10 ms·

My family owns some land in south Texas and my subjective sense from dealing with that reality and talking to people in the area is that you can’t throw a rock

My family owns some land in south Texas and my subjective sense from dealing with that reality and talking to people in the area is that you can’t throw a rock without hitting a protected wetland. In practice, the ubiquity of environmentally delicate tracts of land seems to be used by the state to restrict or permit industrial activities arbitrarily, likely based on political favoritism. If you think this is hyperbole, I suggest you look into the details of the various solar power projects in Texas.

pfdietz 3y ago
I think one could make the case that the government must compensate landowners for putative environmental restrictions. After all, if it's really that important, surely the taxpayers would be willing to pay for it, right? Why make the landowner foot the bill for something that benefits everyone else?
- flerchin 3y ago
  You'd claim large losses for being prevented from placing a toxic waste dump on your property. I'd not want to pay for that.
- poopbutt7 3y ago
  I can't find the article where I read it, but an interesting thing about the environment is that it's connected and we need it to stay alive.
- epivosism 3y ago
  It would be a useful way to balance the costs vs benefits. If the gov't would put a price on it, I could violate the law here but compensate 100x as much elsewhere. My town has a law where if a tree is over 10" in diameter, there's a fine of 5k if you cut it down. But actually, it's worse, because if they find out you plan to do this, or did it intentionally, they can continue to fine you arbitrarily and force you to re-plant a tree! So you may own some land and have approval to build human habitation on it... but the tree prevents you, and you simply cannot do it via any legal means. Otoh if I could... pay the town 5k, and also permanent preserve say 100 trees elsewhere... I could use my own land. I love trees as much as the next one, but it's just a huge risk to allow them to grow on my land cause once they pass that threshold, I irrevocably lose control of land I've paid for and continue to pay a lot of tax on. It's also funny that if your enemy owns land, and you "help" his trees grow that thick without him knowing, property he planned to use as say an ultimate frisbee field will be permanently unusable for him, with no way out (except begging the city council, etc. and other behavior which is indistinguishable from bribery (money or psychologically))
  - minhazm 3y ago
    What happens if the tree dies on its own?
    - epivosism 3y ago
      Depends on if they find the circumstances... suspicious. I am not sure how much surveillance they do - in reality for large lots this restriction may not hold, since trees can disappear at night, be chipped up, etc. But for people in the suburbs, to cut one you need to get a crew in, and there are probably reporting requirements. Also the neighbors love to get involved. But I do wonder if a tree imperceptibly had branches die, be removed, and then just gradually shrunk over time? A lot of these laws don't cause much harm in a pre-surveillance world. But once there are full cameras on everything, seeing how they apply at 100% enforcement can be scary. But by that point there are defenders for each one, so they hardly change.
      - 8note 3y ago
        The way people do it is to hammer in a nail that poisons the tree. The tree dies, and needs to be cut down because it's dangerous to leave standing
        MerelyMortal 3y ago
        A copper nail, specifically (drill a hole first).
        ska 3y ago
        Some jurisdiction will make you replace the tree in that case, just to avoid this sort of mechanism.
        userinanother 3y ago
        Yeah but the tree only has to be that diameter at final size. You can plant a dozen tiny trees too close then let them stunt or choke each other out
- kaibee 3y ago
  > I think one could make the case that the government must compensate landowners for putative environmental restrictions. After all, if it's really that important, surely the taxpayers would be willing to pay for it, right? Why make the landowner foot the bill for something that benefits everyone else? If you listen really close, you can hear Henry George spinning in his grave from the existence of this comment.
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      I don't think the world is run for anyone. Because that implies a level of conscious, intentional, consistent, a and long lasting decision making that simply doesn't exist at the global level. It's easy to fantasize about some sort of global illuminati, since it's hard and scary to admit that even folks much smarter, more competent, with much more resources, discipline, etc..., than themselves can barely give a nudge to the rudder of mankind's future. After all, that would mean the median conspiracy theorists has roughly zero chance whatsoever of doing anything meaningful, that can't just be nudged back in the future.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  The right logic is the other way around. Why should the public compensate the land owner for something that also benefits the land owner? By your logic, restaurant owners should also be compensated for not being allowed to serve spoiled food, and bosses should be compensated for not beating their employees.
  - nomel 3y ago
    If someone buys a piece of land, how does it benefit them if that land is then made unusable? If it's for public benefit, and restrictions for public benefit, then it should be owned by the public. Taking what cost a mans life savings doesn't seem the right way to go to make that happen.
- pomian 3y ago
  This is the crux of environmental misalignment in our system. There is not actual tradeable value for environment. Most importantly, how to set a price for a view? In some cases we have comparison for a tourist economy where we value the benifit of a view, but intrinsically we have no way to measure the value of a: Pristine forest Beautiful view Clean lake Healthy aquifer Free space for camping, etc. Future worth?
  - bumby 3y ago
    A carbon tax would put a price on one aspect, no? Same with various EPA fines. It seems like we have mechanisms to do so, it just comes down to whether we leverage them.
- hindsightbias 3y ago
  Texas is a low service state, so I don't think they'd be interested in subsidizing you unless you want to drill. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/08/texas-solar-wind-power-legislation/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/0...
- 8note 3y ago
  They already benefit from it though? Eg. Wetlands ease flooding during hurricanes, and quality of life improvements by being close to nature without pollution I could see a one time payment when the restriction is first added, but once it's there, that's priced into the value of the property, and influences who will buy it Why should tax payers foot the bill for somebody who wants land by the wetlands because they're an avid birder?
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    I too could get behind a one time payment. That would hopefully prevent landowners deliberately destroying the environment just to prevent it becoming protected. It might even start a new class of landowner who buy uninteresting land, then cultivate lots of nature and wildlife, then make a profit when the government designates it a nature reserve.
- bumby 3y ago
  I was just reading about a converse case that involved public land that was effectively "landlocked" by private land. The private landowners had assumed exclusive access to the public land. The case was made that their private land value should be adjusted commensurate with the additional public land value, since they were the only ones with access.
  - Thlom 3y ago
    With a «right to roam» law this isn’t a problem. Most land around me is private, but with the right to roam I can move over private land as long as it is not farmland or someone’s house property (garden, parking lot etc). You can also move over grazing land as long as you remember to close the gate and you can move over farmland in winter time. You can also walk through people’s garden if needed to access trails etc. usually land owners have no problem with this and works together with local groups to maintain trails and access to trails. Granted, there’s not very much good farm land here, mostly mountains.
    - bumby 3y ago
      Out of curiosity, where are you located geographically? In the US, property rights generally extend to the right to exclude others.
      - Thlom 3y ago
        Norway.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
Texas & wetland in the same sentence??? Perhaps someone can expound cos I'm a brit. Thanks
- mulmen 3y ago
  Wetlands are like swamps. Texas is a state.
- yellow_lead 3y ago
  The Texas coast is very long and has several islands, and many wetlands.
- eklitzke 3y ago
  If you look at Texas on Google maps or earth.google.com you'll see the west half is very dry and has little vegetation, but the east half is actually quite wet and verdant.
  - dingnuts 3y ago
    additionally, most of the population is east of the wet/dry line, just as most of the population in the US is as a whole. the stereotype of dusty, desert Texas applies only to west Texas
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  The vast majority of the Mexican Gulf coast of the US is relatively swampy. Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida all have extensive areas of swampy wetlands. If I correctly recall, Houston has frequent issues with flooding because so much of it is built on basically paved over wetlands.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  The state of Texas is about three times the size of your country, and as a result, it contains several different ecological systems. There can simultaneously be a hurricane on one side of the state and a drought on the other. The distance between Houston and Amarillo, both in Texas, is comparable to the distance between London and Berlin. I have driven at highway speeds for 10 hours without leaving Texas before when crossing it east to West.
lokar 3y ago
It depends on your conception of what it means to own land. We don’t generally view land ownership as absolute in the way we would for say a coffee mug. In some sense all land is partly owned by society, the deed owner has many rights, but not absolute ownership.
- slim 3y ago
  you make it seem like the added complexity is morally sound, but as soon as you start asking about which society, you get into moral troubles
  - lokar 3y ago
    I’m not making a judgment, just explaining the world as it is.
    - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
      Given that the air and water are shared with surrounding land owners, I have a hard time seeing how else it could be.
      - lokar 3y ago
        There are externalities, but also a sense aside from them that land is special.
yellow_lead 3y ago
Heard an anecdote from an architect in south Texas: if you have land there, and it rains enough, your land can become a protected wetland. Now you can't build on it.
- sho_hn 3y ago
  To be fair, there's also a good case for preventing people from building on land to protect ecosystems. We may not need that many rockets, and it's certainly not the only priority for society. Our tech circles tend to paint a very one-sided picture of the rules just putting roadblocks in front of us, but there's a lot of good examples both of what unregulated progress can do to natural resources, and of preservation efforts making a real difference. If I was a professional environmentalist/preservationist, I'd be very frustrated with the total lack of empathy by the tech community and their efforts (often cutting-edge science!) getting described as backwards or in the way of progress almost constantly ...
  - lefstathiou 3y ago
    If you were an environmentalist / preservationist, how would you determine where the line is between what’s an appropriate level of resistance versus inappropriate (or what’s fair for spacex vs unfair for the environment)?
    - eastof 3y ago
      I am an environmentalist. The line is that SpaceX is operating a fundamentally unsustainable business. The appropriate level of resistance is that which prevents them from conducting any launches at all. Launching rockets is quite literally the last possible thing we need to achieve a sustainable and equitable future for our planet. Before you call my opinion fringe/extreme, go ahead and speak to some low-income folks at your local dive bar. You'll most likely find that 90+% of them are vehemently opposed to space missions in general, and especially SpaceX given the absurdity of traveling to Mars when we have so many low-hanging problems to fix here on Earth.
kalupa 3y ago
> likely based on political favoritism. I'll be that person and ask "do you have evidence of this"?
- mordymoop 3y ago
  Nope! At least, not really. Not evidence that I would find persuasive, anyway. I can only tell you that I know of a few stories from individuals who tried to get things built on their own property and hit impenetrable walls of bureaucracy at every juncture, while the next patch of land over is suddenly being developed into a $2 billion industrial plant of some kind by GloboOil. The hypothesis that "money talks" is usually enough to explain stuff like this. Perhaps instead of political favoritism I should have simply said corporate power is always able to find a way around such obstacles and the little guy never is.
HuangDude94 3y ago
[dead]
gorwell 3y ago
That entire category of laws are commonly used to apply selective leverage. NIMBYs love this one trick. They can be selectively waived too. In fact earlier this month the Biden administration waived 26 laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction. https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/politics/biden-administration-border-wall/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/politics/biden-administration... The laws waived: National Environmental Policy Act Endangered Species Act Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act) National Historic Preservation Act Migratory Bird Treaty Act Migratory Bird Conservation Act Clean Air Act Archeological Resources Protection Act Paleontological Resources Preservation Act Safe Drinking Water Act Noise Control Act Solid Waste Disposal Act Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act Antiquities Act Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act Farmland Protection Policy Act National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act National Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956 Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act National Trails System Act Administrative Procedure Act Eagle Protection Act Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act American Indian Religious Freedom Act Federal Land Policy and Management Act

pfdietz 3y ago

I think one could make the case that the government must compensate landowners for putative environmental restrictions. After all, if it's really that important, surely the taxpayers would be willing to pay for it, right? Why make the landowner foot the bill for something that benefits everyone else?

flerchin 3y ago
You'd claim large losses for being prevented from placing a toxic waste dump on your property. I'd not want to pay for that.
poopbutt7 3y ago
I can't find the article where I read it, but an interesting thing about the environment is that it's connected and we need it to stay alive.
epivosism 3y ago
It would be a useful way to balance the costs vs benefits. If the gov't would put a price on it, I could violate the law here but compensate 100x as much elsewhere. My town has a law where if a tree is over 10" in diameter, there's a fine of 5k if you cut it down. But actually, it's worse, because if they find out you plan to do this, or did it intentionally, they can continue to fine you arbitrarily and force you to re-plant a tree! So you may own some land and have approval to build human habitation on it... but the tree prevents you, and you simply cannot do it via any legal means. Otoh if I could... pay the town 5k, and also permanent preserve say 100 trees elsewhere... I could use my own land. I love trees as much as the next one, but it's just a huge risk to allow them to grow on my land cause once they pass that threshold, I irrevocably lose control of land I've paid for and continue to pay a lot of tax on. It's also funny that if your enemy owns land, and you "help" his trees grow that thick without him knowing, property he planned to use as say an ultimate frisbee field will be permanently unusable for him, with no way out (except begging the city council, etc. and other behavior which is indistinguishable from bribery (money or psychologically))
- minhazm 3y ago
  What happens if the tree dies on its own?
  - epivosism 3y ago
    Depends on if they find the circumstances... suspicious. I am not sure how much surveillance they do - in reality for large lots this restriction may not hold, since trees can disappear at night, be chipped up, etc. But for people in the suburbs, to cut one you need to get a crew in, and there are probably reporting requirements. Also the neighbors love to get involved. But I do wonder if a tree imperceptibly had branches die, be removed, and then just gradually shrunk over time? A lot of these laws don't cause much harm in a pre-surveillance world. But once there are full cameras on everything, seeing how they apply at 100% enforcement can be scary. But by that point there are defenders for each one, so they hardly change.
    - 8note 3y ago
      The way people do it is to hammer in a nail that poisons the tree. The tree dies, and needs to be cut down because it's dangerous to leave standing
      - MerelyMortal 3y ago
        A copper nail, specifically (drill a hole first).
      - ska 3y ago
        Some jurisdiction will make you replace the tree in that case, just to avoid this sort of mechanism.
        userinanother 3y ago
        Yeah but the tree only has to be that diameter at final size. You can plant a dozen tiny trees too close then let them stunt or choke each other out
kaibee 3y ago
> I think one could make the case that the government must compensate landowners for putative environmental restrictions. After all, if it's really that important, surely the taxpayers would be willing to pay for it, right? Why make the landowner foot the bill for something that benefits everyone else? If you listen really close, you can hear Henry George spinning in his grave from the existence of this comment.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    I don't think the world is run for anyone. Because that implies a level of conscious, intentional, consistent, a and long lasting decision making that simply doesn't exist at the global level. It's easy to fantasize about some sort of global illuminati, since it's hard and scary to admit that even folks much smarter, more competent, with much more resources, discipline, etc..., than themselves can barely give a nudge to the rudder of mankind's future. After all, that would mean the median conspiracy theorists has roughly zero chance whatsoever of doing anything meaningful, that can't just be nudged back in the future.
tsimionescu 3y ago
The right logic is the other way around. Why should the public compensate the land owner for something that also benefits the land owner? By your logic, restaurant owners should also be compensated for not being allowed to serve spoiled food, and bosses should be compensated for not beating their employees.
- nomel 3y ago
  If someone buys a piece of land, how does it benefit them if that land is then made unusable? If it's for public benefit, and restrictions for public benefit, then it should be owned by the public. Taking what cost a mans life savings doesn't seem the right way to go to make that happen.
pomian 3y ago
This is the crux of environmental misalignment in our system. There is not actual tradeable value for environment. Most importantly, how to set a price for a view? In some cases we have comparison for a tourist economy where we value the benifit of a view, but intrinsically we have no way to measure the value of a: Pristine forest Beautiful view Clean lake Healthy aquifer Free space for camping, etc. Future worth?
- bumby 3y ago
  A carbon tax would put a price on one aspect, no? Same with various EPA fines. It seems like we have mechanisms to do so, it just comes down to whether we leverage them.
hindsightbias 3y ago
Texas is a low service state, so I don't think they'd be interested in subsidizing you unless you want to drill. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/08/texas-solar-wind-power-legislation/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/0...
8note 3y ago
They already benefit from it though? Eg. Wetlands ease flooding during hurricanes, and quality of life improvements by being close to nature without pollution I could see a one time payment when the restriction is first added, but once it's there, that's priced into the value of the property, and influences who will buy it Why should tax payers foot the bill for somebody who wants land by the wetlands because they're an avid birder?
- londons_explore 3y ago
  I too could get behind a one time payment. That would hopefully prevent landowners deliberately destroying the environment just to prevent it becoming protected. It might even start a new class of landowner who buy uninteresting land, then cultivate lots of nature and wildlife, then make a profit when the government designates it a nature reserve.
bumby 3y ago
I was just reading about a converse case that involved public land that was effectively "landlocked" by private land. The private landowners had assumed exclusive access to the public land. The case was made that their private land value should be adjusted commensurate with the additional public land value, since they were the only ones with access.
- Thlom 3y ago
  With a «right to roam» law this isn’t a problem. Most land around me is private, but with the right to roam I can move over private land as long as it is not farmland or someone’s house property (garden, parking lot etc). You can also move over grazing land as long as you remember to close the gate and you can move over farmland in winter time. You can also walk through people’s garden if needed to access trails etc. usually land owners have no problem with this and works together with local groups to maintain trails and access to trails. Granted, there’s not very much good farm land here, mostly mountains.
  - bumby 3y ago
    Out of curiosity, where are you located geographically? In the US, property rights generally extend to the right to exclude others.
    - Thlom 3y ago
      Norway.

_a_a_a_ 3y ago

Texas & wetland in the same sentence??? Perhaps someone can expound cos I'm a brit. Thanks

mulmen 3y ago
Wetlands are like swamps. Texas is a state.
yellow_lead 3y ago
The Texas coast is very long and has several islands, and many wetlands.
eklitzke 3y ago
If you look at Texas on Google maps or earth.google.com you'll see the west half is very dry and has little vegetation, but the east half is actually quite wet and verdant.
- dingnuts 3y ago
  additionally, most of the population is east of the wet/dry line, just as most of the population in the US is as a whole. the stereotype of dusty, desert Texas applies only to west Texas
genocidicbunny 3y ago
The vast majority of the Mexican Gulf coast of the US is relatively swampy. Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida all have extensive areas of swampy wetlands. If I correctly recall, Houston has frequent issues with flooding because so much of it is built on basically paved over wetlands.
mattmaroon 3y ago
The state of Texas is about three times the size of your country, and as a result, it contains several different ecological systems. There can simultaneously be a hurricane on one side of the state and a drought on the other. The distance between Houston and Amarillo, both in Texas, is comparable to the distance between London and Berlin. I have driven at highway speeds for 10 hours without leaving Texas before when crossing it east to West.

lokar 3y ago

It depends on your conception of what it means to own land. We don’t generally view land ownership as absolute in the way we would for say a coffee mug. In some sense all land is partly owned by society, the deed owner has many rights, but not absolute ownership.

slim 3y ago
you make it seem like the added complexity is morally sound, but as soon as you start asking about which society, you get into moral troubles
- lokar 3y ago
  I’m not making a judgment, just explaining the world as it is.
  - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
    Given that the air and water are shared with surrounding land owners, I have a hard time seeing how else it could be.
    - lokar 3y ago
      There are externalities, but also a sense aside from them that land is special.

yellow_lead 3y ago

Heard an anecdote from an architect in south Texas: if you have land there, and it rains enough, your land can become a protected wetland. Now you can't build on it.

sho_hn 3y ago
To be fair, there's also a good case for preventing people from building on land to protect ecosystems. We may not need that many rockets, and it's certainly not the only priority for society. Our tech circles tend to paint a very one-sided picture of the rules just putting roadblocks in front of us, but there's a lot of good examples both of what unregulated progress can do to natural resources, and of preservation efforts making a real difference. If I was a professional environmentalist/preservationist, I'd be very frustrated with the total lack of empathy by the tech community and their efforts (often cutting-edge science!) getting described as backwards or in the way of progress almost constantly ...
- lefstathiou 3y ago
  If you were an environmentalist / preservationist, how would you determine where the line is between what’s an appropriate level of resistance versus inappropriate (or what’s fair for spacex vs unfair for the environment)?
  - eastof 3y ago
    I am an environmentalist. The line is that SpaceX is operating a fundamentally unsustainable business. The appropriate level of resistance is that which prevents them from conducting any launches at all. Launching rockets is quite literally the last possible thing we need to achieve a sustainable and equitable future for our planet. Before you call my opinion fringe/extreme, go ahead and speak to some low-income folks at your local dive bar. You'll most likely find that 90+% of them are vehemently opposed to space missions in general, and especially SpaceX given the absurdity of traveling to Mars when we have so many low-hanging problems to fix here on Earth.

kalupa 3y ago

> likely based on political favoritism. I'll be that person and ask "do you have evidence of this"?

mordymoop 3y ago
Nope! At least, not really. Not evidence that I would find persuasive, anyway. I can only tell you that I know of a few stories from individuals who tried to get things built on their own property and hit impenetrable walls of bureaucracy at every juncture, while the next patch of land over is suddenly being developed into a $2 billion industrial plant of some kind by GloboOil. The hypothesis that "money talks" is usually enough to explain stuff like this. Perhaps instead of political favoritism I should have simply said corporate power is always able to find a way around such obstacles and the little guy never is.

HuangDude94 3y ago

[dead]

gorwell 3y ago

That entire category of laws are commonly used to apply selective leverage. NIMBYs love this one trick. They can be selectively waived too. In fact earlier this month the Biden administration waived 26 laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction. https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/politics/biden-administration-border-wall/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/politics/biden-administration... The laws waived: National Environmental Policy Act Endangered Species Act Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act) National Historic Preservation Act Migratory Bird Treaty Act Migratory Bird Conservation Act Clean Air Act Archeological Resources Protection Act Paleontological Resources Preservation Act Safe Drinking Water Act Noise Control Act Solid Waste Disposal Act Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act Antiquities Act Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act Farmland Protection Policy Act National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act National Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956 Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act National Trails System Act Administrative Procedure Act Eagle Protection Act Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act American Indian Religious Freedom Act Federal Land Policy and Management Act