Back in the 1970s, the federal government began requiring environmental impact statements for certain types of projects. In retrospect, this was probably a mistake. The Tejon Ranch development provides a good example of what can go wrong.
Here’s an article from 2008:
“How heartening it is, the sound of environmentalists and developers harmoniously agreeing on new construction. That’s what first came to mind when the Tejon Ranch Co. and such environmental heavyweights as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council jointly announced plans to both build on and preserve swaths of the 270,000-acre ranch that straddles Los Angeles and Kern counties. If all goes as intended, more than 200,000 acres would be preserved, with some as a state park and most under private conservancy.”
Sounds great. Developers and environmentalists agree on a massive new development that will provide much needed homes for California residents. But it took another 10 years for the local government to actually approve the project. This is from 2018:
The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission recommended approval of the proposed Centennial development, which would build 19,000 homes on Tejon Ranch at the northern edge of the county.
“The Regional Planning Commission voted 4 to 1 to recommend that the county Board of Supervisors certify the project’s environmental impact report and approve associated land-use plans and permits, subject to some additional conditions,” reports Nina Agrawal.
The project still has to go before the county Board of Supervisors for approval.
You might think that all’s well that ends well. Finally, we have agreement from developers, environmentalists and government officials. Unfortunately, no project is safe from lawyers. This is from a few days ago:
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff rejected the environmental impact report (EIR) for the massive Centennial project planned for northern Los Angeles County, one of the most controversial and closely watched master planning developments in Southern California in recent memory.
Louis Sahagun reports on the latest twist in the long saga of the Centennial project, a proposal approved by the county of Los Angeles to allow Tejon Ranch Co. to build 19,300 homes on 6,700 acres on the border with Kern County to the north.
Meanwhile, California has by far the nation’s largest homeless population, more than twice its share of the US population.
In an ideal world, the government would repeal the laws that allow the courts to interfere in the construction of new developments.
There’s a lot of recent talk about spending trillions of dollars on new “infrastructure”. Much of this money is likely to be wasted, however, as regulatory hurdles make it almost impossible to build useful infrastructure in a cost effective manner. If the Biden administration is serious about infrastructure, they will enact policy reforms to dramatically reduce the cost of building new projects. Today, many infrastructure projects in America cost many times more than what they would cost in a truly deregulated environment. One place to begin is by removing the need for environmental impact statements.
READER COMMENTS
BC
Apr 13 2021 at 12:04am
“If the Biden administration is serious about infrastructure, they will enact policy reforms to dramatically reduce the cost of building new projects.”
Tyler Cowen linked to this paper, which claims that people systematically default to searching for additive changes instead of subtractive changes: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03380-y]. Instead of asking what regulations we can repeal, spending to cut, or taxes to reduce that might improve infrastructure, people automatically default to spending more money, financed by more taxes, perhaps adding more regulations about how the money is spent. Trump imposed a rule that each new regulation must be accompanied by repealing two existing regulations. We should try requiring that each new dollar of spending be accompanied by two dollars in spending cuts and each new dollar of taxes be accompanied by two dollars in tax cuts.
robc
Apr 13 2021 at 6:45am
Back 20 years ago, when the KY legislature went to annual sessions from alternate year sessions, I suggested it would be an okay idea as long as every second year was only for removing laws.
I got odd looks.
Mark Brophy
Apr 13 2021 at 10:12am
We have term limits in Colorado so most of the legislators don’t understand legislation. The lobbyists write the laws and most of them are government employees.
robc
Apr 13 2021 at 12:22pm
As an aside, I shall be a CO resident by this fall.
That said, that is BS. Experience isn’t required to understand legislation, just sit down and read it. Now super-omnibus type bills may make that hard, but that is an entirely different issue.
“We have to pass it to find out what is in it” wasn’t said by someone under term limits, she had plenty of experience.
Oscar Cunningham
Apr 13 2021 at 3:21am
Rather than just pointing to the delays, don’t you actually have to argue that the regulations aren’t preventing a commensurate amount of environmental damage? We have no way of knowing if they’re good or bad without that information.
(As opposed to zoning regulations, which we can see are bad from economic reasoning alone.)
Mark Brophy
Apr 13 2021 at 10:15am
Shouldn’t the burden be on the proponents of statements be to prove that the statements are useful? It seems obvious that houses don’t damage the environment but we should be open to proof that we’re wrong.
Scott Sumner
Apr 13 2021 at 11:49am
If they think an area is environmentally important, then have the government (or an NGO) buy if from the developer.
robc
Apr 13 2021 at 12:24pm
And pay the single land tax from that moment forward.
Oh wait, I slipped into the real world (as opposed to this crazy one we live in) for a moment, sorry about that.
Rebes
Apr 13 2021 at 2:02pm
“In an ideal world, the government would repeal the laws that allow the courts to interfere in the construction of new developments.”
Why? That is a very sloppy statement, particularly for an economist. In an ideal world, nobody needs to interfere with anything because the world is ideal already. Now let’s switch to the real world. Why should laws that interfere with new developments be repealed?
Scott Sumner
Apr 14 2021 at 1:41pm
Because they are inefficient, they reduce aggregate welfare.
David Seltzer
Apr 14 2021 at 6:34am
To paraphrase Milton Friedman, put the any government agency in charge of the Sahara Desert, and there will be a shortage of sand in five years.
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