A history of environmental mandates and the cost for wastewater treatment plants in Pennsylvania to meet the Chesapeake Bay nutrient reduction requirements.

摘要

ince the late 1960's the number of environmental regulations in the United States has drastically increased. A majority of these environmental regulations require various levels of government and private industries to expend enormous sums of money to comply with the regulations. Many of these regulations are passed on to the regulated community in the form of unfunded mandates, whereby the federal government provides little or no money for the various levels of government and private industries to comply. One such unfunded mandate is the Chesapeake Bay mandate which partly requires wastewater treatment plants to reduce the overall amount of nitrogen and phosphorous that they discharge into the Chesapeake Bay. This study focused primarily on upgrades at municipal wastewater treatment plants in Pennsylvania. Some studies estimated upgrade costs for these facilities as little as ;Completed surveys from 65 wastewater treatment facilities revealed that the costs to upgrade to remove nitrogen and phosphorous for the Bay mandate for only 36 out of the 65 facilities cost over