In 1997, the city government of New York realized that because of changing agricultural practices it would need to act to preserve the quality of the city's drinking water. It could have installed new water filtration plants, but that would have cost $4 Billion to $6 Billion up front, together with annual running costs of $250 million. Instead, the government pays landowners to preserve the rural nature of the Catskill and Delaware river basins form which New York gets most of its water. It is spending $250 million on buying land to prevent development, and paying farmers $100 million a year to minimize water pollution. Several other American cities, following New York's footsteps, have calculated that every dollar invested in environmental protection would save anywhere from $7.50 to $200 on the cost of filtration and water treatment facilities.
from Food Fight
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