Excerpt
POLICYMAKERS are under increasing public pressure to “do something” about protecting irreplaceable groundwater supplies. This “something” generally implies laws, rules, and regulations affecting activities ranging from underground gasoline storage to solid waste disposal to farming practices. The one thing on which all parties agree is that we need more information to help us make rational and equitable public policy decisions.
To “do something” in the absence of “enough information” poses an unavoidable dilemma. By imposing tough regulations on farmers, for example, is to interfere with production decisions and to risk backlash against efforts to protect groundwater quality. But to be more lenient, while purpoting to address the problem through the law, is likely to result in little more than “motherhood resolutions.” The policymaker is thus placed in a dilemma similar to that of the pitcher who is advised to “throw strikes, but don't give 'em anything good to hit.” In this case, we don't even know where the strike zone is!
Policymakers wish to propose prescriptions that protect groundwater, but that are no more restrictive than necessary. However, no one knows “how …
Footnotes
John J. Waelti is professor and extension economist, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, 55108.
- Copyright 1990 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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