Abstract

CORREA RESTREPO, Francisco; DE LA OSSA ARTEAGA, Angélica  and  VALLEJO CHANCI, Zuly. Regulación ambiental en Colombia: el caso de la tasa retributiva para el control de la contaminación hídrica. Semest. Econ. [online]. 2007, vol.10, n.19, pp.27-46. ISSN 0120-6346.

Over the last years, important changes have taken place in Colombia on the issue of regulating the quality of water bodies that receive polluting effluents. Thus, there has been a shift from a direct regulation towards the use of taxes on contamination by means of environmental charges rate. In this sense, this paper establishes a theoretical framework for the environmental charge, and analyzes the impact of applying this fee to residential tariffs on aqueduct and sewage system in a municipality in Colombia. The main conclusion of this work is that the number of users is a fundamental factor for the cost distribution of environmental charges in the municipalities, because if the number of users is low, these environmental rates have a high negative toll on the income of the lowest layers, thus diminishing the well-being of those population groups.

Keywords : hydric pollution; economical incentives; optimality; cost-efficiency analysis; pigouvian tax.

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