An Economic Perspective on Fiscal Sustainability of U.S. Water Utilities: What We Know and Think We Know

2021 ◽  
pp. 2150001
Author(s):  
Mohammad Ali ◽  
Jingjing Wang ◽  
Heather Himmelberger ◽  
Jennifer Thacher
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Water Demand ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Fiscal Sustainability ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Economic Perspective ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Major Factors ◽  
Over Time

A key issue facing U.S. water utilities is that while costs are generally fixed and increasing over time, the revenue is typically variable and has generally been decreasing/dampening over time, making it harder to maintain fiscal sustainability. Based on a comprehensive review of the relevant literature, we highlight the major factors that can potentially impact the fiscal sustainability of a water utility from an economic perspective. Furthermore, using numerical examples and data from North Carolina, we critically examine which of these factors actually contribute to the fiscal unsustainability of water utilities. We conclude that decreases in demand and increases in costs are the two primary driving forces. Particularly, rate increases cannot be attributed as a determinant of fiscal unsustainability because of the inelastic nature of water demand. Finally, we also highlight strategies for U.S. water utilities to improve their fiscal sustainability.

scholarly journals Aplicabilidade do modelo matemático SAD-IPH na análise de processos de outorga: o caso da Bacia do Ribeirão Taquaruçu

2021 ◽  
pp. 208-234
Author(s):  
FERNÁN VERGARA ◽  
◽  
VIVIANE CHIESA ◽  
CECILIA COSTA ◽  
ROBERTA OLIVEIRA ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Demand ◽  
Water Security ◽  
Water Sources ◽  
Dry Season ◽  
Water Yield ◽  
Yield Reduction ◽  
Mathematical Tool ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Local Water ◽  
Over Time

In order to issue a water permit, which allows abstraction of water in a given place, the issuer needs to make sure, based on the hydrology of the region, that the amount of water available in the water body is sufficient to meet not only the demand associated with the required entitlement, but also all the existing demands from other users in the basin. This paper aims at evaluating the usefulness of the SAD-IPH mathematical model to simulate water demand scenarios in the Ribeirão Taquaruçu basin, located in the city of Palmas, state of Tocantins. Simulations provided by the SAD-IPH model indicate that the balance between water availability and demand is already critical in some parts of the basin, especially during the dry season, and the situation worsens over time. These results clearly suggest the local water utility needs to search for new water sources to meet the growing demand, mainly during the dry season. Results show the mathematical tool used in the analysis provides new and valuable information to decision makers (water resources institutions and river basin committees), potentially reducing the risk of making bad decisions. Additionally, as a water security measure, it is crucial to enforce the preservation of sensitive areas in the watershed because there is already an intense occupation in preserved areas next to water sources, a process that is likely to result in water yield reduction, which combined with an increase in the water demand over time, will compromise water security.

Enhancing community welfare through improved water quality: a case for applying staggered pollution charges in the river Musi sub-basin of Andhra Pradesh, India

Water Policy ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 469-483
Author(s):  
Tishya Chatterjee
Keyword(s):  
Andhra Pradesh ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Pollution Prevention ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
Marginal Costs ◽  
Community Acceptance ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Over Time

In conditions of severe water-pollution and dormant community acceptance of accumulating environmental damage, the regulator's role goes beyond pollution prevention and more towards remediation and solutions based on the community's long-term expectations of economic benefits from clean water. This paper suggests a method to enable these benefits to become perceptible progressively, through participatory clean-up operations, supported by staggered pollution charges. It analyses the relevant literature on pollution prevention and applies a cost-based “willingness to pay” model, using primary basin-level data of total marginal costs. It develops a replicable demand-side approach imposing charge-standard targets over time in urban-industrial basins of developing countries.

Benchmarking Risk Analysis Practice in the International Water Sector

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
B.H. MacGillivray ◽  
P.D. Hamilton ◽  
S.E. Hrudey ◽  
L. Reekie ◽  
S.J.T Pollard
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Risk Analysis ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Water Sector ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Analysis Techniques ◽  
The Usa ◽  
International Water ◽  
Practical Guidance ◽  
The Uk

Risk analysis in the water utility sector is fast becoming explicit. Here, we describe application of a capability model to benchmark the risk analysis maturity of a sub-sample of eight water utilities from the USA, the UK and Australia. Our analysis codifies risk analysis practice and offers practical guidance as to how utilities may more effectively employ their portfolio of risk analysis techniques for optimal, credible, and defensible decision making.

The Role of Vascular Aging in Atherosclerotic Plaque Development and Vulnerability

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (29) ◽  
pp. 3098-3111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Liberale ◽  
Giovanni G. Camici
Keyword(s):  
Atherosclerotic Plaque ◽  
Molecular Mechanisms ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Plaque Burden ◽  
Vascular Aging ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Plaque Development ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Over Time

Background: The ongoing demographical shift is leading to an unprecedented aging of the population. As a consequence, the prevalence of age-related diseases, such as atherosclerosis and its thrombotic complications is set to increase in the near future. Endothelial dysfunction and vascular stiffening characterize arterial aging and set the stage for the development of cardiovascular diseases. Atherosclerotic plaques evolve over time, the extent to which these changes might affect their stability and predispose to sudden complications remains to be determined. Recent advances in imaging technology will allow for longitudinal prospective studies following the progression of plaque burden aimed at better characterizing changes over time associated with plaque stability or rupture. Oxidative stress and inflammation, firmly established driving forces of age-related CV dysfunction, also play an important role in atherosclerotic plaque destabilization and rupture. Several genes involved in lifespan determination are known regulator of redox cellular balance and pre-clinical evidence underlines their pathophysiological roles in age-related cardiovascular dysfunction and atherosclerosis. Objective: The aim of this narrative review is to examine the impact of aging on arterial function and atherosclerotic plaque development. Furthermore, we report how molecular mechanisms of vascular aging might regulate age-related plaque modifications and how this may help to identify novel therapeutic targets to attenuate the increased risk of CV disease in elderly people.

Linking Identity Politics and Foreign Policy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisel Hintz
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
Inside Out ◽  
Domestic Level ◽  
Over Time

This chapter provides clear definitions of the concepts the book uses and the theory of inside-out identity contestation it develops. The chapter defines competing identity proposals as suggested understandings of the national self that prescribe and proscribe specific behaviors and red lines as particularly intolerable points of contention among supporters of various proposals. It then argues that identity hegemony is the goal of these supporters, and contestation is the process by which the contours of identity debates change over time in supporters’ efforts to achieve hegemony. The chapter briefly reviews relevant literature to carve out space for the book’s theoretical argument: when supporters of a proposal are blocked at the domestic level, they take their fight “outside” through the use of international institutional conditionality, transnational activist networks, and/or diasporic politics. The chapter also discusses the methodology of intertextual analysis and process tracing employed in the study.

Socio economic influences on the restoration and maintenance of the water environment

1998 ◽  
Vol 37 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Peter Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Water Environment ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Water Services ◽  
Economic Issue ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Influences ◽  
Mind Set

Protection of the water environment has become a modern socio economic issue in which the sociological pressures for a healthy water environment must be balanced with affordability. Reconciliation of these aspects requires clear political thinking and rigorous methodologies. It also requires a shift in mind-set which considers members of the public as customers. Water utilities are the major users of the water environment and potentially its greatest threat – so good delivery of water services is very important. The presentation addresses the topic through the experience of Anglian Water, a privatised water utility serving Eastern England.

scholarly journals How Perceptions of Trust, Risk, Tap Water Quality, and Salience Characterize Drinking Water Choices

Hydrology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Madeline A. Grupper ◽  
Madeline E. Schreiber ◽  
Michael G. Sorice
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Risk Perceptions ◽  
Anthropogenic Impacts ◽  
Tap Water ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
The Public ◽  
Water Behavior

Provision of safe drinking water by water utilities is challenged by disturbances to water quality that have become increasingly frequent due to global changes and anthropogenic impacts. Many water utilities are turning to adaptable and flexible strategies to allow for resilient management of drinking water supplies. The success of resilience-based management depends on, and is enabled by, positive relationships with the public. To understand how relationships between managers and communities spill over to in-home drinking water behavior, we examined the role of trust, risk perceptions, salience of drinking water, and water quality evaluations in the choice of in-home drinking water sources for a population in Roanoke Virginia. Using survey data, our study characterized patterns of in-home drinking water behavior and explored related perceptions to determine if residents’ perceptions of their water and the municipal water utility could be intuited from this behavior. We characterized drinking water behavior using a hierarchical cluster analysis and highlighted the importance of studying a range of drinking water patterns. Through analyses of variance, we found that people who drink more tap water have higher trust in their water managers, evaluate water quality more favorably, have lower risk perceptions, and pay less attention to changes in their tap water. Utility managers may gauge information about aspects of their relationships with communities by examining drinking water behavior, which can be used to inform their future interactions with the public, with the goal of increasing resilience and adaptability to external water supply threats.

Sanskritization in Pāli

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan G. Levman
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Early Language ◽  
Phonological Constraints ◽  
Dialect Variation ◽  
Major Factors ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
Over Time

Abstract This article continues the discussion on the nature of the early language of Buddhism and the language that the Buddha spoke, arguing that the received Pāli transmission evolved out of an earlier Middle Indic idiom, which is identified as a koine. Evidence for this koine can be found by examining correspondence sets within Pāli and its various varieties and by examining parallel, cognate correspondence sets between Pāli and other Prakrits which have survived. This article compares 30 correspondence sets transmitted in the Dhammapada recensions: the Gāndhārī Prakrit verses, the partially Sanskritized Pāli and Patna Dhammapada Prakrit verses, and the fully Sanskritized verses of the Udānavarga. By comparing cognate words, it demonstrates the existence of an underlying inter-language which in many cases can be shown to be the source of the phonological differences in the transmission. The paper includes a discussion on the two major factors of dialect change, evolution with variation over time, and the diffusionary, synchronic influence of dialect variation; it concludes that both are important, with dialect variation – and the phonological constraints of indigenous speakers who adopted MI as a second language – providing the pathways on which the natural evolutionary process was channeled.

The same deep water as you? The impact of alternative governance arrangements of water service delivery on efficiency

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Rodrigues ◽  
António F Tavares
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Authority ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Switching Regression ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Utility Systems ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Switching Regression Models ◽  
Governance Arrangements

This work contributes to the literature on water governance by attempting to provide an answer to the question of what are the differences in efficiency of alternative governance arrangements of water utilities. We test hypotheses derived from property rights, principal–agent, and transaction costs theories using a comprehensive database of 260 water utility systems provided by the Portuguese Regulatory Authority of Water and Waste Services. Using endogenous switching regression models estimated through maximum likelihood, the study is designed in two steps. First, we investigate differences in efficiency between in-house options and externalization and find that in-house solutions as a set (direct provision and municipal companies) are more efficient than externalization options (mixed companies and concessions). Second, we test differences in efficiency within both in-house and externalization solutions, and fail to find statistically significant differences in efficiency between in-house bureaucracies and municipal companies and between mixed companies and concessions.

Mathematical Models for Predicting and Managing Water Resources — The Case of China in 2025

2013 ◽  
Vol 448-453 ◽  
pp. 995-1001
Author(s):  
Ning Na Wang ◽  
Qin Lin Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
Water Demand ◽  
Optimal Allocation ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Grey System ◽  
Allocation Model ◽  
Water Supply Management ◽  
Generate Solution ◽  
Major Factors

An effective management of water supply is critically significant to a countrys water utilities, and accurate prediction of water supply and demand is of key importance for water supply management. The objectives of this paper are to use Grey System Model (GSM) and Linear Regression Model to forecast the water demand and water supply respectively in China 2025, and then propose a new Optimal Allocation Model (OAM) to generate solution so that analysts and decision makers can gain insight and understanding. The two predictive models take into account four major factors including domestic development, agriculture, industries and eco-environment, calculating a deficit between water demand and water supply in China 2025. Then the OAM, which considers desalinization, irrigation saving and urban recycling, provides a feasible solution to fill the gap and an effectual management of water supply.

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