Impact of Regulatory Delays on the Cost of Wastewater Treatment Plants
研究了美国环保局污水处理厂建设拨款项目中，监管要求导致的延迟如何因通货膨胀增加成本，从而削弱拨款减轻社区财政负担的效果。
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Wastewater Treatment Plant Construction Grants Program has come under attack from persons involved in the administration of the program, as well as from members of municipal authorities that have received these grants. It is believed that the requirements mandated by the EPA for projects receiving grants cause so much time to elapse before construction bids can be accepted, that the increase in costs due to inflation outweighs the decrease in costs to the municipality from receiving an EPA grant. Thus, the effectiveness of this program in reducing the financial burden to a community of building a wastewater treatment plant is questioned. However, to properly assess the effect of delays, the time preference factor for money and the change in cash flow to build and operate a treatment plant need to be recognized. These will affect how the community views, i.e., values, the required outflow of funds. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effects of time lags of various lengths on the present value of the future outflow of funds to pay for and operate treatment plants.