They bring up a couple of good points as to why they are against the new factory. Having any project rushed through approvals typically means things were not as thorough as they probably should...
They bring up a couple of good points as to why they are against the new factory.
Having any project rushed through approvals typically means things were not as thorough as they probably should have been and likely missed something. With more and more focus on companies destroying local environments, any place that deals with hazardous materials will be scrutinized by the local community.
The other problem I agree with is the lack of skilled workers out in the rural communities. Working as an engineering manager in the Midwest this is something we run into quite a bit as well. There tend to be very few local people that have the skill sets that are needed, and those that do have the skill set are often hesitant to relocate into rural areas. Couple that with housing is typically limited in the area and it’s yet another deterrent for someone new to the area.
I think the most fascinating "mega-site" currently being built right now is Intel's Ohio-One. It's a $20billion project that's basically creating an entire industry surrounding it from the ground...
I think the most fascinating "mega-site" currently being built right now is Intel's Ohio-One. It's a $20billion project that's basically creating an entire industry surrounding it from the ground up. There are tons of things to be concerned about in a project this big. The biggest question is how in the world you get a highly skilled workforce to that area. It would require basically a massive community investment involving schools, housing and other amenities. I'm not convinced mega sites like this are ultimately a good thing as they would require such massive change to the local ecosystem.
It seems likely that there will be significant hiring from all over to get the workforce, with local contributions to the labor force growing over time as a stronger tax base leads to better...
It seems likely that there will be significant hiring from all over to get the workforce, with local contributions to the labor force growing over time as a stronger tax base leads to better municipal services which will lead to a more skilled population. That's a 20 year plan, though.
The problem is Intel is expecting a quick ROI, not planning on something 20 years down the line. Given it's a semiconductor fab, chances are the plant will be antiquated tech and they could be...
The problem is Intel is expecting a quick ROI, not planning on something 20 years down the line. Given it's a semiconductor fab, chances are the plant will be antiquated tech and they could be looking to shutdown the operations. This means a massive disruption to the local community and environment.
My current thinking is that for manufacturing to really move back to the states, it will require these massive operations where land is dirt cheap. On paper it's not a terrible thing, but my concern is that corners will be cut, planning will not be through and problems will arise. I'm hoping I can look back and see this ford and Intel plants as successful blueprints for how to do these projects.
The advantage of siting somewhere where all the surrounding land is cheap is that it leaves room for agglomeration effects to build up. If there is space for more associated industries, and large...
The advantage of siting somewhere where all the surrounding land is cheap is that it leaves room for agglomeration effects to build up. If there is space for more associated industries, and large populations of skilled workers with the backgrounds to be able to cross pollinate and move between them, you can get economies of scale and sophistication that are basically impossible to do otherwise. This is largely why Shenzen has been so successful at becoming a hub for manufacturing electronics. The whole city is built for it, the companies are big enough that they have excess capacity they can spin up. They can tear down property they own and build a new facility basically on demand. They have lots of tooling and workforces they can tap when necessary. There's just a lot of friction they don't deal with by having a bunch of the stuff necessary to create and distribute things all in one city.
It's always tough because it's really unclear to what extent things are actually being rushed through versus people just saying it's been "rushed" or "they didn't talk to the community" because...
Having any project rushed through approvals typically means things were not as thorough as they probably should have been and likely missed something.
It's always tough because it's really unclear to what extent things are actually being rushed through versus people just saying it's been "rushed" or "they didn't talk to the community" because they need an excuse to be opposed to change. In Japan there is very little community input on stuff like this and people mostly seem to get along okay, though their top-down approaches are more urban and human development friendly than our car-obsessed model is.
I really got the impression that a lot of it is just opposition to large megasites fundamentally altering the character of a community. If they're hiring droves of new people to settle in that means one of two things has to happen. You can do the Chinese special economic zone thing, where you basically master-plan a new city from scratch to go with it that includes housing and infrastructure and amenities to support the new people and the new businesses that will come to cater to those new people. Otherwise you just build the factory with no housing or infrastructure expecting "the free market" to sort all that out and then the community becomes a traffic choked craphole and all the housing stock becomes unaffordably expensive and overcrowded. In either case, the nature of the community is being fundamentally altered.
But at the same time, if America is going to have a functioning manufacturing base it needs to build. And it can't build if we have this idea that the present configuration of every political unit (city, town, neighborhood, etc.) must be preserved exactly according to the tastes and preferences of the people who currently live in it. It would be one thing if these were functional communities with long-standing roots in the area and a younger population that we expected to remain and continue whatever local traditions. But in most cases these aren't, we're dealing with aging communities that young people leave because there are no jobs.
Edit: This was intended as a child comment to yours @sublime_aenima. I think I was distracted when I pasted it in and put it in the wrong reply box to make a new top-level one.
I think any comparison between Japan NIMBYism and USA NIMBYism is going to be fundamentally flawed. Homeownership in the USA is between 60-70% of household wealth. Building a road, factory, or...
I think any comparison between Japan NIMBYism and USA NIMBYism is going to be fundamentally flawed. Homeownership in the USA is between 60-70% of household wealth. Building a road, factory, or wind farm near property you own could devastate you financially.
In Japan homes generally depreciate over time. It isn't uncommon for homes in Japan to reach a value of zero after 20-30 years and need to be completely rebuilt. Zoning laws are also quite different between the two countries historically.
This was a deliberate policy choice the US made though. So the NIMBYism is a consequence of tying household savings to real estate equity, due in part to the fact that many political units in the...
Homeownership in the USA is between 60-70% of household wealth. Building a road, factory, or wind farm near property you own could devastate you financially.
In Japan homes generally depreciate over time.
This was a deliberate policy choice the US made though. So the NIMBYism is a consequence of tying household savings to real estate equity, due in part to the fact that many political units in the US were basically created for and run by real estate development interests (seriously, just look at the career paths of most members of city councils in your typical exurban or suburban community). The NIMBYism feeds this dynamic and is fed by it in turn.
I agree that most Americans nowadays assume that housing is (and should be) an investment. The mortgage industry relies on that assumption. The 2008 recession happened due to flaws in that...
I agree that most Americans nowadays assume that housing is (and should be) an investment. The mortgage industry relies on that assumption. The 2008 recession happened due to flaws in that assumption.
While the history of how that got started would be interesting, I don't think treating it as a special interest at this point makes sense. We all rely on it, at least indirectly.
Hard to say what will happen. Lending standards for home owners are tighter and the big banks better capitalized, so a repeat of 2008 doesn't seem too likely? On the other hand, I've read some...
Hard to say what will happen. Lending standards for home owners are tighter and the big banks better capitalized, so a repeat of 2008 doesn't seem too likely? On the other hand, I've read some alarming things about commercial real estate and the banks that loaned money to them.
I don't think it'll be a financial crash like 2008, I think it just manifests as an ever worsening affordability crisis that mires young people in debt and opens up deep fault-lines of inequality...
I don't think it'll be a financial crash like 2008, I think it just manifests as an ever worsening affordability crisis that mires young people in debt and opens up deep fault-lines of inequality in society that manifest as poverty, poor health, drug use, crime, etc.
Yeah. The status quo of housing being an investment vehicle that always increases in value is not good or sustainable. There has to be a reckoning, even though that will involve many people losing...
Yeah. The status quo of housing being an investment vehicle that always increases in value is not good or sustainable. There has to be a reckoning, even though that will involve many people losing money.
I think the specifics of the type of manufacturing plays a big role in the amount of backlash against it. I think a neighborhood would have a much harder time accepting a new fireworks factory...
I think the specifics of the type of manufacturing plays a big role in the amount of backlash against it. I think a neighborhood would have a much harder time accepting a new fireworks factory than one that packages cheese. The ford factory that stars in the article is planned to make batteries. I bet if they made vehicle frames, the locals would be at least a little more open to it.
Anecdotally, I live in suburb to exurb country where land is cheap and a lot of factories are being built. None of them are to the scale of megasites like the ford factory referenced in the article, but they're decent sized. My hometown was ecstatic to get a pet food factory after years of the industrial park sitting empty. On the other side of the coin, a different town I lived in briefly had a major existential threat of finding that a long time car battery factory had been leaking contaminants into the air and water supply for many years without anyone noticing, and that children of factory workers had dangerous levels of lead in their blood. I even got a letter from the state asking whether I wanted to participate in a decade long study to determine what the long term health effects were from living within a few mile radius. This was only 4 years ago, not some time last century when regulation was considered overreach.
I don't blame anyone for wanting potentially hazardous manufacturing away from residential areas. Now when I look for a new place, I specifically consider what is upwind and what is based on the same aquifer. Even if it seems to be safe now, it doesn't mean it will always be.
Yeah anything with environmental or health impacts are going to be a big deal. I just wish we addressed those through channels designed to provide unbiased evidence and information about the...
Yeah anything with environmental or health impacts are going to be a big deal. I just wish we addressed those through channels designed to provide unbiased evidence and information about the likely risk impacts instead of trying to back into it through litigation and weird community input mechanisms. Instead if a scientist or public health person gets involved it's either on some company's payroll or some ambulance chasers'.
We're experiencing the same thing as the article in my area. This is a staunchly conservative (red) area, mostly MAGA folks yelling the loudest, and I find their concerns about the environment a...
We're experiencing the same thing as the article in my area. This is a staunchly conservative (red) area, mostly MAGA folks yelling the loudest, and I find their concerns about the environment a little too convenient. It doesn't pass the smell test to me.
"We don't need jobs" "62 year old tool maker." Oh yeah, this guy definitely doesn't need a job. I get why they're like this though. They don't want their community to change, but unless they start...
"We don't need jobs"
"62 year old tool maker."
Oh yeah, this guy definitely doesn't need a job. I get why they're like this though. They don't want their community to change, but unless they start having younger people move there the community will just eventually die out.
I don't think it's that simple. When did you last apply for jobs? My recent experience has been an abundance of jobs but nobody who will call you back.
I don't think it's that simple. When did you last apply for jobs? My recent experience has been an abundance of jobs but nobody who will call you back.
This article discusses the NIMBY movements acting to block construction of factories and other manufacturing infrastructure that using the same strategies that are often used to block housing...
This article discusses the NIMBY movements acting to block construction of factories and other manufacturing infrastructure that using the same strategies that are often used to block housing development.
The whole meme of “NIMBYism” needs to die. It combines extremely different situations opposed by different people for different reasons, and the label doesn’t say anything useful beyond “you don’t...
The whole meme of “NIMBYism” needs to die. It combines extremely different situations opposed by different people for different reasons, and the label doesn’t say anything useful beyond “you don’t want this in your general area” and implies they’re wrong for feeling that way. I find it especially weird to say that people who don’t want a factory built close by due to health concerns are “NIMBYs” in the same vein as people who don’t want apartments built for aesthetic reasons. If this factory is going to be safe and avoid polluting the surrounding area, great, but people have every right to be concerned when there’s such a history and ongoing problems stemming from industrial activity near residential areas. Nobody wants to be the next Love Canal and have their home become a future Superfund site. We can and should discuss whether the complains of these specific residents are well-founded or not, but please, let’s not set the tone of that discussion by calling them “NIMBYs.”
I'd say this is itself a useful distinction regardless of the whos or whys because, fundamentally, things need to get built for society to keep working and if you don't want it built near you and...
and the label doesn’t say anything useful beyond “you don’t want this in your general area” and implies they’re wrong for feeling that way.
I'd say this is itself a useful distinction regardless of the whos or whys because, fundamentally, things need to get built for society to keep working and if you don't want it built near you and you don't have a useful opinion of where it should be built, you are functionally either offloading the costs of it existing to the marginal communities without the same political clout or offloading the cost of it not existing to the rest of society.
Housing is a perfect example. We don't build enough, housing gets more expensive. Whether it's because you're a greedy property owner who just wants their assets to appreciate or an anti-capitalist who doesn't want real estate developers to get rich it ends up being the same results at the end of the day.
Houses and factories are two different things. When an apartment complex gets built near you, the worst you'll face is more noise and traffic. When it's a factory, not only will you be dealing...
Houses and factories are two different things. When an apartment complex gets built near you, the worst you'll face is more noise and traffic. When it's a factory, not only will you be dealing with both of those things to an even worse degree, there's also a very serious risk of pollution, and all of these factors have an impact on people's health when they have to live nearby. While it's often problematic for planned new housing to get bogged down in community review and red tape, there should be a full investigation of the impact of an industrial development on people who live nearby rather than expediting it. The people who are concerned about living near a factory aren't to blame if the company decides to build it somewhere else where people don't have the power to object. That fault lies with the company (and the government) for not considering how it affects those people to begin with.
Car traffic is probably one of the single biggest factors affecting general health and quality of life in America right now so I wouldn't blithely dismiss the impacts of traffic so easily....
Car traffic is probably one of the single biggest factors affecting general health and quality of life in America right now so I wouldn't blithely dismiss the impacts of traffic so easily. Apartment complexes can also bring months, if not years, of construction and associated pollution and construction waste if not managed properly. These aren't trivial things, it's the management of the externalities that's important.
The people who are concerned about living near a factory aren't to blame if the company decides to build it somewhere else where people don't have the power to object.
Why wouldn't it be? They are happy to buy the production of these polluting industries, but they are unwilling to bear the costs of that production, preferring to force those less influential than them to bear it instead. That's just hoarding privilege. If you want to buy and own cars, should you not be willing to deal with everything that entails? What does it say about a person if they assert that people must have cars, but the costs of building those cars must be borne by someone other than them? It's analogous to people who oppose setting the minimum wage at a living wage, which is implicitly saying that the job they do must be done but whoever does it deserves to be poor.
The companies will go where they can to make the stuff they make. Presumably people would be quite unhappy if they didn't make that stuff. And, since these communities have more political capital and clout, they're better positioned to force these companies to adhere to public safety guidelines and at forcing the governments to enforce them than marginalized communities are. They just choose to use their clout for knee-jerk opposition rather than figuring out how to make it work.
I haven't dismissed the impact of car traffic or construction, just compared it to industrial activity that's even more impactful. Blaming individuals or groups of people who live in a certain...
I haven't dismissed the impact of car traffic or construction, just compared it to industrial activity that's even more impactful. Blaming individuals or groups of people who live in a certain area for the overall harm caused by polluting industry strikes me as a non-constructive distraction from the actual problem. It seems like you're framing this issue as a moral failing on the part of these so-called "NIMBYs," but consider the system we live under and how these companies are given so much leeway once they've built what they want. People who don't feel strongly about the job creation aspect may still be concerned about the environmental impact, and there are plenty of historical and current cases that make it a real threat. This project wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for the surrounding residents, and I think it's a good idea overall. However, it won't engender community support by avoiding the review process.
Industrial activity is actually less impactful is the thing. We’re just bad at assessing systemic/background risks versus specific risks that we can blame entities for. And industries don’t...
Industrial activity is actually less impactful is the thing. We’re just bad at assessing systemic/background risks versus specific risks that we can blame entities for.
And industries don’t pollute because they’re Captain Planet villains who love polluting. Pollution is a byproduct of production. If you want to enjoy the production it’s going to cause pollution. We either pay more to offset it or reduce effectiveness or we offload those externalities to others who are less able to stop them. Boycotts or degrowth or emphasis on mitigation might all be good ways to address those, but just no development of any kind isn’t constructive it’s selfish.
Like I said, I doubt they’re avoiding a review process, but you can always have more reviews. At some point the red tape becomes an impediment to action.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the sum total of all car traffic in the United States is worse than all the industrial activity, but that’s not relevant when considering the impact of one factory in a...
It wouldn’t surprise me if the sum total of all car traffic in the United States is worse than all the industrial activity, but that’s not relevant when considering the impact of one factory in a specific area. In this case, people are worried about lithium leeching into the groundwater if there’s an accident or safety procedures aren’t stringent enough. It’s not irrational or selfish to want concerns like that to be fully addressed throughout the construction process. If Ford can show through the review that they’re taking all possible steps to ensure safety both during construction and once the plant is built, they shouldn’t have to worry about getting tied up in red tape, but they shouldn’t get to avoid the full approval process either.
Resisting building the facility entirely isn't arguing to ensure concerns are fully addressed. That makes it sound more like the concerns are a canard to stop the development for other reasons....
people are worried about lithium leeching into the groundwater if there’s an accident or safety procedures aren’t stringent enough.
Resisting building the facility entirely isn't arguing to ensure concerns are fully addressed. That makes it sound more like the concerns are a canard to stop the development for other reasons. This is the issue I mentioned earlier where it seems no environmental or safety people are involved in this unless it's on an interested party's payroll. There's no impartial authorities here.
That's still a pretty broad argument though, and I'm in favor of making further distinctions. It may be true that the objections in a particular case are have little merit, but it seems like the...
That's still a pretty broad argument though, and I'm in favor of making further distinctions. It may be true that the objections in a particular case are have little merit, but it seems like the argument needs to be made each time, based on the specifics.
NIMBYism goes wrong when it's a veto that can be used to add arbitrary delay regardless of merit, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be any community input or debate. There should be debate followed by a decision that sticks.
I don’t know if “community input” every really gets anything but input from the most HOA-brained busybodies. In theory we want actual community input, but in practice systems are heavily weighted...
I don’t know if “community input” every really gets anything but input from the most HOA-brained busybodies. In theory we want actual community input, but in practice systems are heavily weighted towards people whose priorities are very unrepresentative of the community at large. And that’s ignoring the tendency of communities to protect their specific interests against the interests of other neighboring communities or future generations.
Everybody wants to build a new factory (particularly in places where they will be the sole large employer) but nobody wants to use the empty facilities and lots previously occupied by factories....
Everybody wants to build a new factory (particularly in places where they will be the sole large employer) but nobody wants to use the empty facilities and lots previously occupied by factories. Maybe we don't need more industrial wasteland sprawl when the current crop of robber barons have moved on? Maybe if these megacorps want a company town so badly they should have to clean up an old paper mill or screen door factory first?
I'm all for brownfield development but it's actually often not worthwhile to bother. A paper mill and a battery plant don't have any machinery or equipment to re-use, and it's doubtful that they...
I'm all for brownfield development but it's actually often not worthwhile to bother. A paper mill and a battery plant don't have any machinery or equipment to re-use, and it's doubtful that they would even need a factory floor that's the same size. Old manufacturing facilities are usually much smaller than the scale things get built in now, and it's more efficient to build new since you can design with a bunch of things in mind that older plants didn't have like modern health and safety standards, disability access, and layouts more conducive to modern equipment and working styles. They'd basically just be leveling what's there and starting over, which ends up being more disruptive to whatever community is there (since they tend to be larger due to the population left over from the old facilities) than greenfield development is.
For these reasons among others, it's usually preferable to turn those older facilities into public amenities like parks or community centers or something else that has fewer operational constraints and is able to get more creative with how they use space.
They bring up a couple of good points as to why they are against the new factory.
Having any project rushed through approvals typically means things were not as thorough as they probably should have been and likely missed something. With more and more focus on companies destroying local environments, any place that deals with hazardous materials will be scrutinized by the local community.
The other problem I agree with is the lack of skilled workers out in the rural communities. Working as an engineering manager in the Midwest this is something we run into quite a bit as well. There tend to be very few local people that have the skill sets that are needed, and those that do have the skill set are often hesitant to relocate into rural areas. Couple that with housing is typically limited in the area and it’s yet another deterrent for someone new to the area.
I think the most fascinating "mega-site" currently being built right now is Intel's Ohio-One. It's a $20billion project that's basically creating an entire industry surrounding it from the ground up. There are tons of things to be concerned about in a project this big. The biggest question is how in the world you get a highly skilled workforce to that area. It would require basically a massive community investment involving schools, housing and other amenities. I'm not convinced mega sites like this are ultimately a good thing as they would require such massive change to the local ecosystem.
It seems likely that there will be significant hiring from all over to get the workforce, with local contributions to the labor force growing over time as a stronger tax base leads to better municipal services which will lead to a more skilled population. That's a 20 year plan, though.
The problem is Intel is expecting a quick ROI, not planning on something 20 years down the line. Given it's a semiconductor fab, chances are the plant will be antiquated tech and they could be looking to shutdown the operations. This means a massive disruption to the local community and environment.
My current thinking is that for manufacturing to really move back to the states, it will require these massive operations where land is dirt cheap. On paper it's not a terrible thing, but my concern is that corners will be cut, planning will not be through and problems will arise. I'm hoping I can look back and see this ford and Intel plants as successful blueprints for how to do these projects.
The advantage of siting somewhere where all the surrounding land is cheap is that it leaves room for agglomeration effects to build up. If there is space for more associated industries, and large populations of skilled workers with the backgrounds to be able to cross pollinate and move between them, you can get economies of scale and sophistication that are basically impossible to do otherwise. This is largely why Shenzen has been so successful at becoming a hub for manufacturing electronics. The whole city is built for it, the companies are big enough that they have excess capacity they can spin up. They can tear down property they own and build a new facility basically on demand. They have lots of tooling and workforces they can tap when necessary. There's just a lot of friction they don't deal with by having a bunch of the stuff necessary to create and distribute things all in one city.
It's always tough because it's really unclear to what extent things are actually being rushed through versus people just saying it's been "rushed" or "they didn't talk to the community" because they need an excuse to be opposed to change. In Japan there is very little community input on stuff like this and people mostly seem to get along okay, though their top-down approaches are more urban and human development friendly than our car-obsessed model is.
I really got the impression that a lot of it is just opposition to large megasites fundamentally altering the character of a community. If they're hiring droves of new people to settle in that means one of two things has to happen. You can do the Chinese special economic zone thing, where you basically master-plan a new city from scratch to go with it that includes housing and infrastructure and amenities to support the new people and the new businesses that will come to cater to those new people. Otherwise you just build the factory with no housing or infrastructure expecting "the free market" to sort all that out and then the community becomes a traffic choked craphole and all the housing stock becomes unaffordably expensive and overcrowded. In either case, the nature of the community is being fundamentally altered.
But at the same time, if America is going to have a functioning manufacturing base it needs to build. And it can't build if we have this idea that the present configuration of every political unit (city, town, neighborhood, etc.) must be preserved exactly according to the tastes and preferences of the people who currently live in it. It would be one thing if these were functional communities with long-standing roots in the area and a younger population that we expected to remain and continue whatever local traditions. But in most cases these aren't, we're dealing with aging communities that young people leave because there are no jobs.
Edit: This was intended as a child comment to yours @sublime_aenima. I think I was distracted when I pasted it in and put it in the wrong reply box to make a new top-level one.
I think any comparison between Japan NIMBYism and USA NIMBYism is going to be fundamentally flawed. Homeownership in the USA is between 60-70% of household wealth. Building a road, factory, or wind farm near property you own could devastate you financially.
In Japan homes generally depreciate over time. It isn't uncommon for homes in Japan to reach a value of zero after 20-30 years and need to be completely rebuilt. Zoning laws are also quite different between the two countries historically.
This was a deliberate policy choice the US made though. So the NIMBYism is a consequence of tying household savings to real estate equity, due in part to the fact that many political units in the US were basically created for and run by real estate development interests (seriously, just look at the career paths of most members of city councils in your typical exurban or suburban community). The NIMBYism feeds this dynamic and is fed by it in turn.
I agree that most Americans nowadays assume that housing is (and should be) an investment. The mortgage industry relies on that assumption. The 2008 recession happened due to flaws in that assumption.
While the history of how that got started would be interesting, I don't think treating it as a special interest at this point makes sense. We all rely on it, at least indirectly.
We do, but it’s not sustainable. There’s going to have to be a pop eventually because otherwise we’re functionally operating a pyramid scheme.
Hard to say what will happen. Lending standards for home owners are tighter and the big banks better capitalized, so a repeat of 2008 doesn't seem too likely? On the other hand, I've read some alarming things about commercial real estate and the banks that loaned money to them.
I don't think it'll be a financial crash like 2008, I think it just manifests as an ever worsening affordability crisis that mires young people in debt and opens up deep fault-lines of inequality in society that manifest as poverty, poor health, drug use, crime, etc.
Yeah. The status quo of housing being an investment vehicle that always increases in value is not good or sustainable. There has to be a reckoning, even though that will involve many people losing money.
I think the specifics of the type of manufacturing plays a big role in the amount of backlash against it. I think a neighborhood would have a much harder time accepting a new fireworks factory than one that packages cheese. The ford factory that stars in the article is planned to make batteries. I bet if they made vehicle frames, the locals would be at least a little more open to it.
Anecdotally, I live in suburb to exurb country where land is cheap and a lot of factories are being built. None of them are to the scale of megasites like the ford factory referenced in the article, but they're decent sized. My hometown was ecstatic to get a pet food factory after years of the industrial park sitting empty. On the other side of the coin, a different town I lived in briefly had a major existential threat of finding that a long time car battery factory had been leaking contaminants into the air and water supply for many years without anyone noticing, and that children of factory workers had dangerous levels of lead in their blood. I even got a letter from the state asking whether I wanted to participate in a decade long study to determine what the long term health effects were from living within a few mile radius. This was only 4 years ago, not some time last century when regulation was considered overreach.
I don't blame anyone for wanting potentially hazardous manufacturing away from residential areas. Now when I look for a new place, I specifically consider what is upwind and what is based on the same aquifer. Even if it seems to be safe now, it doesn't mean it will always be.
Yeah anything with environmental or health impacts are going to be a big deal. I just wish we addressed those through channels designed to provide unbiased evidence and information about the likely risk impacts instead of trying to back into it through litigation and weird community input mechanisms. Instead if a scientist or public health person gets involved it's either on some company's payroll or some ambulance chasers'.
We're experiencing the same thing as the article in my area. This is a staunchly conservative (red) area, mostly MAGA folks yelling the loudest, and I find their concerns about the environment a little too convenient. It doesn't pass the smell test to me.
"We don't need jobs"
"62 year old tool maker."
Oh yeah, this guy definitely doesn't need a job. I get why they're like this though. They don't want their community to change, but unless they start having younger people move there the community will just eventually die out.
This just seems like NIMBYism run amok.
I don't think it's that simple. When did you last apply for jobs? My recent experience has been an abundance of jobs but nobody who will call you back.
An abundance of fake jobs that auto-reject you 6 months later. I will always support new job creation. There are no downsides to employer competition.
No argument here, I'm just wary of over-simplification. These are not simple issues.
6 months ago, heard back in a week, did 2 interviews and a panel interview and was hired.
This article discusses the NIMBY movements acting to block construction of factories and other manufacturing infrastructure that using the same strategies that are often used to block housing development.
The whole meme of “NIMBYism” needs to die. It combines extremely different situations opposed by different people for different reasons, and the label doesn’t say anything useful beyond “you don’t want this in your general area” and implies they’re wrong for feeling that way. I find it especially weird to say that people who don’t want a factory built close by due to health concerns are “NIMBYs” in the same vein as people who don’t want apartments built for aesthetic reasons. If this factory is going to be safe and avoid polluting the surrounding area, great, but people have every right to be concerned when there’s such a history and ongoing problems stemming from industrial activity near residential areas. Nobody wants to be the next Love Canal and have their home become a future Superfund site. We can and should discuss whether the complains of these specific residents are well-founded or not, but please, let’s not set the tone of that discussion by calling them “NIMBYs.”
I'd say this is itself a useful distinction regardless of the whos or whys because, fundamentally, things need to get built for society to keep working and if you don't want it built near you and you don't have a useful opinion of where it should be built, you are functionally either offloading the costs of it existing to the marginal communities without the same political clout or offloading the cost of it not existing to the rest of society.
Housing is a perfect example. We don't build enough, housing gets more expensive. Whether it's because you're a greedy property owner who just wants their assets to appreciate or an anti-capitalist who doesn't want real estate developers to get rich it ends up being the same results at the end of the day.
Houses and factories are two different things. When an apartment complex gets built near you, the worst you'll face is more noise and traffic. When it's a factory, not only will you be dealing with both of those things to an even worse degree, there's also a very serious risk of pollution, and all of these factors have an impact on people's health when they have to live nearby. While it's often problematic for planned new housing to get bogged down in community review and red tape, there should be a full investigation of the impact of an industrial development on people who live nearby rather than expediting it. The people who are concerned about living near a factory aren't to blame if the company decides to build it somewhere else where people don't have the power to object. That fault lies with the company (and the government) for not considering how it affects those people to begin with.
Car traffic is probably one of the single biggest factors affecting general health and quality of life in America right now so I wouldn't blithely dismiss the impacts of traffic so easily. Apartment complexes can also bring months, if not years, of construction and associated pollution and construction waste if not managed properly. These aren't trivial things, it's the management of the externalities that's important.
Why wouldn't it be? They are happy to buy the production of these polluting industries, but they are unwilling to bear the costs of that production, preferring to force those less influential than them to bear it instead. That's just hoarding privilege. If you want to buy and own cars, should you not be willing to deal with everything that entails? What does it say about a person if they assert that people must have cars, but the costs of building those cars must be borne by someone other than them? It's analogous to people who oppose setting the minimum wage at a living wage, which is implicitly saying that the job they do must be done but whoever does it deserves to be poor.
The companies will go where they can to make the stuff they make. Presumably people would be quite unhappy if they didn't make that stuff. And, since these communities have more political capital and clout, they're better positioned to force these companies to adhere to public safety guidelines and at forcing the governments to enforce them than marginalized communities are. They just choose to use their clout for knee-jerk opposition rather than figuring out how to make it work.
I haven't dismissed the impact of car traffic or construction, just compared it to industrial activity that's even more impactful. Blaming individuals or groups of people who live in a certain area for the overall harm caused by polluting industry strikes me as a non-constructive distraction from the actual problem. It seems like you're framing this issue as a moral failing on the part of these so-called "NIMBYs," but consider the system we live under and how these companies are given so much leeway once they've built what they want. People who don't feel strongly about the job creation aspect may still be concerned about the environmental impact, and there are plenty of historical and current cases that make it a real threat. This project wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for the surrounding residents, and I think it's a good idea overall. However, it won't engender community support by avoiding the review process.
Industrial activity is actually less impactful is the thing. We’re just bad at assessing systemic/background risks versus specific risks that we can blame entities for.
And industries don’t pollute because they’re Captain Planet villains who love polluting. Pollution is a byproduct of production. If you want to enjoy the production it’s going to cause pollution. We either pay more to offset it or reduce effectiveness or we offload those externalities to others who are less able to stop them. Boycotts or degrowth or emphasis on mitigation might all be good ways to address those, but just no development of any kind isn’t constructive it’s selfish.
Like I said, I doubt they’re avoiding a review process, but you can always have more reviews. At some point the red tape becomes an impediment to action.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the sum total of all car traffic in the United States is worse than all the industrial activity, but that’s not relevant when considering the impact of one factory in a specific area. In this case, people are worried about lithium leeching into the groundwater if there’s an accident or safety procedures aren’t stringent enough. It’s not irrational or selfish to want concerns like that to be fully addressed throughout the construction process. If Ford can show through the review that they’re taking all possible steps to ensure safety both during construction and once the plant is built, they shouldn’t have to worry about getting tied up in red tape, but they shouldn’t get to avoid the full approval process either.
Resisting building the facility entirely isn't arguing to ensure concerns are fully addressed. That makes it sound more like the concerns are a canard to stop the development for other reasons. This is the issue I mentioned earlier where it seems no environmental or safety people are involved in this unless it's on an interested party's payroll. There's no impartial authorities here.
That's still a pretty broad argument though, and I'm in favor of making further distinctions. It may be true that the objections in a particular case are have little merit, but it seems like the argument needs to be made each time, based on the specifics.
NIMBYism goes wrong when it's a veto that can be used to add arbitrary delay regardless of merit, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be any community input or debate. There should be debate followed by a decision that sticks.
I don’t know if “community input” every really gets anything but input from the most HOA-brained busybodies. In theory we want actual community input, but in practice systems are heavily weighted towards people whose priorities are very unrepresentative of the community at large. And that’s ignoring the tendency of communities to protect their specific interests against the interests of other neighboring communities or future generations.
Everybody wants to build a new factory (particularly in places where they will be the sole large employer) but nobody wants to use the empty facilities and lots previously occupied by factories. Maybe we don't need more industrial wasteland sprawl when the current crop of robber barons have moved on? Maybe if these megacorps want a company town so badly they should have to clean up an old paper mill or screen door factory first?
I'm all for brownfield development but it's actually often not worthwhile to bother. A paper mill and a battery plant don't have any machinery or equipment to re-use, and it's doubtful that they would even need a factory floor that's the same size. Old manufacturing facilities are usually much smaller than the scale things get built in now, and it's more efficient to build new since you can design with a bunch of things in mind that older plants didn't have like modern health and safety standards, disability access, and layouts more conducive to modern equipment and working styles. They'd basically just be leveling what's there and starting over, which ends up being more disruptive to whatever community is there (since they tend to be larger due to the population left over from the old facilities) than greenfield development is.
For these reasons among others, it's usually preferable to turn those older facilities into public amenities like parks or community centers or something else that has fewer operational constraints and is able to get more creative with how they use space.