Improvement of lake water quality by paying farmers to abate nonpoint source pollution

Abstract

To mitigate damages caused by agricultural runoff, private lake owners' associations are paying for inlake and instream pollution abatement measures and onland conservation practices. This phenomenon supports the notion that individuals who benefit from improved water quality should be willing to pay part of the abatement costs. Our research suggests that onland conservation measures can substantially reduce sediment delivery at low cost. The Sediment Economics (SEDEC) model was modified and then used to select and to site management systems that achieved stated sediment goals at least cost. Other resource policies such as T value, no-till, and contouring were compared with the least-cost frontier and shown to be more costly. Abatement costs decreased substantially and sediment delivery increased only slightly when the same resource policies were applied to cropland areas closest to water channels. The research also pointed out the importance of noncropland areas adjacent to water channels. The noncropland areas substantially reduced sediment delivery to water channels and lowered abatement costs. Further research is needed for long-range watershed planning models such as SEDEC. More work is needed on the modelling of physical processes, particularly sediment delivery. The model also needs to be repackaged into a user-friendly format.U.S. Department of the Interior || U.S. Geological SurveyU.S. Geological SurveyOpe