Part 1 of a continuing series on CBA -- Introduction

Sci.environment has recently had a number of recurring debates|flames
on the subject of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and its applicability and
usefulness for environmental decision-making.  For the purposes of giving
us an example to discuss, I've decided to post large sections of a 
Congressional Budget Office report on the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act and 
my comments on them.  The posts will be in sections so that my newsreader 
will let them by.  I've added sci.econ since the topic seemed relevant to 
that group.  Sci.econ readers will quickly realize that I'm a CBA skeptic :-).

I chose this CBO report for a number of reasons:
 * the text of the report is readily available to me and anyone else who
   wants a copy;
 * the report is recent;
 * CBO (the U.S. Congressional Budget Office) is considered to be relatively
   impartial, so we might avoid some claims of inherent bias;
 * CBO is considered to be relatively competent, so that the techniques 
   used in the CBA section of their report should be representative of
   modern CBA practice;
 * the scientific issues are relatively easy for physical scientists and
   novices to understand (compared with, say, biodiversity issues).

In addition, this example avoids many of the most common concerns about CBA.
Economists generally don't like to consider moral issues such as inequitable
distribution of costs and benefits or the ethics of differentially valuing 
human lives by income levels within a CBA context, and this example lets 
them preserve their biases on these issues so that we can look at other 
elements of CBA.  In addition, there is not much of a discounting issue
involved in this example, so we can avoid that for the moment.  Finally,
the regulation concerns only immediate human health rather than ecosystem 
health, so everyone should at least agree that the goals of the regulation 
are in some sense inherently worthwhile.

The example I've chosen is not completely monetized and therefore may not
satisfy some as representing a "full" CBA.  In addition, the CBO report
does not focus on CBA as its major purpose; it's a case study of unfunded
mandates that includes a section which compares costs and benefits.  Despite 
these problems I think that this remains a good example.

The next section will contain the full summary of the CBO report.