Water Quality and Climate Change: What Are Consumers Willing to Pay to Reduce Health Risks?

Water utilities in Canada are charged with the important task of ensuring that consumers are supplied with good quality water that satisfies Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality published by Health Canada. Over the last decade, this job has become increasingly more difficult as source water quality has deteriorated due to the presence of agricultural and industrial pollution. Models of climate change predict an increase in extremes in weather conditions and an increase in average rainfall. Both are predicted to erode further the quality of source water, thereby putting even more stress upon water managers. Chlorine is the prevailing form of disinfectant. While it kills most microbes, by-products, including Trihalomethanes, have been identified as potentially carcinogenic. This paper addresses an important gap in our understanding of the importance of clean and safe drinking water to Canadians. We report on results from an Internet survey conducted in July 2004 that elicits preferences for risk reductions associated with cancer and microbial illness from water quality improvements. Several values that are of importance to policy makers include the value of mortality risk reduction, as separate from morbidity risk reduction, associated with cancer, and trade-offs between cancer risks and microbial illness risks. We would like to acknowledge financial support from our partners on this project: the Canadian Water Network/Réseau canadien de l’eau, a federally funded Network of Centre of Excellence, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Center for Environmental Economics, the Water Quality and Health Bureau, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch of Health Canada and the Office of the Chief Scientist, Health Canada. We would also like to thank the following people for their assistance in preparation and development of the questionnaires: Spencer Bahnzaf, Michael Batz, Lorie Srivastava, Anne Huennemeyer, Paul De Civita and Andrew Macdonald.