College of Agriculture & Natural Resources

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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.

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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Worldwide Regulations and Guidelines for Agricultural Water Reuse: A Critical Review
    (MDPI, 2020-03-29) Shoushtarian, Farshid; Negahban-Azar, Masoud
    Water reuse is gaining momentum as a beneficial practice to address the water crisis, especially in the agricultural sector as the largest water consumer worldwide. With recent advancements in wastewater treatment technologies, it is possible to produce almost any water quality. However, the main human and environmental concerns are still to determine what constituents must be removed and to what extent. The main objectives of this study were to compile, evaluate, and compare the current agricultural water reuse regulations and guidelines worldwide, and identify the gaps. In total, 70 regulations and guidelines, including Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO), the United States (state by state), European Commission, Canada (all provinces), Australia, Mexico, Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Palestine, Oman, China, Kuwait, Israel, Saudi Arabia, France, Cyprus, Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Italy were investigated in this study. These regulations and guidelines were examined to compile a comprehensive database, including all of the water quality monitoring parameters, and necessary treatment processes. In summary, results showed that the regulations and guidelines are mainly human-health centered, insufficient regarding some of the potentially dangerous pollutants such as emerging constituents, and with large discrepancies when compared with each other. In addition, some of the important water quality parameters such as some of the pathogens, heavy metals, and salinity are only included in a small group of regulations and guidelines investigated in this study. Finally, specific treatment processes have been only mentioned in some of the regulations and guidelines, and with high levels of discrepancy.
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    Essays on Regulatory Uncertainty & Energy Development in the American West
    (2021) Hunt, Jeffrey; Linn, Joshua; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation undertakes an analysis of regulation in the American West, investigating the effects of expropriation uncertainty and technological change in the leasing process.The first chapter explores the possible expropriation of drilling rights due to the addition of the sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act. Leveraging prior decisions of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, I estimate there was a 52.6% chance the sage-grouse would be listed. Using the real-options framework of Kellogg (2014) and constructing an extension of his simulation to accommodate expropriation risk parameterized by real-world drilling data, I find that developers are expected to delay spudding wells to wait out the uncertainty. This result is corroborated with a Cox proportional hazards model. Additionally, using a difference-in-differences model I find robust evidence that developers reduce their bids for leases commensurate with the expected reduction in profits from possible regulation, and using a conditional logit discrete choice model I find evidence that firms abandon core sage-grouse habitat. Lastly, I find no evidence that developers increase the extraction rate of drilled wells. The second chapter investigates expropriation risk in the context of ozone pollution controls from the Environmental Protection Agency. Here, I find a hurry-up-and-drill response. I place this result within the literature of the green paradox, and find that the EPA regulation did not produce a green paradox but if costs were lower, or if the regulation were modified, a green paradox would have existed and briefly result in higher emissions under a stricter regulatory regime. The policy takeaway is that regulators should avoid a long announcement period, as it gives developers time to drain wells before regulation occurs. The third chapter is a cost/benefit test of auctioning drilling leases online rather than in-person. I leverage the fact that only specific leasing jurisdictions transitioned to an online system called EnergyNet in late 2016 to estimate the causal effect of moving to online leasing. I estimate that a given parcel sold online versus in-person will generate 40% higher bids against only a 2% extra cost.
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    The Role of Information in Policy Implementation
    (2020) Andarge, Tihitina Tesfaye; Lichtenberg, Erik; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Firms will comply with a regulation when the expected costs of noncompliance exceed the expected benefits. If the regulator has incomplete enforcement information and firms are aware of this, it will enter into their calculation of expected benefits and costs. The literature on regulatory enforcement typically assumes that the regulator is able to identify the universe of regulated firms. In my dissertation, I relax this assumption by allowing for the existence of regulatory information gaps and examine the implications for compliance and ambient environmental quality. The first chapter reviews the literature on the enforcement of environmental regulations. The second chapter examines the effect of regulatory information gaps on a firm’s compliance strategy. The theoretical results indicate that a firm with a sufficiently low probability of being subject to enforcement action will delay compliance. This prediction is tested empirically in the context of nutrient management regulations in Maryland. The econometric results indicate that the probability of being included in the MDA farm registry is associated with a statistically significant increase in the probability of being in compliance with nutrient management regulations. If information gaps have an effect on a firm’s compliance decision, then they may potentially have consequent effects on ambient environmental quality. In the third chapter, I develop a theoretical model of the firm’s optimal level of emissions under information gaps. The theoretical results indicate that the optimal level of emissions is decreasing in the likelihood of being known to the regulator. If decreases in a firm’s emissions result in decreases in ambient pollution levels, then ambient pollution levels are also decreasing in the probability of being known. I test this prediction empirically within the context of Clean Water Act (CWA) permit regulations. The empirical results indicate that a one percentage point increase in the share of firms known to the regulator results in a 0.43% - 0.49% percent decrease in ambient pollutant concentration for three out of the four pollutants. Increasing the share of known firms by 5 percentage points could lead to benefits, in terms of improved water quality, of $165.9 million per year.
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    An analysis of regulatory decisions on food-use pesticides under the Food Quality and Protection Act
    (2012) Newcomb, Elisabeth Jo; Cropper, Maureen L; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    To ensure the safety of older pesticides used in the United States, the EPA required the reregistration of pesticide uses which were first introduced before 1984. Using a dataset of reregistration outcomes for 2722 pesticide uses applied to food crops, I analyze the extent to which these decisions were determined by chronic health risks, pesticide expenditures, and other factors. I find that the dietary health risks associated with pesticides are had greater influence on actions to reduce dietary and occupational exposures than on pesticide cancellations. High population dietary risks are associated with higher rates of pesticide cancellations, though these results are insignificant. There is evidence that the EPA was more responsive to child and infant dietary risks: values above the EPA's threshold of concern were more than 10% more likely to be cancelled than those that were not (significant at the 10% level). The effects of cancer risks on EPA actions are more ambiguous, though this may be due to data limitations. The less safe pesticides are for handlers, the more often they are cancelled, but pesticide safety has a more significant correlation with reentry intervals. A one percent decrease in the safety of a pesticide to handlers predicts a reduction in reentry interval of 1.6 days (significant at the 5% level). Expenditures on individual pesticides have a strong relationship with pesticide reregistration, with an additional half million dollars in expenditures predicting a 2% increase in the probability of reregistration (significant at the 1% level). Expenditures are not so correlated with reentry intervals or changes in pesticide tolerances. After accounting for dietary risk and pesticide expenditures, Monsanto and Dow were most likely to have uses reregistered. Though there was some concern that small crops with low pesticide expenditures would suffer extra cancellations, small crop uses were no more likely to be cancelled than large crop uses. Mentions of individual pesticides in the media had no apparent relationship with the outcome of reregistration decisions.