alt Hacker NewsThe thing is, everyone's interpretation of "environmental impact" is different. To one person it can mean, "don't put the construction garbage in the river." To another it can mean "not one single Delta Smelt can be scared because of this construction."
And because it's so flexible, in states like California where we have aggressive environmental laws, it's leveraged as the NIMBY trump card. When it can't block a project, the process is used to make it inordinately expensive and take decades. One example would be the environmental studies for the CA High Speed Rail.[1]
[1] - https://ifp.org/fast-track-democratically-approved-transit-p...
Replies
To be fair, part of the inordinate expense is just because it takes longer for the environmental reviews (costs are in expected year of construction, so pushing a project a decade into the future can increase costs by 30-40+% (inflation + interest) depending on the specifics, even if everything else costs the same).
That's why the cost estimates for CA HSR jump a bunch every time an administration hostile to it enters the white house.
> The thing is, everyone's interpretation of "environmental impact" is different.
I know, that's why we've developed all of these systems of representation to discuss and come to reasonable regulatory standards.
But that's neither here nor there in regards to the point being made that people can still build things in a regulated environment.
The deregulation stuff isn’t about nimby. It’s making nimby 10x worse by making it hyper local. That means poor people who are poorly organized get boned. State regulations tended to help with that.
I live in upstate NY, the rebuild of the GOP here is around hyper local issues, mostly apartments and solar. MAGA changed the discourse and allows the rabble rousers to say the quiet part out loud. (Ie bike infrastructure and apartments will bring poor black people to rape and pillage)