“Okay. I am going to just say it: I’d like to see a woman ask a question,” economist Cecilia Rouse said to her �ֲ���ý audience. 

“A student,” she clarified, and a laugh rippled among the students, faculty, and staff who were asking some Q’s during a lively Q&A session after Rouse’s talk in a Pettengill Hall classroom back in April.

Rouse is no stranger to commanding a room: She chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisors. And as a professor of economics at Princeton, she’s certainly no stranger to speaking with students. 

She’s also a woman, and thus no stranger to the fact that economics is infamously dominated by men, a fact that “is not a trend, but always the case in economics — everywhere,” says Lynne Lewis, Elmer W. Campbell Professor of Economics at �ֲ���ý. With colleague Nivedhitha Subramanian, an assistant professor of economics, Lewis welcomed Rouse to �ֲ���ý on behalf of the student club Women in Economics, the Department of Economics, and the President’s Office.

Nicknamed WE@�ֲ���ý, the economics club was founded by Lewis and a colleague in 2018 following high-profile national media accounts of discrimination against women in economics.

The discrimination was “nothing new,” as Lewis said in 2018 but “at the same time it was great to see the topic getting attention.”  how “gender and racial gaps in economics are wider, and have narrowed less over time, than in many other fields.”

Among economics majors at U.S. colleges, it’s understood that about 70 percent are men and 30 percent women. At �ֲ���ý, 74 percent of the economics majors this year were male. That’s within a senior class that is fairly gender balanced at approximately 46 percent male, 52 percent female, and 2 percent transgender and/or gender non-conforming.

Open to all students, Women in Economics focuses on supporting female-identifying students who wish to study and explore economics, finance, consulting, and related fields through various efforts, including invited guest speakers like Rouse, who can expand the notion of who can both major and thrive in economics.

Jane Dodge ’24 of Winchester, Mass., is the community liaison for WE@�ֲ���ý. She’s not an economics major — English is her choice — but knows that economics at the college level ,” a culture that make it hard for female students to see themselves thrive in the field of study.

Students often have a preconceived notion that studying economics is “all about [going into] finance and making money,” says Dodge. But it can be other things. “It’s about looking at how people make choices and ways wealth can be distributed” — which has value that spans most academic majors, she says.

As part of her visit, Rouse spent informal time talking with students, including a gathering in the Fireplace Lounge in Commons, where she offered direct encouragement and advice. At her evening talk, she was introduced by President Clayton Spencer and interviewed by Lewis and Subramanian.

An example of economics’ multidisciplinary reach came during Rouse’s talk when she addressed economics and energy in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Even though the the invasion has “raised the issue” — mostly due to soaring gas prices — so that “as we make this transition to clean energy, we need to be independent there too, because we don’t want to find ourselves at the mercy of another country,” says Rouse. “We need some energy independence.”

Rouse suggested looking at politics as a component of economics, rather than an opponent.

For Caitie McGlashan ’22 of Hopkinton, N.H., Rouse’s insights into how politics, policy, and economics can inform and benefit each other were eye-opening. 

It’s tempting to think of politics as “this nuisance that prevents beneficial economic policy from getting through,” says McGlashan, vice president of WE@�ֲ���ý. But Rouse suggested looking at politics as a component of economics, rather than an opponent.

“When we have some sort of constraint in economics, we incorporate it into our modeling and use it to make the model more realistic. We don’t just ignore it,” McGlashan explains. “So Rouse framed politics as a constraint that can be modeled into the likelihood of a particular piece of economic legislation being effective.”

The trifecta of politics, public policy, and economics are also all components of a slightly older — but ongoing — issue a little closer to home: COVID. Lockdowns at the beginning of the pandemic have had lasting effects on the economy, and it’s only made it more clear that a single decision can have widespread consequences.

COVID variants keep appearing, but no nationwide lockdown has been announced since the first one in March of 2020. Cases are still high, even with vaccination rates, so why hasn’t the economy been hit as hard as that first time?

“Two years ago we knew nothing about this virus,” says Rouse. Information battled with disinformation. “Remember, people were wiping down their groceries — and being told they didn’t have to wear masks, [that COVID] was overblown. Shutting down the economy was what we just needed to do. It was a very extreme policy simply because we didn’t have the tools.”

But now we have those tools, says Rouse. We know what upticks in cases look like, we know ways to react and mitigate exposure, and more importantly, we have vaccines; all tools that affect the way an economist calculates what actions to take.

And for economics students and those considering studying economics, the job market for economists is “red-hot” right now, says Rouse.

Economics doesn’t afford a single path or a single tool for its majors. “It’s a fantastic toolkit to help understand so much of the world around us,” says Subramanian.

“You’re able to ask important questions and use data to answer them,” says Lewis. True, it can be a means to a specific career goal, as are many academic majors, but it’s also about “finding ways to make people better off, and crafting policies that address poverty, discrimination, environmental pollution, and inequality.”

With Theodore Walther’s appointment to the �ֲ���ý economics faculty in 1958, the department exploded in size — from two professors to three.

For Walther, a professor emeritus of economics who died on June 2 at age 88, that was the beginning of vast changes in the college during his 43 years on the faculty. He traversed his long tenure with a New Yorker’s wry bemusement, leavened with a Navy sailor’s equanimity and undergirded by great devotion to teaching and his students.

A native of Atlantic City, N.J., Ted grew up in New York City and served in the U.S. Navy from 1948 to 1952, primarily aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kula Gulf. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Mexico City College in 1955, he earned master’s and doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research.

In 1998, 40 years after his appointment to the �ֲ���ý faculty, Walther retired. Even in retirement, he taught �ֲ���ý courses until 2002. His textbook on international economics, The World Economy (Wiley), was published in 1996.

Professor Emeritus of Economics Theodore Walther, who died June 2 at age 88, served on the �ֲ���ý faculty from 1958 to 1998. In retirement, he taught a course each fall until 2001.

When Walther arrived, the college was half its current size, 875 students. Male and female students ate separately, in Rand Hall and Memorial Commons, and followed different social rules — the men’s more lax than the women’s. Teaching four courses each semester, twice the current standard, �ֲ���ý professors tended to be, and were expected to be, generalists with little time for research.

Indeed, the in loco parentis model was firmly in place at schools of �ֲ���ý’ ilk, and the faculty were expected to be highly attentive parentes. “I think there were a lot of people who were attempting to tell the young people what to do,” he recalled for the �ֲ���ý Oral History Project in 1998. On move-in day, for example, professors would greet arriving freshmen at their residences and help carry in their belongings.

Ted Walther’s arrival in 1958 expanded the economics faculty from two to three. From left, David Williams, Walther, and Ralph Chances pose in 1964. (The �ֲ���ý Mirror)

In his oral history interview, he said that his initial �ֲ���ý courses 40 years earlier, including principles of economics and comparative economic systems, were “bombs. I was teaching a lot of courses, and they were pretty sad.” He and all the �ֲ���ý faculty would get much better.

Late in the 1960s, younger faculty were growing in number and beginning to find their voice. In 1967, Ted joined a handful of faculty members, including Carl Straub and John Cole, in signing an open letter of protest against the Vietnam War, which they called “immoral, illegal, and ultimately futile.”

Under Hedley Reynolds, �ֲ���ý president from 1967 to 1989, faculty expansion really got going, as did growth in student enrollment. The �ֲ���ý professoriate became “sharper,” said Ted in 1998, in the sense that “they [could] now concentrate on certain areas in economics rather than covering a broad spectrum. This is very good.”

Likely watching a football game, Ted Walther watches from the Garcelon Field grandstands circa 1968. (The �ֲ���ý Mirror)

With Title IX regulations coming into full force in the 1970s, �ֲ���ý moved toward greater equity in athletics, and in 1980 Ted became the first chair of the faculty’s newly constituted Committee on Athletics. Though he abhorred the bureaucracy of faculty committee work, he was proud of what the Athletics committee accomplished.

When students dubbed him “Terrible Ted,” it really meant that “he wasn’t.”

“We made a serious effort to make sure that the number of intercollegiate [sports] offered for women were equal to the number offered for men,” he said. “For a while, with the NESCAC, I think that �ֲ���ý was the only school that had more intercollegiate [sports] open for women than it did for men.”

What did not change during Walther’s time, nor thereafter, is how college students rely on irony to communicate affection, so that when students dubbed him “Terrible Ted,” it really meant that “he wasn’t,” says his colleague Michael Murray, Charles Phillips Professor of Economics. A second-floor classroom in Pettengill Hall is dedicated to Walther, and the plaque’s few words testify to the fondness and respect accorded him: “in honor of a professor and a friend.”

Self-effacing and with a dry wit made spicy from years in the Navy, Ted was “not a show-off, and was always incredibly polite and thankful for small favors,” says his colleague Anne Williams, professor emerita of economics.

A Pettengill Hall classroom is named for Ted Walther. The plaque reads, “Gift of a student in honor of a friend and a professor.” (Jay Burns/�ֲ���ý College)

The dry wit shows throughout his oral history interview. Asked if living on Frye Street bothered him, his home being near many student residences and concommitant noise, he said, “Let me put it this way: I’m used to it. And I think a few years from now I’m going to have all the silence I’m going to need.”

The spiciness was evident when, in one of his classes in 1983, he called then-Sen. Ted Kennedy “the Massachusetts Marathon Swimmer,” a reference to the Chappaquiddick incident. A �ֲ���ý Student columnist objected to the jab, then two of Walther’s students responded with a letter to the editor, saying professors should be allowed — through humor or not — “to challenge our perspectives and prejudices.”

In 1992, Ted Walther (standing, right) poses with his economics colleagues. From left, Cynthia Browning, Carl Schwinn, Anne Williams, the late David Aschauer, Walther, Maryke Dessing, and Michael Murray. (The �ֲ���ý Mirror)

An international economist, Walther said that his favorite course was “The World Economy,” which he continued to teach each fall for three years after retiring (by which time, the economics faculty numbered a dozen members). “For many years, Ted gave students their only exposure to international trade and international finance,” says Murray.

When asked how he regarded a fellow swimmer, age 92, who seemed to defy Father Time, Walther smiled and said, “With jealousy.”

“Ted always claimed he chose to go Mexico City for his B.A. degree because the favorable exchange rate would stretch his GI Bill dollars,” Williams says. “I suspect this was an early signal that he would develop into an international economist.” He also taught statistics, international macroeconomics, and monetary policy, and served as department chair. “He had an inimitable form of written expression,” she adds. “His administrative memos were never dull.”

He was an avid swimmer who worked out at Tarbell Pool. Asked in 2009 how he regarded a fellow swimmer, age 92, who seemed to defy Father Time, Walther smiled and said, “With jealousy.”

Friends and colleagues remark on his attentiveness and interest. “He always, always, asked about your family,” said Paul Menice, assistant director of security and campus safety.

When Lynne Lewis, now the Elmer Campbell Professor of Economics, arrived at �ֲ���ý, Walther was teaching just his one course “but he always stopped by my office when he was here,” she recalls.

Having learned that Lewis earned a doctorate at the University of Colorado, Walther wanted to know about Ralphie the Buffalo — the live mascot that runs into the stadium ahead of the team at football games. “He was especially fond of Ralphie and very surprised to hear that Ralphie was actually a female.”

Walther’s survivors include daughters Pamela Walther Felber and Susan Walther; six grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; sister Gretchen Walther Dumler and brother Chris Walther; and a niece and nephew. He was predeceased in 2013 by his wife, Joan Mirandon Walther, who worked as a registered nurse in the �ֲ���ý Health Center from 1974 to 1993. Almost always when he spoke of her, Ted Walther referred to her as “my bride.”

Forty-five years ago this fall, the Clean Water Act became law thanks to the work of U.S. Sen. Ed Muskie ’36 of Maine. That we know.

Less well-known is that President Nixon initially vetoed the act, calling the legislation “extreme and needless overspending.” (The veto is so little known that some websites credit Nixon with signing the bill.)

In the Senate, Muskie led the rapid and successful override effort, and the bill became a law on Oct. 18, 1972. Muskie ridiculed Nixon’s opposition, using speech-making tactics likely learned as a �ֲ���ý debater, including these pointed rhetorical questions, each starting with “Can we…?,” a technique known as anaphora:

“Can we afford clean water? Can we afford rivers and lakes and streams and oceans which continue to make possible life on this planet? Can we afford life itself”?

Today, environmental economists like Lynne Lewis, the Elmer Campbell Professor of Economics at �ֲ���ý, are adding oomph to Muskie’s blistering rebuttal by measuring the financial benefits of clean water, at a time of ongoing

�ֲ���ý environmental economist Lynne Lewis (left) speaks during a media event at Veterans Memorial Park along the Androscoggin River in Lewiston on Oct. 18. Also speaking were, from left, Dick Anderson, former Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologist; Natalie Lounsbury of River Rise Farm in Turner; Lisa Pohlmann, executive director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine; and Beckie Conrad ’82, president and CEO of the Lewiston Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. (Courtesy of Lynne Lewis)

Last month, on the 45th anniversary of Muskie’s landmark Clean Water Act, Lewis offered some of that evidence as she spoke at a press event sponsored by the Natural Resources Council of Maine and held along the Androscoggin River:

Good morning. I am an environmental economist. Many people I meet ask what that is. Environmental economics is, in part, focused on measuring the costs and benefits of environmental policies. The Clean Water Act, authored by Sen. Edmund Muskie, a graduate of �ֲ���ý College here in Lewiston, has been enormously successful in economics terms — meaning providing economic benefits well in excess of the costs of compliance.

The Clean Water Act provides billions of dollars in economic benefits annually, by protecting the water we drink and in which we fish, swim, boat in, and live near.

For a state like Maine that is literally filled with rivers, lakes, streams, and coastline, clean water provides enormous economic value to our state in the form of reduced health care costs, improved recreational opportunities and tax revenues to the state from increased tourism. From my research and that of others, it is clear that clean water significantly increases waterfront property values for both homeowners and businesses.

Thriving businesses and community events take place along rivers such as this. These revenue sources did not exist before the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act has resulted in a rebounding of river herring and other sea-run fish, contributing to the health of our Gulf of Maine fisheries.

The crowd-pleasing success of the Great Falls Balloon Festival underscores the value of a cleaned-up Androscoggin River. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

According to a study by the University of Maine, our lakes contribute an estimated $3.5 billion to Maine’s economy annually, supporting 52,000 jobs. Clean coastal waters support the thousands of lobstering and fishing jobs that deliver landings of more than $700 million annually.

As a result of the clean water quality in Maine, the Portland Water District is one of only 50 water districts in the U.S., out of 50,000, that can forgo having a filtration plant. It would cost $70 million to build a filtration plant and an additional $1 million a year to maintain and operate that plant.

The Clean Water Act has done more to clean up our lakes, streams and rivers than any other single piece of environmental regulation.

Scott Pruitt’s efforts to cut EPA funding for programs that keep Maine’s waters clean, and undo a major water protection rule are examples of his moves to quickly and stealthily dismantle environmental regulations at the expense of those of us who benefit from them.

The Clean Water Rule, enacted by the Obama administration, was designed to take the existing federal protections on large water bodies and expand them to include the wetlands and small tributaries that flow into these larger waters. This rule closed loopholes that had left more than 55 percent of Maine’s stream miles and thousands of acres of wetlands at risk for pollution, thus threatening the drinking water of Mainers across the state.

Back in 2015, the EPA and the U.S. Department of the Army issued a report examining the costs and benefits of expanding the protected waters of the U.S. The original estimate concluded that the water protections would indeed come at an economic cost — between $236 million and $465 million annually.

But it also concluded, in , that the economic benefits of preventing water pollution would be much greater: between $555 million and $572 million.

It’s no surprise that the benefits of protecting America’s rivers, lakes, and streams far outweigh the costs. Whether we’re fishing or swimming or just drinking the water that comes from our taps, protecting our streams and wetlands is a win for all Mainers.

The need for clean water is not controversial. Our own Sen. Muskie, the driving force behind the Clean Water Act, knew this. We can’t afford to go backward on clean water protections. The Clean Water Act benefits all of us.

Held at Veterans Memorial Park on the Androscoggin — Exhibit A when it comes to the beneficial effects of Muskie’s landmark legislation — the gathering’s speakers also included Rebecca Conrad ’82, CEO and president of the Lewiston Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. No stranger to the area — she co-owned an Auburn business for 20 years and has worked at �ֲ���ý — Conrad said she knows “firsthand the river’s power and potential as an economic driver in the community.”

The �ֲ���ý women’s Ultimate team is in uncharted — and unexpected —waters this weekend as the club competes in the Division III College Championships.

Earning a tournament bid was “never something I expected playing Ultimate at �ֲ���ý,” says co-captain Ruthie Baker ’16 of Minneapolis. “For us, it’s been a really cool thing to watch the team transform in such a way.”

Known as Cold Front, the club is in the 16-team tourney and faces Luther College of Decorah, Iowa, at 9 a.m. Saturday.

Per usual when it comes to national competition, NESCAC has a big presence, with �ֲ���ý, Wesleyan, Amherst, and Williams in the tourney.

Co-captain Josie Gillett ’19 of Seattle is a member of the U19 national team heading to Poland this summer for the World Junior Ultimate Championships.

Josie Gillett ’19 of Seattle delivers a pass during practice on May 12, 2016. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

“I’ve been playing on competitive teams nonstop since sixth grade,” she says. “But I don’t think I’ve seen a group of teammates progress as much in a single season as this team has. That has been incredibly, incredibly rewarding.”

“I’m not their professor. I’m their superfan.”

Cold Front’s adviser is Elmer Campbell Professor of Economics Lynne Lewis, who’s seen the sport go from casual to competitive at �ֲ���ý, as it has nationally, since she arrived in 2000.

For her, “it’s wonderful to get to know these young people in a different way” than being their teacher in a classroom.

“I’m not their professor. I’m their mentor, their coach. I’m their superfan.”

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�ֲ���ý environmental economist Lynne Lewis. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

“Desperate Alewives,” a featuring �ֲ���ý environmental economist Lynne Lewis among others, has been nominated for a New England Emmy in the category of Outstanding Environmental Program. The program is part of the MPBN series Sustainable Maine.

The 35th Annual Boston/New England Emmy Awards, sponsored by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Boston/New England chapter, will be presented June 2 in Boston.

A river herring called the alewife — aka sawbelly, mooneye, gaspereau and big-eyed or spring herring — is an essential component in the fresh- and saltwater food chain along much of the Eastern Seaboard. In Maine, alewife populations have plummeted, prompting research by a group whose members include scholars from �ֲ���ý, Bowdoin College and the University of Southern Maine, many of whom are featured in the MPBN segment.

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“I think if we don’t care, it’ll be too late,” Lewis says. “Policymakers always want to know the costs and benefits — and the costs of these decisions always tend to be very localized, the politics very intense, about taking out a dam or putting in a fish ladder.

“But the benefits accrue to so many different people: to the anglers, to the property owners, to the codfishery, to the lobster fishery.”

Associate Professor of Geology Beverly Johnson.

Lewis and her �ֲ���ý colleague Beverly Johnson, a geology professor depicted in the documentary, are collaborating with faculty from Bowdoin and USM on the project “Maine Rivers, Estuaries and Coastal Fisheries,” funded by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Experimental Programs to Stimulate Competitive Research (ESPCoR) through a grant to the University of Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative.

That initiative is designed to connect research with concrete action that promotes the economy, vibrant communities and healthy ecosystems in and beyond Maine.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the collaboration will weigh the costs and benefits of river rehabilitation in Maine and the effects of rehabilitation efforts on fisheries and economies.

Chair of �ֲ���ý’ economics department, Lewis’ own research explores the potential benefits and costs of river rehabilitation and, specifically, dam removal.

Johnson’s research seeks to reconstruct the Gulf of Maine’s ancient nearshore ecosystem in order to help scientists predict current responses to natural and human influences. Funded by a $393,000 NSF grant, that interdisciplinary project also includes biologist Will Ambrose and archeologist Bruce Bourque of �ֲ���ý and Robert Steneck of UMaine’s School of Marine Sciences.

Lynne Lewis stands on the Auburn side of the Androscoggin River with the former Cowan Mill, in Lewiston, in the background.

Shortly after a press release announced Lynne Lewis’ scholarly article on dam removal, the �ֲ���ý environmental economist learned where her academic research really hits home.

“Someone called from Augusta, Ga., wanting to talk about dam removal on the Savannah River,” Lewis recalls. “A guy on the Snake River in Idaho e-mailed me, and so did a guy from Oregon where a dam is coming out on the Sandy River.”

For people in scores of U.S. communities, Lewis’ research is news they can use. “Hundreds of small dams around the country will come up for relicensing over the next decade,” she says. “It is a contentious topic, and people who are considering dam removal want some numbers.”

The numbers that Lewis and her coauthors produced in their article show that when a small hydroelectric dam is removed — in this case, a dam on the Kennebec River in Augusta — the value of nearby homes goes up. It’s a landmark study because it’s the first such hedonic analysis, one that tries to estimate what people are willing to pay for “various attributes of housing choice, including environmental quality,” says Lewis. In this case, the question is what people will pay to be near a free-flowing river.

Looking back, Mainers living in river cities like Waterville, Augusta, or Lewiston historically would pay to live quite far from the water, which was seen as a sometimes stinky part of the cities’ industrial landscape. But in her complex examination of three Kennebec River hydropower sites, including the site of the former Edwards Dam in Augusta, Lewis found a changing reality. While property values near the river are still lower than those farther away, riverfront values have increased.

Lewis’ findings appeared in the April 2008 issue of Contemporary Economic Policy and were co-authored by Curtis Bohlen, director of the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership at USM’s Muskie School of Public Service (and former �ֲ���ý faculty member), and by Sarah Wilson ’06, now a research analyst with the Washington state Department of Ecology.

“This is real pioneering work,” says David Hart, director of the Sen. George J. Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research at the University of Maine. While most people agreed on other improvements since the dam removal — the return of striped bass and Atlantic salmon and a spike in recreational use — “only in the last decade has there been any movement to understand the economic consequences of dam removal,” Hart says.

“Lynne has provided a model for how to do it. Without studies like this, we’re really flying blind.”

Lewis grew up in water-rich New England, but her interest in water management was piqued out West at the University of Colorado, where she earned a Ph.D. in economics. She studied under Charles Howe, perhaps the best-known water economist in a region where water issues are historically and notoriously politicized. Says Lewis, “Here I was in the high-plains desert asking, ‘Where’s the water?'” In 1995, her dissertation on water-sharing across state lines and how to resolve disputes received the Universities Council on Water Resources Dissertation Award.

Since returning to New England, Lewis, an associate professor of economics, has applied her knowledge and skills to the East’s wetter environment. Here, she says, “water is a very contentious topic as well, though the issues are more quality-related than quantity-related.” Maine, in particular, is a living laboratory of environmental economic issues that can test an academic’s skill at communicating new knowledge with multiple audiences, from �ֲ���ý students to lay people outside the College.

“It is important to me to be working on local issues,” says Lewis. “I want to make a difference where I live, and it is important to me to convey to the public the knowledge created at an institution like �ֲ���ý. And I want to be studying current issues. I couldn’t be an academic without doing something real.”

The Edwards Dam, which had blocked the lower reaches of the Kennebec River for 162 years, was the first dam in U.S. history to have its hydropower license renewal refused by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “Typically when dams came up for relicensing, they would do a cost-benefit analysis, but it was superficial,” Lewis says. “It was always power versus no power and, of course, power wins.”

In the case of the Edwards, however, an alliance known as the Kennebec Coalition convinced FERC that it needed to do a better job at estimating the potential environmental, social, and economic benefits of removing the dam — from allowing migratory fish to return to the river to increasing recreational opportunities. And in 1997, FERC recommended “complete removal of the dam,” which was breached on July 1, 1999.

Lewis joined the �ֲ���ý faculty in 2000, and as the years went by she became “intrigued that no one had investigated whether the predictions about the good things that would happen as a result of the dam’s removal were right.” The hedonic study, however, is just a start.

In a forthcoming issue of the Journal of the American Water Resources Association, Lewis and Jesse Lance Robbins ’06 will present survey findings that indicate that anglers are spending more money and visiting more spots on the Kennebec. Meanwhile, she and her students are surveying Lewiston-Auburn residents about the Androscoggin River’s role in their decision to purchase property.

It’s all groundbreaking work, says Nick Bennett, watershed project director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine. The NRCM is a member of the Penobscot River Restoration Trust, which has purchased three dams from an energy company with the aim of demolishing two and constructing a fish bypass on the third.

“Maine law requires dam projects to have economic benefits, but mostly we’ve had to make that determination qualitatively,” Bennett says. “All of us who care about these things believe fishing has gotten better on the Kennebec, but Lynne is getting the numbers that give rigor to those qualitative judgments. That’s pretty cool.”

By Virginia Wright, photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

Freelance writer Virginia Wright wrote about the Harward Center’s collaboration with Museum L-A in the Summer issue of �ֲ���ý Magazine.

When a hydropower dam on Maine’s Kennebec River was taken out in 1999, not everyone agreed that was a good thing.

But recent research by �ֲ���ý environmental economist Lynne Lewis shows just how good a thing it was.

Removing the Edwards Dam restored 17 miles of this important river to a more natural condition. Those miles once again became home to such migratory fish as striped bass and Atlantic salmon, as well as the birds that prey on them and nature lovers eager to experience the river’s transformation.

Historically, in states like Maine where rivers were treated as part of the industrial infrastructure, pollution and other industrial effects depressed the value of property near rivers. Lewis’ Kennebec research offers proof that the opposite effect holds true as well: Restoring a river to a more natural state raises those values.

To compare the worth of properties before and after the dam was removed, her innovative model combined geographic information systems (GIS) technology, home sales in the region, and the results of surveys asking recreational users how they felt about the river.

GIS allows Lewis and the �ֲ���ý students who work with her to relate their data precisely to locations around the river. The before-and-after data from both the real estate market and the surveys shed light on a property’s “hedonic” value — the extent to which property pleases the people who use it.

“We can ask people what something’s worth to them, and that’s the survey work,” she explains. For example, how much do people say they’re willing to pay for better air quality?

On the other hand, the property value component shows how people actually spend their money, as opposed to how they say they would spend it.

“Everything about water resources fascinates me,” says Lewis, who is now doing similar work involving the Penobscot and Androscoggin rivers, and has become a go-to authority on dam removal.

“It’s the life blood of the universe, and we can’t live without it — and we fight over it and put our garbage in it.”

This year, in one fell swoop, the 49 students in Econ 222 quadrupled the amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) that �ֲ���ý is keeping out of the nation’s air. A $1,200 challenge grant from an environmental organization in Colorado spurred the students to submit winning bids for nine permits in the annual U.S. Environmental Protection Agency SO2-allowance auction.

Thanks to the Community Office for Resource Efficiency, in Aspen, and matching funds from supporters on campus, the students boosted �ֲ���ý into the top ranks of colleges and universities successfully participating in the EPA auction. By retiring the SO2 permits, the 49 students will prevent the emission of an additional nine tons of this pollutant created by coal-burning power plants.

“This equals the amount of SO2 that would be emitted if you were to leave 3,600 100-watt light bulbs burning for one year straight,” says Lynne Lewis, associate professor of economics and the originator of the college’s annual bidding effort.

Under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, coal-burning utilities are required to have emissions permits. These permits are tradable, and the emissions-allowance auction held each March by the Chicago Board of Trade disposes of some 250,000 allowances.

The �ֲ���ý students bid $292 for each of the permits in this year’s auction, held March 22. The bid brought to 12 tons the amount of SO2 that the two sections of Lewis’ “Environmental Economics” have retired since 2001.

Since the auctions began, in 1993, dozens of educational institutions from grade school through graduate school have bought and retired permits. The University of Maryland School of Law and affiliated organizations have accumulated by far the most, at 75. �ֲ���ý is in second place, with 12, and the University of Michigan Law School and affiliates third, with 9.

The challenge grant that quadrupled the students’ total appeared after CORE Executive Director Randy Udall read about �ֲ���ý’ success in the auction process.

“He asked if our class could match his $1,200 and buy a total of eight permits, as well as educate others about the program,” Lewis explains. “My students designed informational fliers, sold T-shirts that they designed and had a booth in Commons,” the college’s dining hall.

Several campus organizations and many individuals at �ֲ���ý contributed to the grant-matching drive. “We sold SO2 by the pound,” Lewis says. “Five pounds for a buck — you can’t beat that!” In the end, the students even came up with enough money to top Udall’s challenge by one permit.

Every year, Lewis’ students study past auctions and current markets, and then try to estimate what the price will be. She says, “I believe in learning by doing. We spend a lot of time learning about economic incentives for pollution control — what they are, how they work, when they are most effective, and so on. To tie this exercise in with what we’re learning in the classroom is a phenomenal experience.”

“It’s really exciting to be able to participate in an actual auction,” and the CORE challenge took the excitement to a new level, she says. “I’m really proud of my students. They worked hard on this and bid smart — and we are making a difference, too.”

Because of both its soil chemistry and its location downwind of the nation’s dirtiest utilities, Maine is particularly vulnerable to the effects of sulfur dioxide released by the burning of coal (mercury from the same source is another environmental threat).