Traditional approaches like emission standards are problematic because it is difficult to measure emissions accurately.
Emissions taxes would run into the same problem. Taxes could be applied to those activities or materials that lead to the emissions, rather than the emissions themselves.
For example, taxes might be put on fertilizer used by farmers, or on lawn chemicals used by suburban dwellers.
nps
In many areas of each country point sources and nonpoint sources exist in close proximity, essentially contributing to the same water-quality problems.
The equimarginal principle would require the control of point and nonpoint sources to be balanced so that the marginal emission reduction costs are the same in the two cases.
CONCLUSION
TBSs are appealing as ―technological fixes, they have several drawbacks.
They are likely to give far less pollution control for the money spent than alternative approaches because they normally violate the equimarginal principle. They provide fewer incentives than other policies to find better and cheaper ways of controlling waterborne emissions
