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Comment by daedrdev | Hacker News Reader

Listen y’all, it’s not just that we aren't letting companies spew chemicals into the air. The permitting and regulatory process is so extremely hostile that even when you want to and are able to do so safely and without emissions, it’s impossible.

Instead you have to ship things from out of state and other countries, which generates emissions and pollution itself that might actually be more than local production.

Its the same issue as housing. Endless rules and regulations, many of which make no attempt at doing anything but block, cause the wealth of socirty to be siphoned away. An apartment project in LA with permits complete is worth twice as much as one without. How do we see this and expect our economy to do anything except drown in bureaucracy?

My advice is dont ever manufacturing anything in CA. They will try and kill your business for simply existing no matter how perfect you are.

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Here's a map of superfund sites in the US. https://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/EPA::superfund-national-prio...

Using this I see that within 10 miles of me are

- a microprocessor testing facility that contaminated soil and groundwater with 1,1,1-trichloroethane, trichloroethylene, Freon 113, 1,1-dichloroethane, and tetrachloroethane which affects 300k nearby residents

- a semiconductor manufacturer that led to "trichloroethylene, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, tetrachloroethylene, trichlorofluoroethane, and 1,1-dichloroethylene, in soils on the site and in ground water on and off the site."

- a 5-acre drum recycling plant that contaminated wells within 3 miles with trichloroethane, trichloroethylene, 1,1-dichloroethylene, and tetrachloroethylene. Affecting the drinking water of 250k residents.

- about 10-15 other sites I'm not gonna cover in detail but the contaminants include asbestos-laden dust, PCBs, dichlorobenzene, trichloroethylene, trichloroethane, chloroform, vinyl chloride, xylene, and many many more

Yeah. It's especially relevant for the author's focus on shipbuilding. The old shipyard at Hunter's Point in San Francisco is horribly polluted, and they've been working to decontaminate it for more than three decades in order to reclaim the land for other uses (in particular, housing). Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island also have a lot of pollution from the former naval base there. There is a cost to overregulation, and there is a cost to underregulation.

And OK, sure, there's a lot of industry that ought to happen somewhere. Someone has to build ships and electronics and whatever, and if California's code is too strict then it just becomes NIMBYism. But if some company moves their gigafactory to Reno for easier permitting, I don't whether (or more likely by how much) CA is too strict, or NV is too lax. And I know that CA has NIMBYish and overregulatory tendencies, but given the clear bullshit on this website, I'm not inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt either.

I'm especially doubtful when it says "THE classic example of what you can't do in CA" is auto paint shops ("Impossible"!) ... but then the detail it gives is that they're "effectively impossible" to permit in the Bay Area AQMD, that being only one of the state's 35 AQMDs (albeit one of the larger ones).

Hunter’s Point was where they cleaned the boats that were used for open air nuclear weapons testing.

It’s not a great example. I’d be more convinced if you picked a decommissioned shipyard with more conventional problems, like marinship.

I picked Hunter's Point because I used to live near it. The problems from decommissioning radioactive ships are bad, but they're far from the only pollution that was there. Lots of VOCs, solvents, oils, radiation from other stuff (eg, glow-in-the-dark equipment made with radium), heavy metals, pesticides, PCBs, and what have you.

But sure, there are other shipyards they cleaned up in less than three decades.

That's the first thing that came to mind when I saw this website. The Bay Area is famous for its numerous superfund sites (among many other things, thankfully).

Non sequitur. Superfund sites come from poor industrial process byproduct controls. They can still happen from highly regulated industries that are approved.

Posting a list of them as a justification for red tape that blocks industries does not make sense.

In particular, all those PFAS firefighting foams on Navy bases (and civilian ones?), still being used: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5639257-defens...

There is a lot of manufacturing in California. There are a lot of new factories in California. California manufactures almost as much as most of the Southeast combined. (Note that CA manufacturing is spread across dozens of industries.)

The difference is that successful businesses in California just do. They don't whine about problems caused by their own incompetence.

Trust me I know. If you've ever talked to any of them they absolutely whine about California if you let them.

I’m going to doubt your claim. Texas alone has a similar number people employed in manufacturing as CA.

How CA can manufacture more when you add all the other SE states?

And your statement is like saying “sure the food has poison in it, but people just tough it out and don’t whine”

How about not poising food? Seems like a worthy goal.

There is also a good framework of shadow organizations that will take cash and some of your problems away.

> The permitting and regulatory process is so extremely hostile that even when you want to and are able to do so safely and without emissions, it’s impossible.

This didn't occur in a vacuum. Business interests and their aligned politicians fought successfully for a century for their freedom to destroy human health and life in pursuit of profit. Many died, many were injured and countless more had their lifespans cut short. There's obviously legitimate concerns about over-regulation, but concerns about corporate abuse of power are just as legitimate if not more so based on the history. And it's not unopposed either, but most of the backlash in California has centered on housing construction and occupational licensing - not the rights of investors to build new industrial facilities in a post-industrial state.

Now the regulatory industry is fighting to destroy productive society in the pursuit of profit. The value-added is fairly stagnant, but the costs have been growing dramatically.

Ebb and flow. Would you prefer only ebb, when that ebb was decimating the health of millions of working people? Maybe some flow is justified and necessary.

I just prefer shorter, less dramatic cycles. Overregulation also increases accidents, when there's more incentive to ignore them

That might be true, but this article does not show how, nor does your own comment. Without citations the only proper way to respond to this article is to presume it's 100% false and ignore it.

Neither defend nor refute, and by "presume false" I don't actually mean to come way actively and newly believing the opposite of the claims, but just disregard entirely.

Argue over some other article that actually backs it's assertions with citations and reasoning.

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