Valor econômico dos danos ambientais do rio Meia Ponte em Goiânia (Go)

Abstract

The Meia Ponte river is an important hydric resource of the State of Goiás, but its quality has been thouroghly jeopardized, with the worst polluted site being Goiânia, the state’s capital. Several productive activities are developed along the margins of the river, notably horticulture, whose production is taken to the market. The irrigation of the vegetable gardens with polluted water can lead to contamination of the produce consequently causing damages to the consumers’ health. The lack of markets where public goods, such as Meia Ponte river’s quality, could be traded reflects a lack of knowledge of its value. Such value is indicative of the importance of this goods’s quality level to the well being of the population, since it allows to estimate the damages caused by pollution or the benefits generated by depolluting. In order to estimate the financial cost of Meia Ponte river’s pollution damage to the Goiânia population, the Contingent Valuation Method has been adopted. Through this method, such cost is estimated based on the individual preferences expressed within a context of a hypothetical market.