Establishing the true costs and benefits of environmental protection and enhancement

In the aquatic environment, a number of techniques are available to evaluate environmental benefits arising from improvements in water quality. However, such techniques do not account for the environmental costs of implementing a given quality change, for example those associated with the construction and operation of necessary treatment processes. Life cycle assessment is a technique that enables the nature of environmental impacts arising from the construction and operation of processes to be established. Although comprehensive assessment of all options is likely to be uneconomic, focusing on a number of key system inputs and outputs offers the possibility to include such impacts cost effectively in investment appraisal.