Consequences of the Clean Water Act and the Demand for Water Quality

David A. Keiser and Joseph Shapiro

No 23070, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Since the 1972 U.S. Clean Water Act, government and industry have invested over $1 trillion to abate water pollution, or $100 per person-year. Over half of U.S. stream and river miles, however, still violate pollution standards. We use the most comprehensive set of files ever compiled on water pollution and its determinants, including 50 million pollution readings from 240,000 monitoring sites and a network model of all U.S. rivers, to study water pollution's trends, causes, and welfare consequences. We have three main findings. First, water pollution concentrations have fallen substantially. Between 1972 and 2001, for example, the share of waters safe for fishing grew by 12 percentage points. Second, the Clean Water Act's grants to municipal wastewater treatment plants, which account for $650 billion in expenditure, caused some of these declines. Through these grants, it cost around $1.5 million (2014 dollars) to make one river-mile fishable for a year. We find little displacement of municipal expenditure due to a federal grant. Third, the grants' estimated effects on housing values are smaller than the grants' costs; we carefully discuss welfare implications.

JEL-codes: H23 H54 H70 Q50 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-his and nep-reg
Note: DAE EEE LS PE POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Published as David A Keiser & Joseph S Shapiro, 2019. "Consequences of the Clean Water Act and the Demand for Water Quality*," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol 134(1), pages 349-396.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23070.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Consequences of the Clean Water Act and the Demand for Water Quality (2019)
Working Paper: Consequences of the Clean Water Act and the Demand for Water Quality (2018)
Working Paper: Consequences of the Clean Water Act and the Demand for Water Quality (2017)
Working Paper: Consequences of the Clean Water Act and the Demand for Water Quality (2017)
Working Paper: Consequences of the Clean Water Act and the Demand for Water Quality (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23070

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23070

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().