We’re going to play a water pollution role-playing game. Each of you will be assigned a different role in your breakout room, and tasked with addressing a problem with water pollution from the perspectives of the characters you inhabit. The map below shows the landscape you’ll be working in, and the character sheet below will tell you what each character’s interests and issues are. You may want to refer back to Fullerton’s paper on distributional effects of policy, or Tietenberg’s overview of environmental policies, to help inform your individual assessments.

The map and the setting

You live in a rural state with a big lake (“Lake Champaign”). Many residents depend on tourism and recreational activities, farming, and business activity in cities, towns, and villages to earn a living.

Water pollution is a big deal in this state. Most of the farms in this state are in the lake’s watershed, and most of the water pollution comes from fertilizer runoff from the farms (lawns are a relatively small share). Fertilizer contains nitrogen and phosphorous (sometimes concentrated, sometimes in manure—ignore that distinction here) to help crops grow. Rainfall and natural water flow patterns wash a bunch of that runoff down to the lake. In recent years farmers have (at no trivial cost to themselves) implemented a number of measures to reduce runoff, but 100% reduction isn’t compatible with farming in the region.

Nutrient loading (“more nitrogen and phosphorous”) in lakes can be a big deal. At small levels it doesn’t really matter. But at high levels, the nutrients enable rapid growth of algae and other organisms which (a) drain the water of oxygen, killing off fish and other aquatic life, and (b) generate toxins which render the lake deadly to pets and potentially humans. At high enough levels, the lake can suffer from “dead zones”: areas where nothing can grow or live. Once dead zones form it’s extremely expensive to clean them up; you have to remove more nutrients than just what caused the switch.

Algal blooms really put a damper on how much humans can use the lake: tourism and recreational activities dry up (tax revenues to fund public goods like roads and bridges go down, locals who depended on the lake lose their livelihoods), consumers who value the ability to visit the lake can’t do that anymore. As it gets bad enough residents leave, and every resident leaving is more tax revenues gone + higher tax burdens on those who remain to fund public goods. Overall it’s just not a nice look for a state that’s billed as nature friendly to have a toxic lake filled with dead fish.

The current state of the lake depends on your breakout room number.

If your breakout room has an odd number: Two years ago, the nutrient loading problem got really bad and a dead zone almost formed. The state raised taxes to fund subsidies to encourage farmers to not farm some of the land. This succeeded, albeit at a cost: the taxes were largely levied on the lake business district, causing prices there to rise and demand to fall. Combined with the messy state of the lake, it’s been a rough couple years in the business district. Many establishments have closed as the business has slowed, and others are just hanging on. The good news is that the lake is getting better. The subsidies have now expired, and the state needs to decide what to do next.

If your breakout room has an even number: The nutrient loading problem has never really gotten too bad before—folks always kind of just knew what to do. But in recent years it’s gotten really bad. Farmers have been under a lot of pressure to increase yields as agricultural prices have fallen. Family farms going back generations have closed, and others are just hanging on. A dead zone is about to form. The state needs to act fast to avoid a big mess.

The cast of characters

There are 5 character types you’ll play:

The sketches here give you some loose details; I encourage you to fill in some details on your own during the initial period. Everyone can propose policies or solutions, but please be sure to propose or advocate for policies which your characters would actually be in favor of. (People aren’t all selfish maximizers, but they aren’t all perfect altruists either. They don’t just care about money, but it isn’t irrelevant to most people. Try to find a balance that feels true to your character and your understanding of the key issues.)

Note that everyone can be made better off if you figure out a way to manage the lake’s water quality. The challenge is figuring out an agreement and sticking to it. This issue has been ongoing for many years. As with any such issue, sometimes promises were made and broken, sometimes policies were tried and didn’t pan out, sometimes certain groups were privileged over others.

Farmers

You run a small organic farm. It’s been in your family for generations, but you’re barely making it now. When water quality started to become an issue, you spent a lot of money to build out the infrastructure to inject manure into the ground (it reduces runoff), and you’re still paying off the financing.

There can be up to two farmers per breakout room.

Restaurant and boat shop worker/owner

You are a worker or a business owner at a restaurant-with-boat-shop (local organic foods!) in the lake business district. If the lake quality gets bad, you’ll lose your job (you don’t have much savings and rent is not cheap) or be on the hook for the non-trivial remainder of the loan you took out to start your business (you may have to sell your house to pay the loan off). You only really make profits during the summer (tourists don’t really come to frozen lakes). The business’s tax burden has been rising in recent years, in part to address ongoing water quality issues in the lake. This, combined with reduced demand due to poor lake quality, has reduced overall profits and put pressure on wages.

There can be up to two worker/owner characters (total) per breakout room. The first person allocated this role is a worker, the second is a business owner.

Other local residents

You are a long-time resident of Burlytown City. Most of the city’s water supply comes from the lake, and water quality has been getting pretty bad recently. There’s a new bond measure on the ballot to raise money to improve the water treatment plant. It’s necessary, but the bonds will have to be financed by a tax increase and it’s not clear where the tax will land. You value nature, and like having local family-owned farms and small businesses, but you don’t know if you should stay given how thigns are going.

There can be up to two local residents per breakout room.

A legislator

You are a local legislator coming up for election soon. You got into this to help people and it shows. But while you’re popular, your tough stances on environmental quality (“the environment is important and we can’t destroy it”) and fiscal sustainability (“we’re a state, not the federal government—we can’t print money”) have made you a bit polarizing. As a result, you aren’t guaranteed re-election. Your reputation and legacy matter to you (you’re a semi-conservative legislator in a notably blue state). You want to balance the budget, protect the lake, and get re-elected. But how?

There may only be one legislator per breakout room. Legislator gets to decide which policy to pursue, but must get agreement from a simple majority of the voters.

A journalist

You’re a journalist with an environmental beat working for a hard-hitting investigative journalism outlet (the StateDigger) focused on state-level issues. You always try to get and convey a good understanding of what people are trying to do, where the pain points are, and to think carefully about what’s likely/unlikely.

The journalist can only ask questions. You will be asked to summarize the discussions to the rest of the class when the game is wrapped up. If no agreement has been reached, you will be asked to predict the most likely outcome and explain why. If an agreement was reached, you will be asked to predict how the agreement is likely to play out (will it hold, will it work, etc.).

Allocating roles

Roles allocated by alphabetical order of first name, wrapping around based on alphabetical order and class status (sophomore=1, junior=2, senior and beyond=3) after all the roles have been allocated once. So in a room with Andrew, Chris, Maddison, Molly, Payoja, Rehan, and Zeke, we would have the following allocation:

  • Andrew-Farmer, Chris-Worker, Maddison-Local, Molly-Legislator, Payoja-Reporter;
  • Rehan would be a Farmer if a sophomore, an Owner if a junior, and a Local if a senior; Zeke would follow a similar path without overfilling any category. So if Rehan and Zeke are both sophomores (or juniors/seniors), Rehan would be the Farmer and Zeke the Owner (or Owner/Local, or Local/Farmer—the people whose names are alphabetically later wrap around).

The flow of the session

Take (up to) the first 10 minutes in the room to read over the sheet, determine your role, and flesh out your backstory and interests with your video off. Once you are ready, send a message to your group in the Zoom chat letting them know you’re ready. Once everyone is ready, you can begin discussion. Each of the three voter-types gets 1 minute (per person) to sketch out their position and preferences. The legislator then gets to propose an opening policy, and you’re off to the races from there: folks can respond, ask questions, text/DM each other, etc. You’ll have a total of 35 minutes in the session to read, come up with backstory, and come to an agreement (or not).

Prof Rao will be circulating – as always, feel free to reach out with questions.