Yesterdayīs Supreme Court
ruling on how the
EPA should regulate older power plantsī water intake
systems is instructive. It restates an important lesson
about how environmental regulation should be approached:
Benefits should be weighed against costs.
Obviously cost-benefit analysis is not always easy to
do, especially in the environmental field. How, for
instance, do you assign a monetary value to the loss of
wildlife? But it is essential to use cost-benefit models
whenever possible -- regardless of whether those costs and
benefits are easy to measure -- because cost-benefit
produces quantifiable results that can be used to make
sound, reasoned judgments.
Power-plant water intake systems kill a lot of fish --
3.4 billion a year, the EPA estimates. The vast majority
of these fish are killed by old power plantsī systems.
Newer plantsī closed-cooling systems reduce the kill rate
by 98%, according
to the Washington Post. And the EPA estimates that the
cost to upgrade 500 older plantsī systems to match those
of the newest plants would be $3.5 billion annually.
Thatīs lot of dead fish. And a lot of dollars.
But hereīs a key point. The Washington Post reports
that the EPA says there are less expensive solutions
available that would reduce the loss of fish
by 80% to 95%.
It sounds to me like we need to take a much closer look
at some of those less expensive solutions. Letīs start
with these questions: How much less expensive are they?
And do they really reduce fish kills by those percentages?
Cost-benefit: It isnīt always easy, but itīs necessary.
Pete Fehrenbach is
managing editor of Waste & Recycling News. Past
installments of this column are collected in
the Inbox archive.
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