718,798 research outputs found

    Water utility of the future: a case study of conservation as a service

    Full text link
    INTRODUCTION: Water utilities serving growing populations in dry climates face challenges in balancing increasing water demand with scarce supplies. New water supply sources are increasingly expensive and require construction of additional infrastructure for treatment and delivery. This poses a challenge for utilities to balance revenues and costs to remain financially viable. As a result, water utilities may face a difficult choice. If the utility chooses to develop new water supplies, they will have to increase their rates. However, they can also choose to assess alternative supply and demand management strategies to match revenues with the increasing marginal costs. Approaches such as water reuse, rainwater or condensate harvesting or harnessing other alternative sources are becoming increasingly widespread. Nonetheless, it is important to continuously assess and implement demand conservation programs, which often prove relatively quick, low-cost and straightforward to implement. [TRUNCATED

    Multi-Criteria Analysis of Factors Use Level: The Case of Water for Irrigation

    Get PDF
    In this paper we present a methodology to analyse input use in the agricultural sector. The novelty of the theoretical model explained is that it has been developed considering a multi-criteria environment. Thus, the optimal input use condition is determined by the assessment of “multi-attribute utility” and “multiattribute marginal utility”. We show how the approach adopted in this paper is a generalization of the single-attribute expected utility theory. The theoretical model developed is further implemented in an empirical application that studies water for irrigation use as a particular case. Results show how multi-attribute utility functions elicited for a sample of 52 irrigators explain differences on irrigation water use in relative homogenous agricultural systems, albeit exhibiting similar water partial utility functions. We conclude that these differences come from the dissimilar weights that farmers attached to each attribute in the aggregate utility function. The irrigated area considered as case study is located in North-western Spain.Production Theory, Input Use, MAUT, Water for Irrigation, Spain

    Valuing trout angling benefits of water quality improvements while accounting for unobserved lake characteristics: An application to the Rotorua Lakes

    Get PDF
    Trout angling is one of the most popular water-based recreational activities in the Rotorua Lakes. Despite the high demand for trout angling and other recreational purposes, water quality in some of these lakes has been declining over the past decades and initiatives to try to restore the lakes are underway. To compliment these efforts, this study uses the travel cost random utility models to explore how changes in water quality would impact upon angler’s choice of fishing destinations. The welfare impacts due to water quality changes and possible lake closures are also explored. These findings highlight the importance of discrete choice random utility models as a policy decision making tool for recreational-based natural resource managers in New Zealand. Additionally, this study represents one of the unique cases in travel cost random utility applications that accounts fully for unobserved site effect

    Utility Customers\u27 Views of the Consumer Confidence Report of Drinking Water Quality

    Get PDF
    The author evaluates consumer understanding of water quality reports provided to them by their drinking water utility under the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996

    Mechanisms to Ensure Pro-Poor Water Service Delivery in Peri-Urban and Urban areas

    Get PDF
    This report presents an overview of mechanisms for ensuring access to safe and affordable water services for the urban poor, as found in global literature. After presenting the main issues related to access to water services for the (peri-) urban poor in section 2, the report presents a number of options for improving utility-related water services to the poor in section 3, and options going beyond the utility in section 4. Finally, the conclusions of this report are presented in section 5

    MULTI-CRITERIA ANALYSIS OF FACTORS USE LEVEL: THE CASE OF WATER FOR IRRIGATION

    Get PDF
    In this paper we present a methodology to analyse input use in the agricultural sector. The novelty of the theoretical model explained is that it has been developed considering a multi-criteria environment. Thus, the optimal input use condition is determined by the assessment of "multi-attribute utility" and "multi-attribute marginal utility". We show how the approach adopted in this paper is a generalization of the single-attribute expected utility theory. The theoretical model developed is further implemented in an empirical application that studies water for irrigation use as a particular case. Results show how multi-attribute utility functions elicited for a sample of 52 irrigators explain differences on irrigation water use in relative homogenous agricultural systems, albeit exhibiting similar water partial utility functions. We conclude that these differences come from the dissimilar weights that farmers attached to each attribute in the aggregate utility function. The irrigated area considered as case study is located in North-western Spain.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

    Managerial ownership and urban water utilities efficiency in Uganda

    Get PDF
    This paper assesses the impact of the early 1980s neoliberalistic reform strategies in urban water distribution in developing countries. It examines in particular, the technical efficiency of two heterogeneous urban water utility-groups in Uganda. Performance is considered in light of the key urban water sector objectives that are to universally increase qualitative water coverage and enhance utility revenue. Using a two-staged bias-corrected metafrontier based on the data envelopment analysis estimators, the public-private (than the public-public) owned utilities are found less efficient. Efficiency differences between both groups are further linked to utilities scale of operation and market capture capabilities among other factors. The paper urges policy makers to strengthen public sector capabilities as a development policy solution for inclusive quality water services access among other basic public utility services in Uganda, Africa and the developing countries in general.Efficiency, managerial ownership, non-parametric, Uganda, urban water supply, water supply, water resource management, water utilities

    A recommendation on how the method of setting water prices in Scotland should be changed : customer financed capital as a notional loan to the utility

    Get PDF
    It is difficult to over-estimate the importance of setting prices appropriately for a major utility like water, given that inappropriate pricing can cause unnecessary damage to the comparative competitiveness of a country’s economy. In an earlier article in the Commentary, (Cuthbert and Cuthbert, 2007), we gave a critique of the current cost regulatory capital value (CCRCV) method of utility pricing: a method used, for example, in setting revenue limits, and so prices, in the water industry in Scotland and in England. While that article identified significant problems with the CCRCV approach, we did not make detailed recommendations about how these problems might be rectified. This paper makes a specific proposal about how CCRCV should be modified: our proposal is particularly well suited to the circumstances where, as in the case of Scottish Water, CCRCV pricing is being applied in a publicly owned utility. We argue that implementation of the proposed approach would have a number of advantages: in particular, it would lead to significantly lower water charges, while being fully sustainable well within current levels of public expenditure provision; it would reduce the likelihood of eventual privatisation of the water industry in Scotland; and there is the technical advantage of greatly reducing the cost to the Scottish Budget of the capital charge levied by the Treasury on the assets of the water industry in Scotland
    corecore