The Benefit Assessment of the Specific User Water Source Facilities: the Case of Reclaimed Water, Desalination Plants, and Artificial Lake

Kaohsiung has been suffering from water shortage and 265,100 CMD of water was recently transferred from the agricultural sector into the industrial and residential sectors. Since the price of water is regulated to be artificially low, it cannot reflect the value of water. A method that combines the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), the water footprint and a regional input-output (IO) model that includes the residential sector is proposed in this paper to evaluate the benefits and sectoral impacts of water source facilities. Three water source facilities, a reclaimed water plant (RC), a seawater desalination plant (SD) and the phase one of Gaoping Lake (GL) are evaluated. Since the water from the RC is only for the industrial sector, the most highly impacted sectors are the industry, electricity and gas supply, and water supply sectors. The most highly impacted sectors by the water supplied from the SD and GL are residential, accommodation and food services, and industry sectors. The most highly impacted sectors by the returned agricultural water are the agricultural, residential, and wholesale and retail sectors. GL has the lowest unit cost of water and the highest output effects even when the output reduction from land use change is subtracted。