Great question, and one of the toughest.D1B wrote: Tman, what are your thoughts on balancing the interests of industry with the need to protect the environment?
First, there's a reason for the EIR. But the logical outcome, balanced mitigation, has in effect vanished. Due to litigious environmental activists, the purpose of the EIR has been nullified.
Originally, there were usually draft EIR's, working EIR's and the final, which was, of course, still open to discussion, negotiation and appeal. In it's original concept, however, the EIR had a fixed timeline which forced each "side" into "producing the goods" or dropping their objection. I know this for fact, as I participated in two EIR projects in CA in the mid-80's, one for a new state prison, and another for a large residential development. The "rules" to the game were simple, and admin. judges had little regard for participants who sought "exceptions". Moreso, participants who acted capriciously to delay finalization, could be held liable for the business/builder/project owner's losses. Again, I know that for fact as my employer at the time, a CA city govt., paid a $1.7m settlement for delaying a project due to the City Manager's zealous attempts to extort a water treatment plant expansion from the developer.
But, the reason I underline the EIR, is it has become nothing more than another tool of delay for anti-development and/or environmental organizations, and rarely does the EIR "finalize" the environmental review. To fix this problem, government needs to once again take a hardline stance to enforce the purpose of the EIR, with judges backing up that intent with firm decisions preventing the use of the EIR as merely another tool of delay/obstruction.
Secondly, mitigation needs to come back to reality. In CA, the paradigm of "environmental mitigation" has followed the path of "serial criminal"...no punishment is severe enough. dbackjon recently cited the current revised costs of constructing the Auburn Dam, $6-10 billion. What he DIDN'T discuss, is what was included in that "revised cost"... note pages 35 through 37...benefits and costs...
Auburn-Folsom South Unit Special Report: Cost-Benefit Update
The actual revised cost to construct the dam (field costs) is $3.76 billion to which the engineer's estimate added 20% for "unlisted item" and another 20% for contingencies. Total "contract cost": $5.42 billion. Now, before I go on, having been and taught estimating for years, I usually used 8% for unlisted items and 17% for contingencies (pretty standard norms for construction in CA), but I won't quibble about their figures, although IMHO I feel that 15% additional is unsupported by industry practice.
Moving on to "Non-Contract" costs (ahem, "mitigation" expenses...)
Table TS - 7
Project Non-Contract Costs
Description Amount...................($ millions)
Lands and Rights
Reservoir Take-Line.........................$ 38.0
Environmental Mitigation Lands............$ 2,320.0
Major Highway Relocations..................$ 22.0
Environmental Mitigation....................$ 1,480.0
Environmental Compliance and Planning...$ 15.0
Engineering and Design......................$ 100.0
Construction Management ..................$ 200.0
Total Non-Contract Costs....................$ 4,175.0
Now, subtracting the Take-Line surveying/engineering, highway relocation, Eng.& Design and CM costs of $360 million, the "environmental mitigation" costs total $3.815 billion, or approximately an amount equal to the actual "hard" field costs of constructing the dam: In effect a one-to-one ratio for environmental mitigation, which in effect DOUBLES THE ACTUAL COST OF CONSTRUCTION.
It's this degree of draconian, nonsensical, punitive "mitigation" which has placed environmentalism on a direct collision course with our nation's economic interests. Remembering, that no other country on the planet assesses this extent of punitive "fee" upon their businesses or infrastructure developments, and up until 35 years ago (about the time the U.S. GDP started heading into the sh!tter), neither did the United States.
Third, regulatory imposition of environmental retrofitting/remediation, absent cost-benefit studies. I can cite more examples of thoughtless regulatory penalties and post-completion retrofitting than we have time for, but I'll reference two as example:
In the past twenty years, CA has instituted a licensing and testing requirement for most bakeries, coffee roasting facilities, oil and gas processing/dispensing facilities, dry cleaners, drive-through fast food restaurants, and even wineries. If the local air-quality district determines that the facility is emitting pollutants exceeding their regional limits, they'll require the business to add emissions "scrubbers" which often cost upward of $500k and more. For small mom and pop businesses, that's a door-shutting cost that cannot be absorbed. Most notable is that the "standards" applied by each air-quality district can exceed the State Air Resources Board "standards", and often do. What results, is businesses relocating to counties with minimal emissions levels, or in some cases, exporting their raw products out of state (NV and AZ) for processing (cleaners, even wineries are shipping bulk juice out of state for fermentation, then returning the bulk fermented wine to CA for storage, packaging and marketing). Note that in the end, the increased regulatory requirements do not eliminate the targeted emission, but only end up adding to the cost of the finished product.
Additionally, the emissions monitoring has become a wellspring of penalty revenues for the government (which is IMHO, the REAL goal...). It is not uncommon for large (read: "deep pocket") businesses to receive fines of $100k to $1M for failure to comply with ARB (Air Resource Board) regulations. Some of these heinous offenses include selling VOC containing windshield washer fluid, which is APPROVED for use in mountain regions of CA, in regions where it IS NOT approved for use. For example, if Ace Hardware, or Sears or PepBoys in Sacramento sells a gallon of "mountain" approved washer fluid to some consumer who is preparing for a trip to the mountains that weekend (...representative of about 80% of every person in the Sierra's on the weekend), then Sears can be fined $600,000... http://www.arb.ca.gov/newsrel/nr102708.htm
Ace Hardware can be fined $850,000... http://www.arb.ca.gov/newsrel/nr010708.htm.
Any business that maintains a "fleet" of diesel powered vehicles, regardless of the number of vehicles (a plumbing contractor with two diesel service vans is subject) is required to annually test every vehicle for "smoke opacity", utilizing a computerized system tied into an ARB reporting program. Violation of that requirement, whether failure to test, inadequate documentation, use of unapproved or unregistered testing equipment, or delinquency in testing or reporting, FREQUENTLY results in fines of $10k to $500k and the list of offenders reads like a who's who of big business in CA. Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Waste Management, Sears, UPS/Fed Ex, Brinks, Farmer John Packing, Western Farms Packing, CK Trucking, Airgas, Bimbo Bakeries (distribution)...and yes, even Jesse James of West Coast Choppers gets fined $271,000 for building all those cool choppers... http://www.arb.ca.gov/newsrel/nr012607.htm ...and on and on and on...
...adding insult to injury, the whackjob that runs the ARB in CA, Mary Nichols, is an unabashed slash and burn environmental attorney who got her start under Governor Moonbeam back in the '70's and has earned her reputation as the most heavy handed environmental regulator in the U.S...in fact, in polls amongst environmental groups, she was the first choice to head Obama's EPA. And with the CA leftislature handing her an annual gross budget of $1.5 BILLION, she can cause a lot of damage to CA state businesses.
Now...
Assuming you're still awake...
...the point of this third issue is that facing the prospect of revenue generation via draconian punitive enforcement of environmental law, or implementation of "cap and trade" extortion schemes, cash strapped government bodies at the federal and state level have found this venue too enticing to step back and view the long-term ramifications to economic development and trade. Which is one of the primary reasons why CA and the U.S. as a whole is in the position we face today.
Finally, as with anything, D1B, the concept of "mitigation" needs to be studied with a prudent eye towards "balancing" the needs of businesses and economic survival with the duty to preserve and protect the environment. One cannot drive the value of one or the other to an extreme, yet, that is what is happening today, with catastrophic economic results, which have begun to be manifested in not only decreased quality of life, but severe personal economic hardships for lower and middle class Americans. Jon continually accuses me of "blaming the environment for everything", and to some degree that is true. But for the unrealistic imposition of financial burdens, resulting from unchecked environmental "mitigation" and harassing, obstructionist litigation, placed on business and infrastructure development and maintenance, our country's employers (IMHO) could afford to pay a living wage to most workers, alleviating much of the cry for unionization and benefits. Moreso, with a living wage and a healthy economy, workers could afford their sometimes "excessive" mortgages, thus minimizing much of this current housing/foreclosure crisis we face.
IMHO.
It's a gray area, but the path we're on is destined to destroy our country.
