Any payoff to ecological engineering? Cost-benefit analysis of pumping oxygen-rich water to control benthic release of phosphorus in the Baltic Sea

This paper examines the economic aspects of pumping of oxygen-rich water to anoxic bottoms of the Baltic Sea from two different angles. Drawing on the recent pumping experiments in the Swedish archipelago (Lännerstasundet) and in the Finnish archipelago (Sandofjärden), we generalize the findings to the anoxic coastal areas of the Gulf of Finland. For nutrient policies we find that under the current abatement levels and abatement costs in WWTPs, reduction of external loads produces higher annual net benefits and higher present value than oxygenating anoxic bottoms by pumping in the coastal areas of the Gulf of Finland. For pumping a means of speeding up the recovery after a hypothetical heavy reduction in nutrient loads we find that it might provide positive net benefits in the coastal anoxic bottoms in the Gulf of Finland but not in the open Gulf of Finland.