New Episode of Resources Radio: “Market Solutions for Water Pollution, with Cathy Kling”

WASHINGTON, DC—Resources for the Future (RFF) today released a new installment of Resources Radio: "Market Solutions for Water Pollution, with Cathy Kling.”

Host Daniel Raimi talks with Catherine Kling, a Tisch University Professor of environmental, energy, and resource economics at Cornell University, and a member of RFF’s Board of Directors. Kling discusses the topic of her recent New York Times op-ed, which focuses on the harmful algae blooms occurring across the United States and their connection to unregulated nutrient runoff from agricultural land. Kling considers the efficacy of current regulations under the Clean Water Act, and offers potential federal and state policy solutions to the problem. Kling also discusses her early work in measuring the social costs of water pollution.

Listen here.

Notable quotes from the podcast:

• “My goal . . . in developing social costs of water pollution would be to start with nutrients—not only because I know it better than anything else, but there is enough research and enough data, I think, that we can start to really get a handle on the various ecosystem service impacts that nutrients, nitrogen, and phosphorus are imposing.”―Catherine Kling (21:04)
• “It seems very sensible, as you just suggested, that because of [nutrient runoff watershed pollution], a federal, or at least a large regional agency or plan, should be in place to address this [pollution].”―Catherine Kling (10:54)
• “It really is the thing we have to be talking about—that agriculture is really going to have to be part of the conversation . . . It is the large areas of cropland and of unregulated [agricultural land] that much of this nutrient is still coming from.”―Catherine Kling (13:47)

Resources Radio is a weekly podcast series exploring timely environmental, energy, and natural resources topics. Episodes can be found on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and SoundCloud.