A conceptual framework for measuring the benefits of groundwater protection

There is an increasing concern regarding the contamination of groundwater by hazardous materials. This concern is now being translated into private and public sector initiatives to implement waste disposal and other policies designed to protect groundwater. These activities generate substantial costs; the purpose of this paper is to establish a framework with which to measure the benefits of such efforts to protect groundwater. This benefits framework is based on the premise that the probabilistic value of protection is at least as great as the expected costs of contamination. These costs are shown to be sensitive to a variety of site-specific hydrogeologic and water use factors and general economic parameters. By facilitating benefit-cost comparisons, the framework provided here should help direct groundwater protection resources to their most efficient uses.