Preliminary Research Question: Is River Restoration Profitable?

Can river restoration be sold as an investment for water users? In other words, can restoration activities be justified by a reduction in water management costs downstream? Initially, I considered studying the financial costs of all water users downstream but I may need to focus on water treatment facilities since they are the largest water user with the highest expenditures.

To answer my question, I must understand the relationship between the water quality and treatment cost. If one could establish this relationship, one might find that a marginal improvement in water quality could lead to significant reduction in treatment costs. Since the Llobregat is highly polluted (low water quality), my initial assumption is that the treatment facilities are probably operating on the higher and more expensive end of this relationship.

Of course, specifying the relationship between water quality and treatment cost will not be easy. There are several obstacles. For example, there might be thresholds associated with certain contaminants which would create a step function. Another challenge will be defining “water quality” or “water pollution”. Both terms are comprised of many variables, often in different units. Similarly, cost data may fluctuate over time for reasons independent of water quality.

Studies have found that cleaner surface water can reduce treatment costs, although it is unclear by how much. One study in Texas found that a 1 percent increase in turbidity was associated with increased chemical cost of 0.25%. Furthermore, when comparing the presence or absence of a contamination index, the presence of contamination increased the chemical cost of water treatment an additional USD $20 to a total of USD $95 per million gallons (3,785 m3) (Dearborn 1998). More information on the total cost of water treatment would be necessary to assess the relative magnitude of these values. Also, one cannot expect to find the same level of savings as in the well known example of New York City drinking water because most urban areas already have constructed water filtration systems (Thompson 2007).

Is the ecosystem services framework useful for river restoration in the Barcelona metropolitan region?

The ecosystem services framework may provide a useful entry point for addressing competing water needs in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region. In the spring of 2008 the Barcelona Metropolitan Region confronted its worst droughts in recent history. The Catalan Government implemented severe water restrictions and initiated emergency plans including the importation of desalinated water on boats from southern Spain. Authorities were concerned that water restrictions would exacerbate citizen discontent and destabilize a weak economy dependent on tourism revenue. At the same time, the European Union has mandated watershed restoration plans to obtain “good ecological status” in all water bodies including rivers (ACA 2006). The Catalan government is under pressure to meet the needs of its residents without further degrading riparian ecosystems.

Can ecosystem services help uncover win-win solutions to address Catalonia’s water problems? I begin my research open with the possibility that the ecosystem services framework is significantly more limited than advocates make it out to be. At least the literature on hydrologic services makes it clear that tradeoffs will be inevitable (Brauman et al. 2007). Furthermore, the links between water attributes such as quantity, quality, timing, and location are not easily translated into numerical values for policy makers. Perhaps surface water quality provides one of the clearest links between restoring “good ecological status” and human well-being.

Another more complex connection between ecosystem functions and human well-being relates land use, water quality and water treatment. The urbanization of a watershed with impervious surfaces is closely related to diminished water quality (Moglen & Kim 2007). This creates an incentive for water users, treatment managers and service providers to minimize development impacts on the hydrologic cycle. Are water users, treatment managers and service providers willing to pay for land conservation to protect their watershed and reduce (or stabilize) water treatment expenses? A study on this question with water service providers in California found that land was too expensive to offset the ecosystem benefits gained from protection (Thompson 2007). They concluded that for conservation to make financial sense, the hydrologic services alone are not enough. To make a convincing case for land conservation, the ecosystem services will need to be bundled. Attempts to calculate the bundled value of ecosystem services across a landscape are still preliminary. Only recently have researchers used this approach to identify and prioritize areas for conservation (Chan et. al 2006; Naidoo & Ricketts 2006). Indeed, much of the discussion on ecosystem services has been in a conservation context. The degraded conditions of the Llobregat watershed will permit an exploration of the utility of the ecosystem services concept in a restoration context. Are the ecosystem services sufficient to merit their restoration?

More on Ecosystem Services

People and cities depend on the goods and services produced by our planet’s ecosystems. This dependent relationship between human well-being and the biophysical world is eloquently encapsulated by the relatively new notion of ecosystem services. The food we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we drink all derive from ecosystem processes. However our dependence on these ecosystems has not prevented us from stressing them to the point where we have reduced their capacity to meet our needs (MA 2003). To maintain our valuable ecosystem services intact we must improve our management and decision making. The ecosystem services framework promises to generate the interdisciplinary tools of the future that can meet this challenge. This approach is quintessentially interdisciplinary as it weaves together the physical, biological, and social sciences into a framework for decision-making. The successful integration of these fields into a coherent and practical framework has the potential to transform environmental policy at all scales.

Proponents of ecosystem services have argued that this framework offers the most promising way forward for the field of conservation biology (Armsworth et al. 2007). Protecting our life support systems has also resonated with advocates for the global poor (Sachs & Reid 2006). Major research institutions, conservation organizations, foundations and the private sector are investing in advanced research on ecosystem services. Stanford University has selected this topic as a core area of research. Consistent with this objective, the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford has teamed up with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and The Nature Conservancy (TNC), to create the Natural Capital Project[1] – a bold new initiative that brings together leading intellectuals and conservation practitioners to create new decision making tools for ecosystem managers. Millions of dollars are being invested in this initiative (pers. com. P. Kareiva, 2007). These groups are gambling that a breakthrough in ecosystem services research will open new avenues for solving sustainability challenges. The vast potential of this field has not escaped attention of the popular media (Montenegro 2008). Ecosystem services research promises to find win-win solutions that have a broad appeal to government leaders, business owners, and the public at large. New ecosystem management approaches that weave together the natural and social sciences could transform conservation biology, land-use planning and environmental policy.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) defines ecosystem services as the benefits that humans obtain from ecosystems (MA 2003). This concise definition has become the standard for the field. In fact, the MA has become the benchmark document for nearly every study grappling with ecosystem services. A coalition of United Nations agencies spearheaded the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment by bringing together international experts in the natural and social sciences. This team was asked to synthesize the existing scientific information on the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being. Their report targeted global leaders who manage ecosystems and look after the well being of their constituents (Carpenter et al. 2006). In the process of conducting this assessment, the MA organized our understanding of ecosystem services and mapped out the health of our planet. With regular updates scheduled every 5 to 10 years, the MA process has been modeled after the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (MA 2003).

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[1] See www.naturalcapitalproject.org

Field Work Reflection: Closer to a dissertation topic

Researching for Locals and Academics

My goal this summer was to find a research question that contributed to two distinct conversations. On the on hand, I want to address local problems in the Llobregat basin. Simultaneously, I want my research to advance the literature on river restoration or management. Finding a question that speaks both to local users and the larger academic community has not been easy. Many local questions could be answered by environmental consultants without creating new knowledge. As such, they are not appropriate for PhD research. On the other hand, I would be uncomfortable answering a question devoid of local salience.

This summer I conducted preliminary field work that introduced me to the Llobregat River, its managers, history, and competing uses. From mid June to mid August, I interviewed experts and gathered documentation in Barcelona. In order to see the current river conditions first hand, I hiked the length of the river from the Pyrenees Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea. Over the course of ten days and 170 kilometers, I met local users and neighbors who shared their knowledge of the river, its past, present and potential future.

Framing the Research in the Llobregat Watershed

The Llobregat River is highly polluted and heavily managed. Still, millions depend on surface water from the Llobregat for industrial, agricultural and domestic uses. Treating the highly polluted river for drinking water purposes exposes Barcelona residents to several public health risks that few are willing to discuss openly. Water managers at the two treatment facilities have been dealing with industrial contaminants and mining residue dumped into the Llobregat for decades. Potash mines have been contaminating the Llobregat with salts since the 1930s, and industrial waste has been dumped in the river since the 1960s. This has not stopped the region from relying on the Llobregat River to meet its basic water needs.

The private company Aigües de Barcelona (AGBAR) built the first water treatment plant on the shores of the Llobregat in the 1950’s. Since then they have mixed treated surface water with high quality groundwater from the Llobregat Delta aquifer. ABGAR built the water treatment facility in the lower segment of the river outside the city of Barcelona in the suburb of Sant Joan Despí. This site has proven unfortunate because it is located downstream of major industries at the bottom of the watershed. The surface water to ground water ratio at the AGBAR plant is usually around 50/50, and the average intake from the Llobregat is 3 cubic meters per second (m³/s). During the dry season, the AGBAR facility frequently diverts the entire Llobregat River into the treatment plant. However the river does not run dry because immediately after the diversion point, another pipe dumps industrial waste and treated wastewater into the riverbed.

In the 1970’s the Catalan Government built a second water treatment plant upstream in the town of Abrera. This plant is managed by the public water agency Aigües Ter-Llobregat (ATLL) who is responsible for treating water from the Llobregat and Ter Rivers and then re-selling it to municipal providers. While the extraction point in Abrera is upstream of many industries, they too have considerable problems maintaining water quality. On the day of my visit, the water was dark red prior to filtration. I was told that this was unusual, but later when I visited the ABGAR plant they asked me if the ATLL plant in Abrera continued to struggle with the red dyes.

Both facilities use classic water treatment technology with large sedimentation ponds and sand filters. They avoid disinfecting with chlorine as much as possible because it reacts with organic matter to produce carcinogenic trihalomethanes. Instead, they disinfect with with ozone (O₃) and chlorine dioxide. Within the last decade, both treatment plants have installed activated carbon filters. The carbon filters are expensive, and the maintenance consists of shipping them to large ovens in Italy where they burn off filtered material. After every burning, the damaged carbon must be replaced with new material. These maintenance expenses may be a critical component of a dissertation that tries to relate treatment costs with water quality.

While the activated carbon filters brought considerable improvements in drinking water quality, the taste has remained poor. Both water treatment plants are now investing in advanced membrane technology that will remove additional contaminants, especially various salts compounds. The Llobregat River becomes extraordinarily salty after it passes the potash mines in the towns of Sallent and Cardona. The salts in the Llobregat have plagued drinking water managers for decades and have been responsible for a consistently poor taste in Barcelona’s tap water. In the 1980’s, the Catalan government tried to mitigate salt contamination by diverting salt runoff from the mines into a long pipe that ran 100 kilometers from mines to the Mediterranean. This pipe collects the salty stormwater runoff and to some degree, has reduced the river’s salinity. However maintaining the pipe has been difficult and periodic breaks have released heavy salt loads onto fields destroying crops or into the river disrupting aquatic ecosystems.

When I visited the water treatment plants, both were undergoing major construction to install the modern desalination technology. It was odd to see desalination systems being installed in a freshwater ecosystem and I wondered if there was any precedent for this absurdity. Both of these systems are costing millions of Euros. The public agency ATLL is purchasing electrodialysis desalination equipment manufactured by General Electric, while downstream, the private firm AGBAR is investing in reverse osmosis. Both systems are highly energy intensive and costly to maintain. Nevertheless, AGBAR is a profit driven firm that would not have invested in desalination had the project not been deemed financial viable. At the same time, I suspect that these projects have been partially subsidized by the European Union or other government agencies, thereby reducing the investment burden.

The investment in desalination shows that water managers in Catalonia are implementing an “end of pipe” solution to mitigate its environmental woes. Instead of addressing the contamination at its source, water managers have chosen to make a huge investment in a new technology that is costly to purchase and maintain. In this respect, they are moving in the opposite direction of water managers from New York City who have avoided expensive filtration by investing in watershed management upstream. The case of New York City’s water supply is perhaps the most frequently cited example of intelligent water management because the protection of the Catskill watershed came at only a fraction of the cost of the planned filtration plant. The financial savings have been estimated at USD $6 to $8 billion, plus $300 million per year in maintenance (Chichilnisky & Heal 1998, National Research Council 2000). While these avoided costs have erroneously been referred to as the “value” of the ecosystem services, it is nevertheless a good example of a successful strategy that protects ecosystems and improves water management.

Initially I was discouraged to learn about the magnitude of the investment in desalination along the shores of the Llobregat. Had I began my dissertation five years ago, I probably could have made a strong case in favor of river restoration at its source, mirroring the experience from New York City, and potentially help redirect the millions invested in desalination into watershed management instead. So now that this investment is underway, are there no longer economic arguments in favor of river restoration? Is the concept of ecosystem services only useful for averting infrastructure investments? How can the notion of ecosystem services still be applied in the Llobregat watershed?

My interviews with river managers in Spain made it clear that they do not need a dissertation to inform them that the Llobregat River is polluted. Nor are they interested in a dissertation about river restoration methods – for the most part, they have the capacity to restore geomorphology and improve wastewater treatment. However river managers did express interest in studies that could strengthen linkages between restoration activities upstream and water users downstream. If river managers had more evidence that restoration investments in the upper parts of the watershed could produce tangible benefits for water users throughout the river’s course, this evidence could refocus attention away from the “end of pipe” approaches and encourage restoration efforts in the upper parts of the watershed.

The questions posed by water managers in Spain fit nicely into a broader discussion in the academic literature on ecosystem services.