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EPA To Buy Small Town In Kansas
Ponca City, We love you writes "The Wichita Eagle reports that Congress has approved funds to relocate the population of the southeast Kansas town of Treece, which is plagued with lead, zinc and other chemical contamination left by a century of mining. Estimates say it will cost about $3 million to $3.5 million to buy out the town, which is surrounded by huge piles of mining waste called 'chat' and dotted with uncapped shafts and cave-ins filled with brackish, polluted water. 'It's been a long, dusty, chat-covered road, but for the citizens of Treece, finally, help will be on the way,' said Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas who has been pushing for a buyout of Treece for two years. The population of Treece has dwindled to about 100 people, almost all of whom want to move but say they can't because the pollution and an ongoing EPA cleanup project makes it impossible to sell a house. The EPA has already bought out the neighboring town of Picher, Oklahoma, stripping Treece of quick access to jobs, shopping, recreation and services, including fire protection and cable TV. Both cities were once prosperous mining communities but the ore ran out and the mines were abandoned by the early 1970s. Of 16 children tested for lead levels in Treece, two had levels between 5 and 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood and one had a level of more than 10 times the threshold for lead poisoning."
The goods manufactured there are cheaper for us because they export the true cost onto the Chinese population and the environment. Those costs will catch up to them, just as they've caught up to us.
Exactly. Wouldn't it be sensible for future municipalities to look at this and think twice before allowing an outside corporation to extract profit and turn their town toxic? That would help manage the environmental impact. Oh, wait, it would also require people to think things through. Unrealistic.
It was not a free market system. A faulty accounting system allowed the mines to extract profits without being responsible for the damages.
Now the tax paying public is cleaning up. So the "free market" now has tax payers paying while the company exits with its profits.
A proper market accounting system would have made the mining corporations pay for the cleanup.
So what happened here was a broken market system where the costs of the mines was not properly applied.
Well, in all seriousness, it is worth noting that Pat Roberts is a Republican pushing for government intervention in an environmental problem. It's not so controversial when it's something an tangible as lead-poisoned children.
Because the perfectly legal free market system crashes the markets, destroys lives, and also destroys the world in the name of increased profits.
Wouldn't it be sensible for future municipalities to look at this and think twice before allowing an outside corporation to extract profit and turn their town toxic? That would help manage the environmental impact. Oh, wait, it would also require people to think things through. Unrealistic.
Municipalities typically have very little say as to controlling what goes on; most of that is state and federal law.
it's US law that you can't go after the stockholders
and back in those days most people didn't care about pollution
The comment about lead levels is exaggeration. Lead levels between 5 and 10 mcg/dl are more likely caused by chipping lead paint or lead dust from home renovation. Those lead levels more likely indicate that the mining is NOT causing elevated lead levels.
Lead levels above 10 mcg/dl are considered "elevated." Lead poisoning refers to lead levels above 24 mcg/dl.
Corporations are people, too: http://www.ratical.org/corporations/SCvSPR1886.html
So I guess they merit "social engineering", eh?
/SarcasmOff
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
And the government required they poison the locals?
Was that to show those damn japs we meant business?
The reality is these folks chose to do it that way so they could sell more product at lower prices thereby increasing their profit. We cannot go after them for breaking rules that did not exist, but we could require companies going out of business to restore land to salable levels. If they fail to do that, pierce the veil and take the owners money to do it.
The government's fundamental purpose is to at least restrain individuals from harming other individuals. Anything less than that is not a free market by its very definition. A free market is not anarchic in nature but is instead the minimum intervention required to protect individual rights against various forms of violence. Environmental damage like this is a perfect example of a case where the government must intervene on behalf of those whose rights were abused. You are arguing against corporatism which is a perfectly reasonable position to have on the matter.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Doesn't $3 Million seem a bit cheap. Essentially, they could clean it up for billions, but instead they are just gonna move the population away for a measly $3M and hope that everyone just forgets about the place.
I don't think that this "solution" will work in all cases, but in this case I am glad they decided to spend $3M rather than cleaning up the mess. If left alone for a couple of centuries, I'd wager that nature will take care of much of the mess.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Note that this accounting failure is the descendant of a deliberate choice made by various courts shortly after the Industrial Revolution, when they chose to rule for polluting manufacturers and against impacted property owners in a blatant display of "progressive" social engineering triumphing over property rights.
My observations have been that when you talk about pollution with rabidly pro-free-market libertarians, it proceeds something like this:
Q: Won't that new plant they're building cause a lot of pollution?
A: Well they should have to pay for externalities like cleaning up after themselves.
Q: Ok, they built the plant, can't we stop it from pouring all that pollution into the environment?
A: That's not really pollution. It's shoddy science to say it is. There's no proof that it causes cancer. Who cares if the rates of cancer have tripled, correlation does not equal causation. Making it cleaner will cost too much.
Q: Well the plant's been shut down, now the area around it is a dead zone, the economy's shot, and people are dying, isn't this a failure of the economy?
A: Well they should have been made to pay for externatlities like cleaning up after themselves.
In an economics course, when they teach you about the free market, they start with something like, "When transaction costs are low, there are no barriers to entry, and property rights exist and are enforced, then the free market is efficient". Otherwise.... it's generally not. One of the things that lets negative externalities like pollution come to pass is that the "property rights" for "living in a town that's not crazy polluted" didn't exist / weren't enforced.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Do nothing? Okay.
Let's move to a totally free market economy. Let's forget about public roads. Someone will build a road to where I want to go. Except the road only goes one place. Did you catch the cost of switching from the road you are on to another road system? I can't get some places because the road owners can't agree to trade terms. That's okay though because it's unfettered capitalism.
The great thing about totally free markets is, kidnapping you and selling you into slavery is legal. But you won't fetch nearly the price I get for selling your children into slavery. There are no exceptions to your magical thinking. No pesky government prosecuting me for the world's oldest, most abhorent crime. And I'm just getting started. I'm going to put on man-to-beast fights to the death shows and charge $5 to get in. You will be my first contestant. I'm going to make a killing!
I could go on from there, but the basic point is you are pursuing a mythical notion with consequences that you can't possibly justify and purposely choose to ignore. The sooner you come back to reality, the better off we all will be.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
"These folks" made no such decisions. The decisions were made by people above their pay grade (both in business and government.)
Prior to starting the mining, the company should have to commit
to paying, say, 25% of top-line revenue into a fund to be held in escrow
by the government.
If the company cleans up adequately, and operates cleanly all along,
then at termination of mining operations, they get the funds back with interest.
If the government has to clean up, it uses the fund. There should be a penalty
catch, something like: If the government has to spend more than 25% of the
fund cleaning up, then the government fines the company the rest, and
such money is made available to an R&D pool that companies and universities
can access only for purposes of R&D into more environmentally responsible
methods and technologies for extracting resources.
This is probably an appropriate place to state that my signature line is ironic,
being a listing of two oxymorons.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Once mining companies (and property/land developers) realize that their is a risk that they might be sued in the future, they will create subsidiary companies that are legally responsible for the project. Once the project has been completed, the subsidiary company is liquidated along with any legal responsibilities. Either way, the owners will be absolved from any blame.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
That sounds like a strong argument for less centralization of government authority, and a return of decision-making power to localities and private citizens (who have a bigger voice in local government).
Once the mining companies go belly-up, it's hard to say where the money's gone and who is responsible
A lot of jurisdictions have laws now that cover this. Mine, in Nova Scotia, Canada, requires a large bond to be placed by the mining company before the ground is even broken. The bond is sufficient to cover the costs of reclamation once mining is done. Thus, the public is guaranteed that reclamation will happen for any new mine, even if the company goes under. NB that reclamation and modern mining regulations have basically eliminated problems like those that caused the issues in TFA. The only problems that exist now - in jurisdictions with first-world standards, at least - relate to natural disasters and human error, problems that affect every other industry that deals with toxic materials.
Not quite. The OFFICERS can he held liable but only if it can be proven they commited a criminal act or negligent activity. Officers obviously can be stockholders but they don't come after Joe SixPack's stock or his 401K. "Piercing the veil" is very difficult and doesn't occur very often and certainly not 30-50 years after the fact, there is something called "tolling the statute".
I'm so sorry my sarcasm was not lost on you :-)
P.S. I have still, even after Bush and Obama, huge difficulties differentiating between republicans and democrats.
Don't worry, it is the same problem in Finland, though we can "choose" from three (major) parties.
Eh ... perhaps you should worry.
Considering how ridiculously broke our federal government is, I'm not sure in what sense it can continue to be said that it is "buying" or "paying" for things.
From my point view, this was nothing more than an elaborate scam to convert our tax dollars into their personal assets (and a grossly inefficient method at that.)
Not to worry: nowadays we have much more efficient methods to convert tax dollars into personal assets: no-bid military contracts, bank bailouts, tax breaks nestled into unrelated bills, and bridges to nowhere, to name a few.
I am officially gone from
Anyone who would oppose holding polluters responsible for damages evidenced by clear cases of cancer rationally attributed to their emission of carcinogens is no "pro-free-market libertarian," whatever they may call themselves. Yes, I know about the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, but the only possible point of your comment would have to be an accusation that I would make such an argument based on my similarity to "libertarians" you've encountered in the past. I have made no such argument, and I have no plans to do so, so feel free to check your stereotypes at the door.
Of course, I'm not the one you have to convince. It would be up to a suitably impartial court to decide whether causation exists—and up to you to convince them that it does. Naturally (if there is no out-of-court settlement) the polluter is going to argue exactly the opposite, just as in any other court case.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
That's not completely correct in terms of your 2nd answer.
The free-market solution would be to not regulate any pollution, but to put the onus on the property owner to file a suit for any pollution placed on his property or in his airspace. Have fun proving the pollution in your air was created by a particular corporation.
This is why we have communal ownership of airspace rights and the government regulates pollution. The deal is that Monsanto et al. can emit a particular amount of pollution with impunity. In theory the regulators would look out for what the public safety, but as is with almost all regulatory bodies in this country, they are captured by the industries they attempt to regulate. Therefore the regulatory body is an arm of the industry, essentially charged with making sure the industry's costs are increasingly externalized.
That sounds like a strong argument for less centralization of government authority, and a return of decision-making power to localities and private citizens (who have a bigger voice in local government).
Well it wouldn't be too much of a "return," munipalities have never had that sort of power. And honestly, people in small towns tend to be very anti-environmentalist when they think it may impact the economy. In poorer areas with a less-educated populace, you also have a large number of people who can't make the intuitive leap to realize that toxic chemicals can actually be dangerous instead of just unpleasant smelling.
"When transaction costs are low, there are no barriers to entry, and property rights exist and are enforced, then the free market is efficient".
So not in the real world, then.
Someone must enforce the property rights to have a free market. That someone does not have to be a government, however, nor any other kind of monopoly over the use of force. In fact, if you have a monopoly backed by force, even over the (non-aggressive) use of force, then you are violating property rights and do not have a free market. Ergo, any system involving a government, defined as an organization claiming a monopoly on the use of force, is not a free market by its very definition, even ignoring other inevitable property-right violations such as taxes to fund the enforcement.
In a free market the enforcement of property rights is ultimately the right and responsibility of every property owner. There are no rulers required or permitted. Not all forms of anarchy have free markets, but all free markets are anarchic in nature.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
You're assuming that every taxpayer is a consumer, and that every consumer uses the product (and contributes to the pollution) in equal amounts. Neither assumption is well-founded, which means that there is a significant difference between holding the company responsible for its pollution and taxing everyone to clean it up. The tax-based approach creates major externalities, imposing the cost of cleanup disproportionately on users and non-users alike. It's also an after-the-fact approach, and "justice delayed is justice denied." The company should be held responsible when the pollution occurs, and not permitted to let the pollution accumulate.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
What you are saying is pretty much that communities should disallow businesses to operate that might cause pollution. Because no matter how much a business says they aren't going to, once they do in the stealth of night, it is done. And then someone has to clean it up.
So the obvious solution for a community - if they had control - is to disallow any business that has the potential to cause any sort of pollution of anything. So you block the dry cleaner because of PERC, the auto shop because of waste oil, refrigerant, spilled gasoline, etc. Then you need to block the small metal shop because of dangerous organic solvents and metal chips. Eventually, you have a perfectly safe community (like California is trying to achieve) without any commercial activity at all.
They figured this out in about 1950 and today communities have no control. It is decided at the state and federal level, far far away from anyone that might be impacted.
This is also why the manufacturing has moved out of the US and either across the border to Juarez or across the ocean to China. No matter what companies tried to do, they were getting blocked by lawsuits and stupid regulations. A stupid regulation is California's Prop 65 - all it is going to do is drive businesses across the state line. It will not force car dealers to eliminate the lead in the batteries or the oil from the cars. But by all means, keep passing these regulations and drive all those industries over somewhere else. We can all work for the Government.
Many would argue that it is a valid defense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_Experiment
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Mines come in when it's profitable, screw up the environment because nobody can stop them (that would be government regulation, which would be socialistical), and leave having raped the land of the only thing that was worth anything. The people left behind have no money to clean up the mess the mines made, and the mine companies are under no obligation to do so themselves. Yet another example of why libertarianism is a pipe-dream utopia second only to Communism in its impracticality.
I piss off bigots.