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VALUING ACID MINE DRAINAGE REMEDIATION IN WEST VIRGINIA: A HEDONIC MODELING APPROACH
Citation:
WILLIAMSON, J. M. AND H. W. THURSTON. VALUING ACID MINE DRAINAGE REMEDIATION IN WEST VIRGINIA: A HEDONIC MODELING APPROACH. The Annals of Regional Science. Springer Berlin/Heidelberg, , Germany, 42(4):987-999, (2008).
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Description:
States with active and abandoned mines face large private and public costs to remediate damage to streams and rivers from acid mine drainage (AMD). Appalachian states have an especially large number of contaminated streams and rivers, and the USGS places AMD as the primary source of water-quality degradation in the region. In order to appropriately characterize costs and benefits of proposed restoration projects, stakeholder groups and policy makers alike are interested in estimating the impacts associated with AMD impairment, such as loss of recreation activities or impacts on property values. In this article we use a hedonic price model that incorporates a distance-to-impaired stream measure in order to estimate the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for the cleanup of AMD impaired waterways in the Cheat River Watershed of West Virginia. We derive non-use values for AMD using 21 years of housing sales data, spanning 1985 – 2005, and use geographic information systems (GIS) to link housing market sales data with stream water quality. The results indicate that property values with one-quarter of a mile of an AMD impaired streams were reduced by 13.5% or $5,299.
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VALUING ACID MINE DRAINAGE REMEDIATION IN WEST VIRGINIA: A HEDONIC MODELING APPROACH