Costs And Water Quality Impacts Of Reducing Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution

Environmental problems in coastal ecosystems can sometimes be attributed to excess nutrients flowing from upstream watersheds into estuarine settings. This nutrient over-enrichment can result in toxic algal blooms, shellfish poisoning, coral reef destruction, and other harmful outcomes. All U.S. coasts show signs of nutrient over-enrichment, and scientists predict worsening problems in the years ahead. Clean Coastal Waters explains technical aspects of nutrient over-enrichment and proposes both immediate local action by coastal managers and a longer-term national strategy incorporating policy design, classification of affected sites, law and regulation, coordination, and communication. Highlighting the Gulf of Mexico's "Dead Zone," the Pfiesteria outbreak in a tributary of Chesapeake Bay, and other cases, the book explains how nutrients work in the environment, why nitrogen is important, how enrichment turns into over-enrichment, and why some environments are especially susceptible. Economic as well as ecological impacts are examined. In addressing abatement strategies, the committee discusses the importance of monitoring sites, developing useful models of over-enrichment, and setting water quality goals. The book also reviews voluntary programs, mandatory controls, tax incentives, and other policy options for reducing the flow of nutrients from agricultural operations and other sources.

Water pollution control has been a top environmental policy priority of the world’s most developed countries for decades, and the focus of significant regulation and public and private spending. Yet, significant water quality problems remain, and trends for some pollutants are in the wrong direction. This book addresses the economics of water pollution control and water pollution control policy in agriculture, with an aim towards providing students, environmental policy analysts, and other environmental professionals with economic concepts and tools essential to understanding the problem and crafting solutions that can be effective and efficient. The book will also examine existing policies and proposed reforms in the developed world. Although this book addresses and has a general applicability to major water pollutants from agriculture (e.g., pesticides, pharmaceuticals, sediments, nutrients), it will focus on the sediment and nutrient pollution problem. The economic and scientific foundations for pollution management are best developed for these pollutants, and they are currently the top priorities of policy makers. Accordingly, the authors provide both highly salient and informative cases for developing concepts and methods of general applicability, with high profile examples such as the Chesapeake Bay, Lake Erie, and the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone in the US; the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe; and Lake Taupo in New Zealand.

If you work in the water quality management field, you know the challenges of monitoring and controlling pollutants in our water supply. The increasing problem of agricultural nonpoint source pollution requires complex solutions. Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution: Watershed Management and Hydrology covers the latest techniques and methods of managing large watershed areas, with an emphasis on controlling non-point source pollution, especially from agricultural run-off. Written by leading experts, the book includes topics such as: nitrate and phosphorus pollution, pesticide contamination, erosion and sedimentation, water-table management, and watershed management. The authors discuss the effects of agricultural run-off - one of the most intransigent problems now faced by environmental engineers and hydrologists. They explore each issue with an eye towards the integrated management of water quality and water resources over a defined area or region. This single-source reference gives you a complete understanding of the whats, whys, and hows of nonpoint source pollution - and more importantly of how to monitor and manage it. Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution: Watershed Management and Hydrology provides a broad but detailed overview that helps you to comprehend the intricacies of the problem and puts you on the path to finding the answers.

Nonpoint-source pollution (NPSP) poses a special challenge to society's ability to manage its collective environmental good - especially surface and groundwater quality. Since there is no `point', such as an outfall pipe, from which the pollution is being discharged and can be measured, pollution can reach the ambient environment without being monitored. Since management of air and water polution requires the definition and enforcement of limits on discharges or the imposition of fees on those discharges, inability to measure limits our ability to manage this environmental problem. This book presents a state-of-the-art review and discussion of economists' efforts to resolve this major problem and attempts to provide a way of working around it. The book sets forth the theoretical issues, modeling, and the actual programs set up to confront this issue.