This article assesses the water use impacts of the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program in the Upper Arkansas River basin in Kansas, a water rights retirement program aimed at reducing depletion of the High Plains Aquifer. First, I use a fixed effects model with matched samples of farmers to determine the effect of the program on the water use of individuals who retire acreage. I find that every acre authorized for irrigation that is retired in the program represents about 1.28 acre‐feet of water that would have been used each year. Further, I do not find evidence that farmers increase their water use in an effort to satisfy program eligibility requirements. Second, I estimate a probit regression to determine which factors most influence the probability that a farmer retires a water right. Using the results of the probit regression, I then simulate enrollment decisions outside of the policy region to assess how features of the program impact its cost effectiveness and how the policy design could be improved. I find that programs that base incentives on past levels of water extraction lead to more water use reductions per dollar paid.

Stream restoration is widely used to mitigate the degradation of urban stream channels, protect infrastructure, and reduce sediment and nutrient loadings to receiving waterbodies. Stabilizing and revegetating riparian areas can also provide recreational opportunities and amenities, and improve quality of life for nearby residents. In this project, we developed indices of an environmental benefit (potential nitrate load reduction, a priority in the Chesapeake Bay watershed) and economic benefit (household willingness to pay, WTP) of stream restoration for all low order stream reaches in three main watersheds in the Baltimore metro region. We found spatial asynchrony of these benefits such that their spatial patterns were negatively correlated. Stream restoration in denser urban, less wealthy neighborhoods have high WTP, but low potential nitrate load reduction, while suburban and exurban, wealthy neighborhoods have the reverse trend. The spatial asynchrony raises challenges for decision makers to balance economic efficiency, social equity, and specific environmental goals of stream restoration programs.

The Conservation Reserve Program is the largest agricultural land retirement program in the United States, with more enrolled acreage entering the program through a competitive auction called the General Signup than any other component. In this study, we assess the land use impacts of the Conservation Reserve Program by observing the land use decisions of parcels following the 2016 General Signup. We estimate land use impacts using a regression discontinuity design based on the Environmental Benefits Index, the program's selection and ranking mechanism. Our estimates largely rely on the auction design of the General Signup, such that we observe the land use decisions of rejected offers. We also use information on the rental rates of these offers to understand what the program pays to retire land in different uses. We estimate that a marginal acre of land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program replaces 0.30 acres in cropland, 0.25 acres in mixed forage, 0.32 acres in grassland, 0.12 acres in idle or fallow land, and 0.01 acres in timberland. We also find that enrollments from newly offered fields are more likely to displace cropland and less likely to displace grassland than returning fields. Consequently, we estimate that new enrollments lead to 47% greater reductions in water‐driven erosion and 12% greater reductions in wind‐driven erosion, compared to fields with prior enrollment.

Streams and rivers provide a range of vital ecosystem services and goods, such as drinking water, recreational opportunities, and aquatic habitat. Stream restoration has emerged as one of the most widely used interventions to improve water quality with over 37,000 stream restoration projects in the United States (U.S.) during 1990-2003 at an estimated total cost of $15 billion (Bernhardt et al., 2005). Streams and their degradation obey no boundaries for land tenure, such that in many urban and suburban areas, a substantial number of stream miles occur on both privately and publicly owned land. Our analysis focuses on the Baltimore metro region where the majority of stream restoration projects have been undertaken on public land, despite the fact that over 80% of the total stream miles are located on private property. To comply with