Vineyard of Silicon Valley VC hit with $4m in penalties after bulldozing wetland | Hacker News Reader

Vineyard of Silicon Valley VC hit with $4m in penalties after bulldozing wetland

pressdemocrat.com

19 pointsel_benhameen15 comments

There is a good chance they knew that and the fee is cheaper than spending money to convince the county to allow them to build (ex. paying for environmental studies and permits)

They’re a VC. Managing risk is what they do.

yep. just like the Sean Parker wedding. completely planned.

3 million is pittance for people like this.

They should have a fine and be required to fully restore the land they destroyed.

We don’t let someone who stole a tv keep the tv, not should we when they’re stealing public resources.

Otherwise the message is very simple: breaking the law only adds to the construction cost but let’s you keep the construction.

They can't restore it in that location as its been so heavily disturbed, but offsite compensation is common in industry.

That being said, where I live the people involved would have likely risked real jail time.

Wetland restoration is possible, it just takes years and years, but is possible, and will cost real amounts of money.

I work in industry that deals with that all the time. I'm saying that compensation can happen off site (Creating a wetland elsewhere in compensation for habitat lost) in many cases when the original wetland is already beyond saving.

They should have a fine and be required to fully restore the land they destroyed.

No, they shouldn't simply be fined and required to restore the land.

In addition to all of this -- they should be put in jail.

That's the only way these people will begin to get the message.

These people inevitably hide behind companies. The obvious solution is to make executives of companies that commit criminal acts themselves be held criminally liable. After all they've spent decades arguing their grossly disproportionate incomes is due to the "risk" they're taking.

But in the US especially it seems unlikely law makers will ever hold the people who pay them culpable

Agreed. In the event that the land cannot be restored then you should be required to purchase a similarly sized piece of land and donate it to a preservation society. The destroyed land should also be donated.

An eye for an eye doesn't work when one person values their eyes less. The perpetrator must see punishment greater than that experienced by the victim.

That was probably a smart move on the contractors part. They would have never been able to get permits for that stuff and it would have taken years. Filling in wetlands is almost always the right thing to do economically

Sure let's fuck over the habitat of migratory birds because it's "the right thing economically". Who cares the consequences?

What a psycho thing to think. Fuck off.

Incentives drive behaviors, this is true everywhere. If the fines are less than the benefits X odds of getting caught then the behaviors will continue. In this case they should have been forced to restore wetlands in place or forfeit the land. This minor fine is just the cost of doing business

This is why we can’t have nice things.

This is why we need government fines that are always greater than the benefits received from the violations

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