Water Pollution: Pollutant Trading Could Reduce Compliance Costs if Uncertainties are Resolved.
Abstract
Although significant progress has been made in the past two decades, innovative and cost-effective approaches are needed to help address the nation's remaining water quality problems. Pollutant trading is one such approach with potential as a supplement to traditional regulatory programs. While EPA is beginning to address some of the barriers to pollutant trading, a number of questions and concerns need to be resolved before trading's potential as a supplement to existing regulatory programs can be demonstrated. EPA can play a valuable role in this effort by helping others institute projects for a portion of the nearly 950 water bodies it identified as having trading potential. These projects could be specifically designed to test alternative approaches to deal with many of the questions and concerns that have been raised about trading. EPA then could share the "lessons learned" from these demonstration projects by providing detailed, specific guidance to others considering implementing a trading project. If the Congress wishes to see trading employed on a wider basis, it may want to address the concerns that some have raised about trading's legal status. This could be accomplished by amending the Clean Water Act to explicitly authorize trading under the act.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA298945
Entities
Organizations
- United States Government Accountability Office