Integrated Economic and Environmental Assessment of Regional Development Projects

                                                                       Watershed Information Tool 

This website provides a Watershed Information Tool (WIT) for evaluating economic and environmental impacts of local development projects on Muskegon River Watershed (MRW). The Muskegon River is the second longest river in Michigan and ranks as the third largest Michigan watershed encompassing over 2,700 square miles spread over 12 counties.

Regional development projects are aimed at creating local employment and improving local incomes. However, development projects also affect the local environment as increased economic activity results in greater waste generation and discharges to the environment. Informed decision making needs quantitative assessments of both economic and environmental impacts. The goal of WIT tool is to provide such quantitative information and help decision makers and the community to assess tradeoffs and synergies between economic development and environment protection on a system-wide basis. 

The WIT is based on an economic input-output model of the Muskegon river watershed augmented with environmental burden data for industrial and household sectors. The augmented input-output model can be used to analyze the direct and indirect effects of any conservation/development project in the MRW.  The economic and environmental effects quantified include changes in employment, income, indirect business tax revenues, energy use, water use, air emissions, water discharges, and non-hazardous and hazardous wastes in the MRW. 

The WIT is a user friendly software tool that can be used over the internet and does not need installation of any software. An online Tutorial is available to help you learn step by step how to use the tool. You can get detailed information on the methods used, mathematical structure of the model, underlying assumptions, data sources and limitations by clicking on the Method page. A complete report with a case study is available here. 

                         Funding for this project was provided by the Michigan Great Lakes Protection Fund.

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               © 2004, Dr. Satish Joshi, Department of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State University