Collective Utility of Exchanging Treated Sewage Effluent for Irrigation and Mining Water

Abstract

The concept of collective utility is applied to a case study of alternative water resource utilization by providing a basis for comparing alternative uses of resources from the viewpoint of aggregate welfare. The exchange of sewage effluent for groundwater used by irrigation farmers, and the exchange of sewage effluent for groundwater used by processing and milling miners in Tucson, Arizona, are given as examples. Reviewed are collective utility concepts, case problems, definitions of problems, formulation of the model, and marginal change of collective utility. The first case has a collective utility of $800,500-g, where g represents unquantifiable factors, such as the reduction in quality of living due to the odor if solid waste exchanges. The second case has a collective utility of $175,000. Since it is likely that g will be on the order of $1 million per year, the first exchange is preferable to the second.