Valuing drinking water provision as an ecosystem service in the neuse river basin
Abstract
The valuation of ecosystem services such as drinking water provision is of growing
national and international interest. The cost of drinking water provision is directly
linked to the quality of its raw water input, which is itself affected by upstream
land use patterns. This analysis employs the benefit transfer method to quantify the
economic benefits of water quality improvements for drinking water production in the
Neuse River Basin in North Carolina. Two benefit transfer approaches, value transfer
and function transfer, are implemented by combining the results of four previously
published studies with data collected from eight Neuse Basin water treatment plants.
The mean net present value of the cost reduction estimates for the entire Neuse Basin
ranged from $2.7 million to $16.6 million for a 30% improvement in water quality over
a 30-year period. The value-transfer approach tended to produce larger expected benefits
than the function-transfer approach, but both approaches produced similar results
despite the differences in their methodologies, time frames, study sites, and assumptions.
© 2010 ASCE.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6743Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000058Publication Info
Elsin, YK; Kramer, RA; & Jenkins, WA (2010). Valuing drinking water provision as an ecosystem service in the neuse river basin.
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 136(4). pp. 474-482. 10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000058. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6743.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Randall Kramer
Juli Plant Grainger Professor Emeritus of Global Environmental Health
Before coming to Duke in 1988, he was on the faculty at Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University. He has held visiting positions at IUCN--The World Conservation
Union, the Economic Growth Center at Yale University, and the Indonesian Ministry
of Forestry. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank, World Health Organization
and other international organizations. He was named Duke University's Scholar Teacher
of the Year in 2004.
Kramer's research is focused on the econ

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