Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures Survey

PURPOSE

To provide statistics on the cost to the private industry to protect the environment. The United States Code, Title 13, authorizes this survey and provides for mandatory responses. The survey is sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency.

COVERAGE

The survey includes plants classified in manufacturing, mining and electric utility industries as defined by the 1997 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). For manufacturing, the survey covers NAICS sub-sectors 311-339, for mining NAICS sub-sectors 211-213 and for electric utilities NAICS industry 22111.

CONTENT

The PACE presents statistics on capital expenditures and operating costs for pollution prevention and pollution treatment by type of media, air water or solid waste and type of activity, treatment, recycling, disposal and prevention. The survey also collects expenditures for site cleanup, permits, fees and product redesign.

FREQUENCY

The PACE survey was conducted annually from 1973 to 1994 with the exclusion of 1987. The survey was reinstated for 1999 with periodicity of 2-5 years. The survey was last conducted for the 2005 survey year.

METHOD

A mail-out/mail-back survey of some 21,000 manufacturing, mining and electric utility plants selected from a panel of participants in the 1997 Economic Census. Probability of selection was proportionate to the census value of shipments or payroll within each industry and geographic divisions.

PRODUCT

The Census Bureau publishes estimates at regional and industry levels.

USES

The Environmental Protection Agency use these data to monitor the impact of environmental programs and to estimate cost projections for its regulatory impact analysis for proposed pollution regulations.