Environmental Federalism and the Safe Drinking Act: The Arizona Arsenic Experience

Abstract

This thesis examines the effect of the revised arsenic standard on Arizona public water systems (PWSs) in the context of environmental federalism. The thesis begins by briefly describing federalism, environmental federalism, and the revised arsenic standard. It goes on to discuss the benefit and cost estimates of the standard in detail and asserts that it is unclear whether the standard is a potential Pareto improvement for Arizona. The remainder of the thesis examines the distributional consequences of the revised standard with respect to Arizona PWSs. Using statistical and econometric techniques the thesis discovers that large PWSs are disproportionately affected by the standard. In addition, it finds that small PWSs are affected in absolute terms, which raises the issue of small system financing. These policy implications are then discussed in the context of the compliance history of PWSs to date. The thesis concludes by asserting that more reliable health benefits estimates are needed to determine if the uniform national arsenic standard is inefficient in Arizona.