ESTIMATING THE PUBLICS VALUES FOR INSTREAM FLOW - ECONOMIC TECHNIQUESAND DOLLAR VALUES

Sound water resource management requires comparison of benefits and co sts. Many of the perceived benefits of water relate to providing instr eam flow for recreation and endangered fish. These uses have value but no prices to guide resource allocation. Techniques to estimate the do llar values of environmental benefits are presented and illustrated wi th several case studies. The results of the case studies show that emp hasis on minimum instream now allocates far less than the economically optimum amount of water to instream uses. Studies in Idaho demonstrat ed that optimum flows that balance benefits and costs can be ten times greater than minimum flows. The economic benefits of preserving publi c trust resources outweighed the replacement cost of water and power b y a factor of fifty in California. While it is important to incorporat e public preferences in water resource management, these economic surv ey techniques provide water managers with information not just on pref erence but how much the public is willing to pay for as well. This fac ilitates comparison of the public costs and benefits of instream flows .