"When they left the rock or tree or sand dune that had sheltered them for the night, the Navajo was careful to obliterate every trace of their temporary occupation. He buried the embers of the fire and the remnants of food, unpiled any stones he had piled together, filled up the holes he had scooped in the sand. Since this was exactly Jacinto's procedure, Father Latour judged that, just as it was the white man's way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it, make it over a little (at least to leave some mark or memorial of his sojourn), it was the Indian's way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like fish through the water, or birds through the air."
From Death Comes for the Archbishop (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright 1926, 1927, by Willa Cather).
The present and proposed subsidy programs are quite different from the effluent charges system. In the opinion of many, they also are far less desirable.
First, subsidies for treatment of plant construction do not in themselves provide an incentive to take action to control waste discharges. Even if an industry is paid a major proportion of the cost of constructing a waste treatment plant, it is still cheaper, from the industry's standpoint, to dump untreated waste into the river. Thus, the subsidy arrangement cannot work unless accompanied by enforcement or by other pressures on the waste discharger.
Second, to the extent that the subsidy system does work, it tends to bias the choice of techniques in an inefficient direction. It encourages the construction of treatment plants with federal subsidy, even though internal controls would be cheaper.
Finally, subsidies do not yield revenue; they further strain an already seriously overextended system. The effluent charges system, however, yields income that can be put to useful public purposes, including improvements in the quality of our environment. From a social point of view, perhaps the best imaginable tax base is an activity that causes external diseconomies— i.e., effects external to the activities of the economic unit producing them. A tax on this kind of base not only provides revenue but tends to improve the overall allocation of the resources with which society has to work.
There are compelling reasons for favoring the effluent charges system, but it may be difficult for some states and regions to pioneer such a substantial departure from previous practice. The federal government's greater insulation from powerful local interests provides an opportunity for leadership.
One approach would be to levy a national effluent charge on all dischargers of more than a given minimum amount of waste. The charge could be based on a formula similar to that used in the Ruhr area of West Germany (and more recently in France, Czechoslovakia, and England), or on those used by certain U.S. municipalities in levying sewer service charges on industry. It could be supplemented at the discretion of states or regional agencies having responsibility for water quality management. Revenues obtained by the government could be made available to finance the federal program. Excess federal revenues could be turned over to local governments or could be used to establish regional water quality management agencies.
Research over the past several years clearly shows that major efficiencies can be obtained by implementing water quality management systems on a regional basis. In addition to the standard treatment of wastewaters, such systems could include riverflow regulation, putting air directly into streams to speed up purification, brief periods of high-level chemical treatment during adverse conditions, and so on.
Studies of the Potomac, the Miami of Ohio, the Delaware, the San Francisco Bay region, and other areas have shown beyond question the economies to be realized by a regional approach. This approach, however, can be implemented effectively only by a regional river basin agency having the authority to plan, construct, and operate the necessary facilities. So far, this approach has received minimal federal support.
The federal government could, of course, take direct action by setting up regional water quality management agencies as separate entities, such as TVA or regional units of federal agencies. But there has been so much opposition to arrangements of this nature that it is questionable whether the government would be willing to move in this fashion.
An alternative would be for the government to establish incentives and guidelines for the organization and operation of regional management agencies, either under state law or through interstate compacts. An agency with adequate authority to plan and implement a regional water quality management system would be eligible for a grant to help staff the agency and to make the first data collections, analyses, and formulations of specific measures for water quality management. If the proposed program and the plan for implementation satisfied federal criteria for efficient operation, the government could perhaps authorize a grant for a portion of the construction and operating expenses.
A system of this kind might be limited to, say, five years. During this period, it would be necessary to work out longer-term arrangements for financing the agency. Clearly, the proposed effluent charges system could play a major role in this. Presumably, administration of the effluent charges system would be turned over to the regional agencies, and the federal level of charges would be considered a baseline. In this manner, regional measures would be financed and appropriate incentives would be provided to waste dischargers to cut back on their emissions.
A version of this article appeared in print in the June 1970 issue of Resources magazine.
