Economics of reducing off-site costs of wind erosion

In a 1985 empirical study of off-site costs of wind erosion in New Mexico, costs were estimated by using a mail survey of a random sample of households. An important question is how much of these costs could be avoided through conservation and other control activities. A household cost function is estimated from the 1985 survey respondents using the rate of wind erosion, household income, whether the house is owned or rented, and the number of years at the present address. Off-site costs of wind erosion appear to be a decreasing function of the erosion rate, so that off-site benefits from erosion control are an increasing function of the level of control until nearly zero erosion is reached. Thus, equating marginal benefits to marginal costs of reducing erosion does not guarantee an optimum. Given that significant off-site benefits from erosion control appear to be realized only when control levels are relatively high, it seems likely that break-even levels of erosion control exist at relatively high control levels.