Cross-Administrative Integrated Compensation for Urban Domestic Wastewater Treatment Facilities: A Theoretic Framework and Case Study in China

With the rapid development of urbanization, urban wastewater treatment has become an urgent issue in cities of China. The construction and operation of urban domestic wastewater treatment facilities (WTFs) requires a large amount of investment, however often facing the problem of “not in my backyard” (Nimby) effects. As the administrative boundaries of districts/counties for the location region and service area of WTFs are often overlapped in a certain city, the cross-administrative integrated compensation for these facilities can be an effective approach to mitigate the Nimby problem. This paper proposed a theoretical framework for cross-administrative compensation from an integrated perspective for urban domestic WTFs following the principles of fairness, efficiency, and sustainability. In addition, a case study of cross-administrative integrated compensation in the Yangtze River Delta region is presented to illustrate the application of the framework. The results show that the proposed framework can provide a scientific and feasible way to implement cross-administrative compensation for urban domestic WTFs, which can offer guidance to the construction and operation of WTFs and further to promote the sustainable development of urbanization in China.