mussel movement initiative
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Value of a Mussel
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The Value of a Mussel
With the help of expert Dr. Michael McKinney, Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful Board Member and Professor at the University of Tennessee (UT), as well as advisement from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), we are seeking to determine various economic values of a freshwater mussel within the Tennessee River watershed. Periodically, Dr. McKinney will be working through new questions that we pose about new takes on the economic value of our ‘favorite filters!’
1. If we didn’t have freshwater mussels, how much would it cost to filter our river’s waters?
The first challenge we asked Dr. McKinney to help us with is to work through the dollar value of our mussels filtering our river’s waters. If our freshwater mussels didn’t exist, how much more would we have to pay professionals to filter our drinking source? Here’s what Dr. McKinney found based on the three following prompts:
Cost to treat waste water: $.01/gal
Average amount of water mussels cam filter: 8 gallons per day
Lifespan of some mussels: 100 years
Water filtration value chart
Dr. Michael McKinney, Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful Board Member and Professor and Director of Environmental Studies, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences.
Dr. McKinney serves on the Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful board and is a Professor at the University of Tennessee Dept. of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences where he has served as the Director of Environmental Studies since 2001. Dr. McKinney’s collaboration and advising role has been pivotal in launching and implementing our Tennessee River Mussel Movement Initiative.