefit分析、成本效益分析还是风险-成本权衡分析，一个主要问题是用于对替代方案(Dandy)进行排名的“产出”估计中的不确定性或可变性。管理层特别关注的是，对未来供水井地下水污染水平的估计、对与该污染物有关的健康风险和经济损失的估计存在不确定性。
Groundwater contamination is widely regarded as one of the major environmental policy problems for the 1980s and 1990s, and beyond (Pye, Patrick, and Quarles; OTA; Haimes and Snyder). While the percentage of the overall resource already contaminated appears to be small, the places where it has occurred are usually close to heavily populated areas where the economic losses are likely to be the greatest. Possibly more serious than what has already happened are the contamination problems that have not yet been discovered. Because of the exceedingly slow propagation of contaminants in groundwater, the results of past agricultural and hazardous waste disposal practices will extend far into the future (NRC). In response to increased public concern about groundwater contamination, Congress passed several laws during the past decade aimed in part at protecting groundwater (Walker and Bridgeman). In recent years, most of these laws have been directed at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The legislation gives the EPA considerable latitude in developing guidelines for protecting groundwater, and it gives the states considerable freedom in selecting management strategies for some classes of groundwater. In this situation, economic analyses of alternative strategies provide useful information for guiding policy. A major problem for economic analyses of management strategies, whether they be netbenefit analyses, cost-effectiveness analyses, or risk-cost trade-off analyses, is the uncertainty, or variability, in estimates of the "outputs" used to rank alternatives (Dandy).' Of particular concern for management are the uncertainties in estimates of future levels of groundwater contamination at water supply wells, in estimates of health risks and economic losses associated with that contamina-