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Comment by AlecSchueler | Hacker News Reader

People can still "do stuff and build things" while having consideration for environmental impacts.

The thing is, everyone's interpretation of "environmental impact" is different. To one person it can mean, "don't put the construction garbage in the river." To another it can mean "not one single Delta Smelt can be scared because of this construction."

And because it's so flexible, in states like California where we have aggressive environmental laws, it's leveraged as the NIMBY trump card. When it can't block a project, the process is used to make it inordinately expensive and take decades. One example would be the environmental studies for the CA High Speed Rail.[1]

[1] - https://ifp.org/fast-track-democratically-approved-transit-p...

To be fair, part of the inordinate expense is just because it takes longer for the environmental reviews (costs are in expected year of construction, so pushing a project a decade into the future can increase costs by 30-40+% (inflation + interest) depending on the specifics, even if everything else costs the same).

That's why the cost estimates for CA HSR jump a bunch every time an administration hostile to it enters the white house.

> project a decade into the future can increase costs

A very good point.

I don't agree we can blame Trump for HSR though. 2/3 of the time that has passed have had Democrats in the white house. HSR is nearly all pure-California-style self-inflicted wound. And honestly it's just the most visible project California has failed with, there are many others. The one I'm personally angry about is Prop 1. We're now 12 years after, and have no additional water resources even broken ground. It's shameful.

It’s an fully intra-state train line in a state that has an economy bigger than France. California should be able to build an entire EU-style HSR network with zero regard to what’s happening federally.

CA can and did recently, but that's money that will need to come from and/or could have gone to other programs/etc.

I think the most recent cut was $4+ billion in federal funds for HSR. It's going to come from cap and trade instead, but the state could have had both.

Agriculture uses 90% of the water in California growing cotton, alfalfa and almonds, which are all very water intensive, Humans watering their lawn, drinking water and bathing, use a fraction.

Note: The way they divide up water usage. They have a third category, listed As environment, but that’s misleading because the people who have the water rights can always use a lot more water at their discretion at any time. where as the common citizen cannot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California

https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

We can in part. Like you said, it took a ton of time because of environmental review, and that's on the state. With that said, construction didn't begin until 2015, and Trump pulled billions in funding in his first term in 2016 and did the same in 2024.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

If CA had moved quickly, that wouldn't have been an issue, or at least as much of an issue, but because construction took so long to start, it was.

The deregulation stuff isn’t about nimby. It’s making nimby 10x worse by making it hyper local. That means poor people who are poorly organized get boned. State regulations tended to help with that.

I live in upstate NY, the rebuild of the GOP here is around hyper local issues, mostly apartments and solar. MAGA changed the discourse and allows the rabble rousers to say the quiet part out loud. (Ie bike infrastructure and apartments will bring poor black people to rape and pillage)

Do you have any specific examples of how new state regulations actually eased the regulatory burden for building something? Adding new regulations at the state level almost never removes the hyper local restrictions, it just adds a new layer of compliance on top.

How can the solution to burdensome regulations be MORE regulation?

In NC there is a state rule that bans HOAs and local authorities from stopping people building cisterns to catch and store rainwater

I am in NC and didn’t know this. Cool. Where you be at?

>State regulations tended to help with that.

A law banning certain types of regulations at a lower level I would not call “state regulation” I would call that deregulation.

I suppose I agree with you that the solution to burdensome regulation is to write new laws which forcibly deregulate lower level things. But calling laws like that “state regulation” is true only in the most technical sense. Your example is a textbook example of deregulation.

The problem most ignore is that you will either have public regulation from the government or private regulation from companies.

Would you rather have a published regulation that is subject to democratic and judicial review and applies equally to every one. Or a company terms of service that forces binding arbitration and your only recourse is to not use the service?

I lived in a neighborhood with an hoa and it was the worst form of regulation I've ever dealt with. I own a health care provider and the regulation when it was direct medicaid was infinitely better than after it was privatizatized with managed care.

> The thing is, everyone's interpretation of "environmental impact" is different.

I know, that's why we've developed all of these systems of representation to discuss and come to reasonable regulatory standards.

But that's neither here nor there in regards to the point being made that people can still build things in a regulated environment.

In California at least we no longer build housing or infrastructure. Not much of it, anyway.

infrastructure building is a bad word in the United States of America currently, Unfortunately, our major competition in the world is building infrastructure like crazy, but there is still hope, Because once that high-speed rail system starts building west to east or even east to west, all those areas in the middle of the country will change their tune. They will all be fighting on getting a piece of the rock, or I should say a piece of the rail.

The only mistake California made was not including one of the adjacent states as a destination, be it to Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Portland, all of a sudden business interests and those crazy Republicans would be on board because they’re concerned about missing out on making money, which is basically God in America.

I may not live to see it. but once they start going interstate with high-speed rail anywhere within the United States, the tune will change. It’s just amazing that so many people are short-sighted about it. More of that short-term thinking humans are famous for.

Note: Those who think ahead long-term obviously have already bought land on both sides of the route of that high-speed rail line in California, and probably along the proposed route leading to Las Vegas in the future, and the same applies to any possible line to Phoenix or to the Arizona high plateau.

Blaming “republicans” for California’s inability to build a train line within California is an ungodly level of cope.

No cope to it the Republicans in California are powerless, but when there was an opportunity at the last minute to lobby on putting the line on the eastern side of the Central Valley (which probably added three or four years to the process), guess what they cried like babies, to put it on the eastern side of the valley even if it meant more delays.

Originally, the line was scheduled to run on the western side because that side was less populated. In other words, you had pretty much a clear lane as far as the right-aways were concerned, and this scenario will play out once high-speed rail runs out of California to the east.

All those conservative red areas will all of sudden change their tune, and there is no cope again money is God in those red areas that is the one thing those red areas understand particularly those at the top that and taking away the vote, firing a gun or blaming a worker that is less fortunate.

Isn't that where Silicon Valley is located? I'm pretty sure Californians are building things.

The things being built in Silicon Valley don't include much housing or infrastructure. Mostly just software and other IP.

So "things."

Given the nightmarish nimby gridlock I’m less and less convinced it’s a good thing. I’d rather have people mad about windmills being eyesores than be perpetually chained to oil and gas for energy, as an example. I’m also not a fan of endless roadblocks to all manner of construction, even for such simple things as housing.

Yes, having a data center that raises your utilities costs by 300% jammed down your throat because the local mayor got blatantly bribed shouldn’t be a thing, especially when it’s powered by mobile gas turbines that stink up the entire area (note: I’m not against data centers on principle, but there are many ways for ultra-wealthy interests to leave people hosed). But things like faintly visible mini-sats don’t seem like a big deal, subjectively, unless you work at an observatory.

Empirically, we can't. We can barely even build EV chargers.

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