Economic Values of Freshwater in the United States

This report presents nearly 500 water value estimates for four withdrawal uses (domestic, irrigation, industrial processing, and thermoelectric power generation) and four instream uses (hydropower, recreation/fish & wildlife habitat, navigation, and waste disposal). The first section discusses important caveats for interpreting the data and the relevance of water values for achieving efficient use of the resource. The second section discusses the presentation of the data. Tables and graphs are used to summarize and help interpret the water value data that have been converted to constant 1994 dollars. Section 3 presents the data by geographic region to illustrate how the values within a region vary among uses. Section 4 presents the data for individual water uses to illustrate how the values for specific uses vary within each of the 18 water resources regions that comprise the conterminous United States. Information such as the location, year, and methodology used to derive each of the values are presented in the appendices along with each of the water value estimates. The data are organized by water resources region in Appendix B and by type of use in Appendix C.