Uncertainty in Water Resource Planning: An Economic Evaluation of a Water Use Reduction Alternative

摘要

This study examines water consumption in the residential sector for a New Hampshire community. The study illustrates when and where monetary costs accrued to water cutbacks occur in the residential sector, the effect of seasonal demand on shortage costs is shown, and time is included as a penalty factor in assessing the costs of shortage of varying quantity amounts. The methodology developed gives a community an individually tailored range of costs and losses for varying sizes of percentage cuts in water demand over varying time periods. Rather than tie shortage penalty costs to size of shortage in linear fashion, or develop a shortage penalty cost function that is based on three different levels of shortage in three different towns, the individualism of the community is emphasized. If a town is planning to increase its water supply capacity, is can develop its own shortage cost function based on the range of losses that can be expected, along with including duration. These can be measured for each year into the future for which it is expected there will be a water shortage or artifically generated water cutbacks and compared to the costs of increasing supply.