Weighting Factors for Transferable Discharge Permit Programs That Group Several Pollutants

by Barbara J. Lence, Univ of Manitoba, Canada,



Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Optimizing the Resources for Water Management

Abstract:

Transferable discharge permit (TDP) programs for controlling several pollutants may manage such pollutants as several individual commodities or as a single weighted sum of the various pollutants. Under the weighted sum permits program, however, administrators would not have direct control over the amount of each pollutant that is discharged, and environmental quality may be jeopardized unless the selected weighting factors induce a market equilibrium that also satisfies a set of individual environmental quality standards for the different pollutants. This paper presents an approach for estimating the cost effective weighting factors that satisfy environmental quality standards for TDP programs in which pollutants are grouped together. It is shown that estimates of these weighting factors require complete treatment cost and water quality information.

Subject Headings: Pollutants | Water quality | Water pollution | Permits | Benefit cost ratios | Water treatment | Water discharge

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