Economical assessment of the design,construction and operation of open-bed biofilters for waste gas treatment

A protocol was developed with the purpose of assessing the main costs implied in the set-up, operation and maintenance of a waste gas-treating conventional biofilter. The main operating parameters considered in the protocol were the empty bed residence time and the gas flow rate. A wide variety of investment and operating costs were considered. In order to check its reliability, the protocol was applied to a number of scenarios, with biofilter volumes ranging from 8.3 to 4000 m³. Results show that total annualized costs were between 20?000 and 220?000 €/year and directly dependent, among other factors, on the size of the system. Total investment and operating costs for average-size compost biofilters were around 60?000 € and 20?000 €/year, respectively, which are concordant with actual costs. Also, a sensitivity analysis was performed in order to assess the relative influence of a series of selected costs. Results prove that operating costs are those that influence the total annual costs to a higher extent. Also, packing material replacement costs contribute significantly to the total yearly costs in biofilters with a volume higher than 800 m³. Among operating costs, the electricity consumption is the main influencing factor in biofilters with a gas flow rate above 50?000 m³/h, while labor costs are critical at lower gas flow rates. In addition, the use of a variety of packing materials commonly employed in biofiltration was assessed. According to the results obtained, special attention should be paid to the packing material selected, as it is the main parameter influencing the medium replacement costs, and one of the main factors affecting investment costs.     

Potential economic costs of invasive structural pests: conehead termites,Nasutitermes corniger,in Florida†

Increased trade and human mobility result in sizable benefits to society, but are often accompanied by negative consequences, such as increased introduction of invasive pests to different landscapes and seascapes. In this paper, we couple an existing model of the biological spread of Nasutitermes corniger, an invasive neotropical termite recently introduced to Florida, with information on the costs to treat and repair affected structures, and use this coupled model to simulate the potential short-term costs of establishment of this structural pest. We construct empirical distributions of control and repair costs, using surveys of the pest control industry and homeowners, and use them to simulate treatment and damage costs through a re-sampling procedure. Our results suggest that the net present value of potential costs from an unchecked N. corniger invasion in Florida range between $6.9 and $9.9 million over the next 10 years.     

COST BEHAVIOR AND WATER SYSTEMS1

ABSTRACT: Several factors theoretically affect the cost behavior of water systems. These factors include scale, consumer density, and per capita usage. This analysis examines the several possible influences on the unit costs of water service. The statistical analyses indicate that among the factors of scale, per capita use, and consumer density, only the first two factors are important influences on water system costs. Water consumers appear to benefit from being served by large systems and being located in service areas characterized by relatively high per capita consumption. There is little statistical evidence indicating that more dense areas can be provided water service at lower costs than less dense areas.     

COST COMPARISON BETWEEN CESSPOOL AND SANITARY SEWERAGE SYSTEMS IN SAUDI URBAN AREAS1

ABSTRACT: Extensive use is made of on-site wastewater disposal systems of cesspools due to the absence of a sanitary sewerage system in Saudi urban areas. This system has caused the groundwater table to rise to a public nuisance level. A health risk has also evolved. There are several infrastructural, environmental, and social impacts from this, resulting in great financial losses. Examples are: surface water flooding, damage to foundations of buildings and asphalt street pavements, flooded basements and added construction costs required for excavation, dewatering, insulation materials, and special cements. Most of these costs are indirectly being paid by the private and public sectors. This study compares the estimated costs of damage and losses with the estimated costs of building, operating, and maintaining sanitary sewerage systems in the cesspool-served areas. The annual cost of the cesspool system, depending on the severity of the adverse impacts, ranges from 2.2 to 4.4 times the annual cost of the sanitary sewerage system. Remedies for these impacts are very expensive, and delays in the implementation of the sanitary sewerage facility will make the damage recovery more expensive, and in some cases, impossible. Thus, it is recommended that highest priority to be given to the sanitary sewerage systems in Saudi urban areas.     

SOCIAL OVERHEAD CAPITAL COSTS OF IRRIGATION DEVELOPMENT IN WASHINGTON STATE1

ABSTRACT: Increased irrigation as a means of achieving economic development can impose significant social costs on the state or region of growth. The growth in population induced by additional irrigation will require new roads, water and sewage facilities, schools, fire and police protection, etc. Also the increased energy demands due to irrigation and growth in economic activity must be met. Capital investments required to service these needs of new development can become very large. This study attempts to measure such social overhead costs or irrigation development for some specific irrigation project areas of Eastern Washington. It is shown that investment costs in overhead items can reach $2,000 per acre irrigated or $70,000 per job created. Alternatively, the annual costs can equal $180 per acre or $6,700 per worker. These costs must be paid locally through increased taxes, utility rates, or costs for services.     

EFFLUENT FEES,AN ALTERNATIVE SYSTEM FOR ACHIEVING WATER QUALITY: A CASE STUDY1

This paper reports the findings of a case study of the relative costs of a uniform standards system and an effluent fee system of water quality control. A 30-mile stretch of the Black Warrior River in Alabama is considered. The analysis demonstrates that the dischargers could reduce total pollution abatement costs by 33 percent under the suggested effluent fee system.     

Transaction costs and agri-environmental policy measures: are preferences influencing policy implementation?

This paper investigates whether the level of transaction costs of a Swedish agri-environmental policy measure is attributable to technical factors or whether political factors, such as lobby groups and political majorities at the county level, influence the costs. A previous study indicated that political factors may influence the level of transaction costs, but the extreme bounds analysis performed in this paper reveals that those results are fragile. It shows that three of the technical variables are robust with respect to model specifications but that none of the political variables are. Thus, no evidence can be found that political factors influence the level of transaction costs.     

Optimal hardwood tree planting and forest reclamation policy on reclaimed surface mine lands in the Appalachian coal region

We study the optimal hardwood tree planting decision on reclaimed surface coal mines in the Appalachian region using a mine operator-focused, expected cost model that recognizes costs of preparing the site for tree planting, unit costs of planting seedlings, and opportunity costs of reforestation treatments and the performance bond. We also consider the possibility of failed initial attempts by incorporating the probability of reforestation success, based on empirical seedling ,survival rates and regulated tree survival standards, as well as fixed and unit costs of returning for additional planting. Optimal planting levels from 319 to 780 trees per acre and expected costs from $1049 to $2338 were found using simulations over a range of unit planting costs, fixed costs of replanting, tree survival standards, and interest rates. Further simulations compared optimal planting across un-weathered gray sandstone and weathered brown sandstone substrate materials, finding gray sandstone to be associated with lower expected costs. We conclude that optimal planting density and expected reforestation cost are sensitive to economic parameters, regulations, and planting substrate materials; and those policies influencing these factors may have substantial impact on reforestation outcomes and the choice of post-mining land use by mine operators. Our study provides a framework for understanding forest reclamation decisions that incorporates incentives faced by the mine operators who develop and implement the plans for mine reclamation, including forestry.     

A SYSTEMS STUDY OF FUTURE GROUNDWATER DEVELOPMENT COSTS IN THE CHICAGO REGION1

The cost of developing groundwater resources in northeastern Illinois from 198cL2020 is estimated for the purpose of providing a basis for comparing alternative sources. Demands for each township in the study area are estimated at 10-year increments and are satisfied, where the supply is sufficient, in such a way as to minimize the cost subject to constraints on supply. Sources of water are two shallow aquifers with known potential yields and a series of deep aquifers treated as a single unit and modeled on a digital computer. For each township the costs of wells, pumps, power and rehabilitation is estimated for each aquifer on a per million gallons of water per day basis. In addition the cost of groundwater treatment necessary to raise the quality to that of treated Lake Michigan water is considered. Raw water costs are found to vary from 2 to 14 cents per 1000 gallons depending upon the depth to the deep aquifer water. Treated water costs vary from 22 to 53 cents per 1000 gallons, the lower costs applying to the largest users because of the economy of scale. It is found that with proper distribution of pumpage there is sufficient water in storage in the deep aquifers to meet groundwater demands through 2020.     

Transaction costs and community-based natural resource management in Nepal

Transaction costs in community-based resource management are incurred by households attempting to enforce property right rules over common resources similar to those inherent in private property rights. Despite their importance, transaction costs of community-based management of common pool resources (CPRs) are often not incorporated into the economic analysis of participatory resource management. This paper examines the transaction costs incurred by forest users in community forestry (CF) based on a survey of 309 households belonging to eight different forest user groups (FUGs) in the mid hills of Nepal. The analysis reveals that the average 'poor' household incurred Nepalese rupees (NRS) 1265 in transaction costs annually, while wealthier 'rich' households incurred an average of NRS 2312 per year. Although richer households bear higher proportions of such costs, transaction costs for CF management as a percentage of resource appropriation costs are higher for poorer households (26%) than those of middle-wealth (24%) or rich households (14%). There are also village differences in the level of transaction costs. The results show that transaction costs are a major component of resource management costs and vary according to socio-economic status of resource users and characteristics of the community.     

Agribusiness Opportunity Costs and Environmental Legal Protection: Investigating Trade-Off on Hotspot Preservation in the State of São Paulo,Brazil

Prior to deforestation, São Paulo State had 79,000 km² covered by Cerrado (Brazilian savanna) physiognomies, but today less than 8.5% of this biodiversity hotspot remains, mostly in private lands. The global demand for agricultural goods has imposed strong pressure on natural areas, and the economic decisions of agribusiness managers are crucial to the fate of Cerrado domain remaining areas (CDRA) in Brazil. Our aim was to investigate the effectiveness of Brazilian private protected areas policy, and to propose a feasible alternative to promote CDRA protection. This article assessed the main agribusiness opportunity costs for natural areas preservation: the land use profitability and the arable land price. The CDRA percentage and the opportunity costs were estimated for 349 municipal districts of São Paulo State through secondary spatial data and profitability values of 38 main agricultural products. We found that Brazilian private protected areas policy fails to preserve CDRA, although the values of non-compliance fines were higher than average opportunity costs. The scenario with very restrictive laws on private protected areas and historical high interest rates allowed us to conceive a feasible cross compliance proposal to improve environmental and agricultural policies.     

环境成本的内在化问题

环境成本是指人类经济活动引起的环境损失。主流经济学认为，外部性与产权是产生环境污染的经济根源，减少环境成本的实质是通过一定的手段将环境成本内在化。不同的治理手段具有不同的治理成本，一般而言，经济手段具有更高的经济效率和较低的成本，但管制手段也有其存在的意义。解决我国的环境成本问题需要树立生态经济协调发展模式，让企业成为污染治理的主体，建立环境补偿机制等。     

AN ANALYSIS OF RISING IRRIGATION COSTS IN THE GREAT PLAINS1

ABSTRACT: Irrigation costs are rising rapidly on the 32 million acres irrigated with ground water. Ground water levels are declining under about 15 million of those acres adding to increased costs. However, from 1975 to 1982, 75 to 80 percent of increased ground water irrigation costs were due to higher nominal energy prices and interest rates. In real dollars, adjusted for inflation, these costs have risen faster than other irrigation costs and the real rise in commodity prices has been very small. A continuation of rapidly rising costs and slowly rising prices will shorten the economic life of those aquifers experiencing declining water levels. That same condition of prices and costs place all ground water irrigators in a disadvantaged position compared to nonirrigators and could cause a decline in ground water irrigation.     

Minimizing external indirect health costs due to aerosol population exposure: a case study from Northern Italy

Environmental Agencies require Decision Support Systems, in order to plan Air Quality Policies considering the cost of emission reduction measures and the human health effects (with related social costs). The use of Decision Support Systems is also useful to spread information to general public, explaining the effectiveness of proposed air quality plans. In this paper, a multi-objective approach to control PM10 concentration at a regional level is presented. The problem considers both the internal costs (due to the implementation of emission reduction measures) and the external costs (due to population exposure to high PM10 concentrations). To model PM10 concentrations, a single surrogate model is used for the entire domain, allowing the implementation of a very efficient optimization procedure. The surrogate model is derived through a set of 10 simulations, performed using a Chemistry Transport Model fed with different emission reduction scenarios. The methodology is applied to Northern Italy, a region affected by very high PM10 concentrations that exceed the limit values specified by the EU legislation.     

External cost internalisation of urban transport: a case study of Dublin

Transport users do not currently pay all costs associated with their transport activities and in particular do not pay the costs they impose on the environment. Case studies on Dublin, Amsterdam, Brussels and London have been conducted to evaluate how best to meet the requirement of the European Commission in its fair and efficient pricing aims in the transport sector, i.e. where transport users are made to pay all costs they impose. The paper presents the results of Do Nothing (DN) and Do Something (DS) scenarios for 2005 where in the latter case each transport user pays for all costs they impose including pollution, noise, accidents etc. The Dublin results, from an economics model used in the study, are examined in detail; the findings are compared with those of parallel studies conducted in the other cities to demonstrate the international relevance of this work. The comparison between the DN and DS scenarios indicates that taxes on all transport modes should be increased substantially, particularly in the morning and evening peak periods. As a result of the price increases, travel demand is reduced. A practical example where transport users could be made to pay for all their costs is road use pricing, i.e. charging individuals for the use of road space. The taxation levels suggested in the DS scenario have been used in a road use pricing trial in Dublin, the results of which were published in O'Mahony, Geraghty and Humphreys (Transportation 27, 269-283, 2000), to see if the reductions in the travel requirements of individuals proposed by the economics model are in fact true. The principles of the work presented in this paper are not only relevant to environmental impact management in the transport sector but can also be applied to other sectors.     

AN INTERPRETATIVE ANALYSIS OF FAMILY AND INDIVIDUAL ECONOMIC COSTS DUE TO WATER RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT1

ABSTRACT This article reports information on the economic costs not covered by resettlement procedures to forced migrants from a flood-control reservoir. Data come from a sample of 200 families relocated due to construction of the Carr Fork Reservoir in the Coal Regions of Eastern Kentucky (Knott County). Responses indicated that economic costs were greater than the monetary settlement provided by the Corps of Engineers and that economic loss was not randomly distributed among the relocated persons. Analysis showed that persons who were more likely to be victims of greater economic costs due to relocation were landowners, older families with one or two members, persons with lower incomes and persons who were long time residents of the area. It is suggested that change angencies not only include property purchased by necessity in the cost-benefit ratio, but also other costs that have a direct affect on the welfare of the target population. In addition, it is suggested that case workers visit migrants during and after the relocation process to assist in solving various adjustment problems.     

NEW HAMPSHIRE WATER SYSTEMS: ENVIRONMENTAL AND OWNERSHIP CONSIDERATIONS1

An econometric model was developed to measure the influence of several environmentally oriented variables and an ownership variable upon the average total residential water costs for New Hampshire water systems. The implementation of leak detection programs, localized institutional rules and regulations, and hazardous waste inspection programs were statistically significant in influencing residential water costs. The existence of a water conservation program did not statistically influence these per unit costs. Water systems that were privately owned resulted in per unit costs that were higher relative to firms that were publicly owned.     

Environmental Policy in Russia: Economic,Legal, and Organizational Issues

/ Despite the suspension and closing down of many pollutingindustrial facilities and corresponding expectations of positive change inthat field, it is argued that the environmental situation in Russia in thefirst half of the 1990s has not improved. To corroborate this point, thelatest available data are presented and the deep roots and complexities ofthe current socioeconomic and political situation in the country areanalyzed. Using analogies and "component accounting" approaches,the original economic assessments of environmental damage in the recent pastand current period in Russia are offered for comparison with similar datafrom a selection of developed countries. A model of a new environmentalstrategy and policy is developed and its economic, legal, and organizationaldimensions are examined.KEY WORDS: Damage; Environmental costs; Policy; Pollution; Publicparticipation; Risk; Strategy     

Efficient management of marine resources in conflict: An empirical study of marine sand mining, Korea

This article develops a dynamic model of efficient use of exhaustible marine sand resources in the context of marine mining externalities. The classical Hotelling extraction model is applied to sand mining in Ongjin, Korea and extended to include the estimated marginal external costs that mining imposes on marine fisheries. The socially efficient sand extraction plan is compared with the extraction paths suggested by scientific research. If marginal environmental costs are correctly estimated, the developed efficient extraction plan considering the resource rent may increase the social welfare and reduce the conflicts among the marine sand resource users. The empirical results are interpreted with an emphasis on guidelines for coastal resource management policy.     

A case study on project-level CO2 mitigation costs in industrialised countries: the Climate Cent Foundation in Switzerland

This paper analyses CO₂ emissions reduction costs based on project data from the Climate Cent Foundation (CCF), a climate policy instrument in Switzerland. Four conclusions are drawn. First, for the projects investigated, the CCF on average pays €63/ton. Due to the Kyoto Protocol, the CCF buys reductions only until 2012. This cut-off increases reported per ton reduction costs, as the additional lifetime project costs are set in relation to reductions only until 2012, rather than to reductions realised over the whole lifetime. Lifetime reduction costs are €45/t. Second, correlation between CCF's payments and lifetime reduction costs per ton is low. Projects with low per ton reduction costs should thus be identified based on lifetime per ton reduction costs. Third, the wide range of project costs per ton observed casts doubts on the widely used identification of the merit order of reduction measures based on average per ton costs for technology types. Finally, the CCF covers only a fraction of additional reduction costs. Decisions to take reduction efforts thus depend on additional, non-observable and/or non-economic motives. Any generalisation of results has to consider that this analysis is based on prospective costs of a sub-sample of projects in Switzerland.