ABSTRACT
This final chapter on the case study summarizes the losses resulting from the outbreak and discusses the implications of these losses for protecting the residents and businesses in the affected area from the risk of future outbreaks. The first section summarizes the estimates of losses to individuals and to businesses and government agencies, as reported in chapters 6 and 7, and sets out the limitations of the analysis, indicating, where possible, whether those limitations result in overestimates or underestimates of losses. In the second section, the benefits of avoiding future outbreaks of giardiasis in the affected area are compared with the costs of providing filtration of the raw water supplied to that area from the Nesbitt and Spring Brook Intake Reservoirs. The chapter concludes with a statement concerning the use of benefit analysis and benefit-cost analysis in decisions to protect the public from drinking water contaminated with pathogenic organisms.
