MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (11/12/2012) If you've eaten fish, gone
for a boat ride or even taken a drink from the tap, you know
clean water is a valuable commodity. But just how valuable?
That's always been a tough question for policy makers to answer
as they weigh the worth of clean water against societal needs
that compromise it, such as the need to grow food or produce
fossil fuels. Now, however, their ability to do so has been
greatly enhanced by a new policy-making framework developed by a
team of scientists led by Bonnie Keeler, research associate at
the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment. The
framework, published in the Nov. 6 issue of the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, provides a tool for assessing
and valuing the many services clean water provides from
recreation and beauty to navigation and hydropower and
incorporating them into policy decisions. "After repeated
requests for information on the value of water quality, we
realized that there was a huge gap between the