Dam It or Not
In perfect timing with Dan Phaneuf's post on cost/benefit analysis, Time.com has a nice piece on the use of cost benefit analysis as applied to dam removal (Is This Worth a Dam?):
Undoing dams that have outlived their usefulness--or whose social and economic utility is overshadowed by the environmental harm they do--is an idea that is catching on.
It looks like some people consider environmental harm to be a cost that can be compared to 'social and economic utility' (read benefits).
This week the California Resources Agency is host to a daylong workshop on the Hetch Hetchy [local river] question that promises to look broadly at what is known about the costs--and the benefits--of pulling the dam down.
There are benefits and costs to leaving a dam in place, and there are benefits and costs to removing a dam. Can cost/benefit analysis help us weigh the relative advantages and disadvantages of the alternatives? I think so (as do many others).
Tim, if you think so, maybe you -- unlike Dan Phaneuf -- can respond to some of the criticisms and objections raised in that discussion thread.
I also posted some on our blog here:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/7/14/93527/2146
Posted by: Dave Roberts | July 14, 2005 at 06:39 PM
One of the ironies of this story is that one of the economic methodologies used to help place monetary values on water resources, the "travel cost method," was developed largely because of the need to value the benefits of reservoir water recreation during the construction of these dams.
Posted by: John Whitehead | July 16, 2005 at 04:35 AM