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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

Americans love their freedom. Which is more important: the freedom of corporations to innovate in extracting natural resources, or the freedom of citizens to pursue happiness without being poisoned by drinking water?

The last photo on that page shows Mary Workman holding a glass of well water that the Hanna Coal Company rendered undrinkable. Something to remember for those who pine for the days of "great coal jobs" and that unrestricted American entrepreneurial spirit of the 1950s.

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Not to take away from the broader point (I think the EPA and like organisations are very important), but would Workman not have recourse through other means (e.g. under nuisance)?

Recourse after the fact will move some amount of dollars from one bank account to another, but it won't restore destroyed environments and ruined health. Life is hard to replace, money isn't.

We have a vast history of negative experience - your experiment was performed historically, and failed. Regulations didn't just appear - they arrived often because of often vast weaknesses or failures in our systems; whether moral, ethical, physical, or judicial. I lived then and things had gotten bad and individuals suing (for nuisance) was not practical - it literally took the power of a government to force change upon those both innocent and guilty.

Legal recourse for a small homeowner against a large corporation is/was not a likely solution. BigCo has so many lawyers just for this type of contingency, and the homeowner lacks the financial resources to fight. Erin Brockovich was a real person, but her story was made into a movie because it was so rare.

I know its tempting to chest-beat for the EPA as the protector of citizens but they have a track record of staying silent or even covering up. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/01/12/e...

And most of the money for cleanup comes from taxes. Its a nice roundabout/inefficient way to make citizens pay for the pollution of large interests.

In my opinion its more plausible that pollution has decreased due to citizen awareness and organization rather than the EPA.

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