Value of damage caused by BP oil spill

Emeritus Regents Professor of Economics Kerry Smith talks about his research paper, which estimates $17.2 billion in environmental reparations.

In April 2010, an explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers, injured dozens mdash; some critically mdash; and dumped 134 million gallons into a state-sized area of the ocean. It's known as the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, even worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

While we can't put a price tag on the intrinsic value of beaches and animals, a new research paper published in the journal Science estimates the damage to natural resources valued by the public. Emeritus Regents Professor of Economics Kerry Smith is a co-author on the paper, and he joined Ted Simons on Arizona Horizon.

In this video on Arizona PBS on May 15, 2017:

"We estimated mdash; a team working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as part of a damage assessment under the Oil Pollution Act mdash; $17.2 billion as the amount households would pay to prevent another oil spill like this one in the Gulf.

"What's different in this case is people may not even be using the Gulf and they want to protect it. So that's what's important about this study."