I'm also anti-nuclear because it's too expensive, not as safe as advocates make out and the waste problem is not even remotely solved despites all the claims to the contrary. But it's also true that the same kind of anti-development tactics used against refineries are effectively used against nuclear plants such that it takes 15+ years to build a nuclear plant and the costs balloon as a result.
But there's also strong direct evidence contrary to your claim: the new refineries in Oklahoma and Texas. Why are they getting built if "the oil industry isn't going to do it"?
I'll go even further than this: if private industry won't build new refineries, the government should. In fact, that's my preferred outcome anyway.
maybe in some non-literal sense of financing them, which is what the government can (or will) offer to energy development generally. also there are numerous credits and tax favors for energy concerns.
on the flip side, how much demand for oil products is driven by ordinary consumers? some estimates say about 40% of extracted oil - it all eventually get refined, right? so the refining distinction is meaningless - in the US is refined into gasoline that goes directly into light duty vehicles (90% of all gas is light duty!), i.e., joe schmo public driving around.
if you are looking for government levers, your instincts seem right to reach for CEQA and NIMBYs. in the sense that you are looking at the bigger picture at A level of abstraction, but i disagree it is the right level of abstraction. fundamentally US oil consumption (and therefore refining) is about the car lifestyle, which is intimately intertwined with interest rates, because interest rates decide, essentially, how many americans live in urban sprawl and are obligated to use the car lifestyle as opposed to being able to choose.
so your preferred outcome, if we take it to its logical conclusion is, a non-independent fed. and look, you are already saying some stuff that sounds crank, so go all the way. the US president is saying a non-independent fed! it's not a fringe opinion anymore. but this is what it is really about. the system has organized itself around the interest rate lever specifically because it is independent, so be careful what you wish for.
Two truly new refineries in 50 years despite lots of growth of demand throughout most of those decades. The fact there's only been two in fifty years and neither is anywhere near operational is proving my point. These are largely aberrations compared to the last fifty years, and its extremely notable the larger one is being built largely by a foreign oil company wanting to diversify internationally. It hasn't even broken ground yet and you're acting like its already here.
> if private industry won't build new refineries, the government should.
Personally I'd prefer our tax dollars to be spent feeding our kids and providing healthcare instead of continuing to give handouts to billionaires, but hey lots of people have different opinions.
All of my life has been around the oil industry, I'm well bathed in it.
This is a circular statement.
The regulatory hurdles are a large part of what drive cost.
I know a venue that wants to pave a dirt lot so they can better use it for stuff. It doesn't pencil out because of stupid stormwater permitting crap that'll add $250k to the project. It'd never pay off in a reasonable timeframe. So it just continues to exist in its current grandfathered in capacity when even the most unfavorable napkin math shows that what they want is an improvement.
A few weeks ago I was party to the installation of a perimeter railing on a flat commercial roof. The railing cost more than the rest of the job it was there for. Something tells me they won't be pulling permits for petty electrical work ever again.
Oil and most other heavy industry is faced with the same sort of problems with more digits in front of the decimal.
Its not if you get the context.
> The regulatory hurdles are a large part of what drive cost
I agree, they are a large part. The things they have to do to meet the standards are expensive.
The claim was "impossible to get permission to build now". As in, the government won't let them build it. That the standards are just technically impossible to meet. They can get the permission to build it any day. Its possible to meet these standards. They just don't think it'll be worth it when they have to do it right.
There, better?
These agencies have all sorts of discretion to waive this or enforce that or interpret some third thing and yet they leverage all of it in a manner that stalls progress.
I know a guy who has a textbook perfect situation for a septic in MN. MN won't permit it not because of some law or rule or code, but because the agency has decided that they just don't do septics anymore, mounds only and are exercising their discretion to only permit those. The cost difference is a lot, but less than suing them so guess what got installed?
Commercial permitting of every kind is like that but worse because the public will tolerate way more abuse of business than abuse of homeowners.
As for your friend wanting to improve the lot but needs to do a lot of drainage fixes, he should lobby his community for property tax abatement to support the drainage improvements. If the people really want the improvement they'll be willing to help pay for the drainage. But things like failures to account for drainage leads to massive floods hurting everyone in the community. It's something we've ignored in a lot of our planning for a long time.
Both of your major examples are probably selfish takes that harm their neighbors to save someone some money.
>You mean to tell me the land of 10,000 lakes might have a shallow water table that might require mounds more often to prevent people poisoning groundwater with their literal shit? The horror.
The "land of 10k lakes" doesn't get it's water from the ground like a desert municipality. They have surface reservoirs and protected watershed areas to keep those clean enough.
The "ground" is effectively the filter. You want it to be full of shit. That's how a septic works. That's how basically all runoff cleansing measures (sand traps, grass buffers, etc, etc) work. You're basically using "nature" as the settling tanks of a water treatment plant. A septic is the same but underground.
The problem is high water table. But as long as the water table permits a septic is great.
>Without hard data about the site I'm probably going to side with the county on that one.
Did you ever think that maybe the reason the dude applied for the septic was because the engineer said "this property is great for a septic, let's do a septic"
Surely this government you think so highly of is capable of exercising judgement.
If not then why give them discretion in the first place?
What about the licensed engineer that must stamp the plans? Surely he is trustworthy? If not then why does the government enforce his license monopoly and force people to do business with him?
>As for your friend wanting to improve the lot but needs to do a lot of drainage fixes, he should lobby his community for property tax abatement to support the drainage improvements
Are you insane or just lying through your teeth. Nobody is gonna add a political advocacy side quest to an already overpriced minor improvement. They'll just bend over and take it and hope to make it up rent or resale.
>It's something we've ignored in a lot of our planning for a long time.
This used to be municipally managed. Landowners built drainage as they saw fit. Municipalities managed stuff like streams and culverts and ditches and whatnot, build flood control dams and holding ponds and the like.
Making it part of the permitting/development process is mostly an exercise in financial engineering (gets the obligation off the municipality) and is worse because you get patchwork of minimum viable solutions (that work poorly) instead of systems that are planned at the municipal or higher level to work well.
>Both of your major examples are probably selfish takes that harm their neighbors to save someone some money.
And peddling things that drive up the viability floor of development so you can feel good about saving the environment isn't.
Enjoy your $3k rent for a 500ft slum. Make sure you complain about "landlords" while you're at it.
You're competing with the person who isn't renting my buddy's ADU because the ADU never happened because the septic upgrade killed it, the minimum viable mound system got put in to save $$ and it has the capacity for the house and nothing more Y'all really served the public interest on that one.
Sure sounds like potential issues for septic systems
> protected watershed areas
And they're protected by things like being choosy about approving septic systems I'd imagine
> The "ground" is effectively the filter.
And it requires so much "ground" to properly "filter", hence the mounds.
> The problem is high water table
So we both agree there's a high water table, and high water tables can give challenges for properly operating a septic system without poisoning your neighbor's water and lands
> why does the government enforce his license monopoly and force people to do business with him?
Because your runoff poisons the ground of the people around you. I'm sure they'd be singing a far different tune if their neighbors were dumping cancer causing chemicals on the ground right against their property line. Oh but this is their right to dump their wastes...
> Nobody is gonna add a political advocacy side quest to an already overpriced minor improvement
Sounds like nobody really cares about that overpriced minor improvement.
> This used to be municipally managed. Landowners built drainage as they saw fit. Municipalities managed stuff like streams and culverts and ditches and whatnot, build flood control dams and holding ponds and the like
And then we've realized after 100 years of this its led to extremely bad outcomes of nobody actually paying attention to flooding issues and we get children washed down rivers and billions of dollars of damages on random thunderstorms.
> it has the capacity for the house and nothing more
Probably true, and should probably be connected to proper sewer systems to expand and have more density instead of just poisoning their neighbors.
>And it requires so much "ground" to properly "filter", hence the mounds.
There is no point in building up if the ground is sufficient.
MN has basically decided they're not gonna bother considering what that means and just make everyone do mounds at great expense.
>So we both agree there's a high water table, and high water tables can give challenges for properly operating a septic system without poisoning your neighbor's water and lands
That's tangential. Go tee up your dishonest strawman somewhere else.
>Because your runoff poisons the ground of the people around you. I'm sure they'd be singing a far different tune if their neighbors were dumping cancer causing chemicals on the ground right against their property line. Oh but this is their right to dump their wastes...
If people are dumping cancer causing chemicals on the ground that's a separate problem than organic waste.
Forcing everyone to manage runoff (which is a seperate issue from septics) like it's a problem by default when 99% of it is clean (seriously, how dirty is the average concrete sidewalk or shed roof or whatever other impermeable surface) wastes money.
Resources are not infinite. If you actually gave a shit about the environment you'd understand that there's other more effective stuff that money could be spent on.
>Probably true, and should probably be connected to proper sewer systems
At. What. Cost.
> to expand and have more density instead of just poisoning their neighbors.
Once again you don't get how it works. The whole point of a septic is that it's fine as long as you don't sink your well pipe through the leech field.
I'm not gonna bother picking your comment apart any further. It's a waste of my time.
I hope someday you buy property and seek to further develop it so that you may reap what you have sown in ignorance.
When did, "I don't want people poisoning my water," become ivory tower smarmy attitude?
Sure sounds like it isn't, at least according to the county.
> we both agree there's a high water table
> That's tangential
Its fundamental to the decision of septic design, not tangential. Its not a dishonest strawman to bring up the core, fundamental concept at issue here.
> dumping cancer causing chemicals on the ground that's a separate problem than organic waste
Yeah that's right, my waste is fine, their waste is a problem. Who cares if my neighbors have to drink my shit?
> you don't get how it works.
I sure do.
> The whole point of a septic is that it's fine as long as you don't sink your well pipe through the leech field.
If the ground water is too high, you'll have more problems. Like, say, potentially some random property in the land of 10,000 lakes.
> I hope someday you buy property and seek to further develop it
I already have, and I haven't purposefully flooded out or poisoned my neighbors to do it.
> I'm not gonna bother picking your comment apart any further.
I'd potentially have a different opinion if I actually had some real facts about the property other than just some random property in a place known to have a high water table having an issue getting septic permitted. You even said yourself its got a high water table at the property! It honestly doesn't seem surprising to me to see a place like that having an issue with septic systems. But just a "trust me bro gubmit bad" attitude doesn't really change my opinion.
Cool beans buddy. Have a good night.