Americans Are Being Asked to Put a Price Tag on Nature : Conservation: U.S. will survey 6,000 people, asking what they would pay to restore the Grand Canyon ecosystem to proper functioning. The project is part of new approach to environmental issues.

What’s it worth to you, Mr. and Mrs. America, to know that the delicate balance of water, rock and life that makes up the Grand Canyon ecosystem is functioning the way nature intended? Now, would you be willing to pay that amount in monthly installments on your electricity bill?

Those questions are more than just the idle speculation of economists and bloodless policy wonks. The answers could help determine whether Americans’ love of nature will prevail over their hunger for electricity in a key environmental dispute over a hydroelectric dam on the Colorado River--the body of water that is at the Grand Canyon’s heart.

This fall, the Interior Department is expected to order changes in the operation of the 31-year-old Glen Canyon Dam, which is being blamed for environmental damage along the Grand Canyon’s riverbanks.

Although the changes would mark a victory for environmentalists, revisions to the dam’s operations could also dramatically raise electric rates for 3 million customers who rely on the dam for hydroelectric power. Hoping to stem the expected public outcry, the federal government is taking a preemptive strike.

Its proposed weapon? Public opinion.

In the next several weeks, some 6,000 surveys will fall into mailboxes from Maine to Southern California, asking Americans how much, in effect, they value the Grand Canyon and what they would pay to restore the proper functioning of its ecosystem. The responses that pollsters receive could do more than help reverse environmental damage there: They may help effect a small revolution in the making of federal land-use policy.

The questions are part of a new effort to get policy-makers, in decisions concerning the management of public lands, to consider the psychic value of leaving some natural resources unexploited. Still in its infancy, the computation of what economists are calling “non-use value” could hand conservationists new ammunition in their fight to keep some lands off limits to developers. But it also could have the opposite effect of derailing environmentalists’ efforts to set aside natural resources if Americans see unacceptable costs associated with such conservation decisions.

The technique, some environmentalists said, could help right a longstanding imbalance in policy decisions by placing a monetary value on things--like wilderness--that economists have never attached value to before.

At the same time, it raises questions that are deeply unsettling to many green activists and anathema to virtually all Native Americans: How, they ask, can you put a price tag on the Grand Canyon? And if you can put a dollar figure on something like the Grand Canyon’s ecological balance, does that mean it’s for sale?

Environmentalists believe that changing water levels caused by Glen Canyon Dam are responsible for the erosion of beaches along the riverbanks. Loss of the beaches has meant the disappearance of habitats and spawning grounds for many of the canyon’s native species of plants and wildlife--including humpback chub, razorback suckers, coyote willows, canyon wren and Southwestern willow flycatchers.

The erratic water flows also wreaked havoc for Grand Canyon rafters, who faced rapids that were constantly shifting and campgrounds that were in danger of dissolving into the Colorado River.

The temperature of the river has dropped significantly as cold water from the dam’s deep reservoir was released in massive, irregular spurts. The cold water favored fish, such as trout, that had been introduced to the river from elsewhere. But it appeared to be hurting the Colorado River’s native populations of humpback chub and razorback sucker, now nearly extinct. And that changing balance among the canyon’s fish appeared to be causing a cascade of changes up and down the food chain.

But while apparently damaging to the Grand Canyon’s ecology, the changing water flows have been a boon to Western consumers. Whenever demand for electricity is highest, the operators of the Glen Canyon Dam can increase the flow of Colorado River water through its turbines to generate “peaking power.” In all, the dam produces 4 billion kilowatt-hours per year.

For Grand Canyon beaches and the critters that live off them, the resulting gushes of water have produced costly negative effects. But for some 3 million power users, the dam’s operations have brought a cheap, clean and plentiful supply of electricity when it’s most needed; and for the Western Area Power Administration, which markets the power Glen Canyon Dam generates, it’s meant a steady income flow at premium rates.

The modest changes expected to be proposed by the Interior Department this fall would boost electricity bills throughout the West by about $3 million per year, according to current estimates. Beyond that, it could cost taxpayers between $60 million and $100 million to fix the water temperature problem. All of which raises the question: How much is it worth to Americans to restore some measure of balance to a system that few really understand and most will never see?

Even if many will never run the Colorado River’s rapids or gaze down on the canyon’s red limestone cliffs, do Americans still prize the existence of the Grand Canyon ecosystem? And if they do, how much do they prize those “unused resources”? Two dollars a month’s worth? Twenty? Two hundred?

Translating such values into dollar figures in this case is the job of an economics consulting firm in Madison, Wis., named HBRS. It is a new and still-imprecise science, and it’s provoking a storm of controversy, among both economists and environmentalists.

The problem for economists is that restoring the balance of the Grand Canyon’s ecosystem will cost money. But by traditional economic standards, it will yield no return. It won’t produce more electricity to light households, ore for industry, lumber for houses or fish for the market. By standard economic measures, then, fixing the Grand Canyon has no value at all, and clearly should not be pursued. Indeed, under these classical economic assumptions, it would make sense to dam and inundate the entire Grand Canyon if it could be done cheaply and would produce lots of electricity. After all, beauty and balance bear no dollar signs.

“Often when there’s no value presented, a thing is given a zero-value. And that’s not right,” said Mike Welsh, an economist with HBRS and architect of the Grand Canyon survey.

To Americans who prize the Grand Canyon, however, knowing that the area’s ecosystem is again close to what nature intended may produce a sense of well-being, a sense that some wrong has been righted. And that, say economists, is a benefit that one ought to be able to put a dollar value on.

Many environmentalists think so too.

When the Exxon Valdez ran aground off Alaska and poured 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, few knew how to express the value to Americans of the natural beauty that was lost. Most Americans would never venture to that remote corner of the country, but it became clear from the public’s reaction to the spill that Americans felt something valuable had been forfeited.

In an effort to assess Exxon’s financial liability, the state of Alaska turned to economists--for the first time in major accident litigation--to put a dollar figure on the loss of Prince William Sound’s pristine condition. A non-use analysis, using a survey of 1,000 Americans nationwide, placed a price tag of $3 billion on the sound in its unsullied state. Exxon, which was allowed to review the results of the economic analysis, settled with the United States government for $1.5 billion.

The so-called cost-benefit analyses used traditionally by the government have “never been able to capture these values,” said Raymond J. Kopp, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, a Washington environmental research institution that emphasizes economic analysis. “And now you can. That just makes this technique a very powerful tool.”

Since then, many environmentalists have come to see non-use analysis as a way to prove that Americans actually value their remaining islands of natural beauty--that they would be willing to sacrifice something to maintain them.

A non-use analysis helped persuade Interior Department officials to reintroduce wolves into parts of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho--a controversial move expected to cost taxpayers, ranchers and ultimately, consumers of beef. And a 1990 non-use analysis led the Environmental Protection Agency to restrict operation of the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station in Arizona because its emissions were cutting visibility at Grand Canyon National Park.

Currently, the EPA is conducting a non-use analysis to help determine what the federal government will do to prevent the contamination of underground water sources. The regulations could cost affected industries billions of dollars.

But before the agency will propose such costly new rules, it hopes to prove that Americans place an equally high value on maintaining the availability of clean water in underground aquifers.

While the new technique has been used to champion environmental causes, some environmentalists fear it could be used to bury part of their agenda and belittle the very values they champion. Their concerns are shared by many Native Americans, to whom the cold, hard calculation of the earth’s value is a concept that is alien and offensive.

“This is spiritual,” said Ferrell Secakuku, chairman of the Hopi Tribe, which considers the Grand Canyon its birthplace and ancestral home. “You can’t put a price on the spirit. This kind of analysis is like my asking you how much you would pay not to have me drive my car through your church.”

Some environmentalists also fear that a reliance on non-use analysis could doom some of their priorities. Americans, after all, will not pay unlimited amounts to realize all of the environmental community’s most cherished dreams.

“It does put some environmentalists into kind of a difficult position,” said Paul Portney of Resources for the Future. “Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: If you’re going to use the technique when it works for you, you have to be able to live with the results when it works against you.”