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TRADING ALLOWANCES FOR STORMWATER CONTROL: HYDROLOGY AND OPPORTUNITY COSTS
Citation:
Thurston*, H. W., W D. Shuster*, AND M A. Taylor**. TRADING ALLOWANCES FOR STORMWATER CONTROL: HYDROLOGY AND OPPORTUNITY COSTS. Presented at World Water & Environmental Resources Congress 2004, Salt Lake City, UT, June 27 - July 01, 2004.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public
Description:
Excess stormwater runoff is a serious problem in a large number of urban areas, causing flooding, water pollution, groundwater recharge deficits and ecological damage to urban streams. It has been posited that to mitigate the effects of excess stormwater runoff, policy makers could use economic incentives to reward those who install detention technologies. This paper builds on research investigating the use of a tradable allowance system to promote placement of dispersed, smaller-scale best management practices (BMP) for water detention to control excess runoff. Using continuous hydrologic modeling and cost information on BMP that include opportunity costs of land dedicated to the BMP, we investigate the outcome of scenarios that include diverse price and spatial constraints on BMP placement.