More specifically, Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut in which the SCOTUS held that a governing body could transfer real property from one private owner to another private owner through the use of its power of eminent domain absent any local or state legal prohibitions. The ruling majority were the SCOTUS “liberals” and the minority were the “conservatives.”
The majority was essentially ratifying the common practice of local governments to seize private property for “public use” in the most broadly interpreted meaning of “public use” such as had taken place for decades of redevelopment projects. (The arguments of the minority were more muddled and ahistorical. Plus its difficult to believe that those same Justices or their like-minded replacements would see anything wrong with the Texas law that permits a private corporation like Trans-Canada from exercising its eminent domain authority for a pipeline as Walter Brasch detailed in Standing Tall for Landowner Rights.) It’s also interesting to note that this decision so outraged the public and that many states passed restrictions on the use of eminent domain.
In the narrow sense, the Supreme Court got it right – land usage decisions are the jurisdiction of local governments. It is also troubling because what’s best for one locale in the near-term may not be best of that locale in the longer term and in both the short and long term may have serious negative repercussions for adjoining communities, the state, and the nation.
As the pictures of the devastation left by Hurricane Sandy began appearing, many like me were struck by the size and lavishness of the beachfront houses in New York and New Jersey. Some like me can recall when beachfront dwellings were closer to vacation shacks than the upper middle class houses we were seeing. It makes sense for those local building permit authorities to approve high value building applications because it means ka-ching for local property tax revenues. But who pays for such land use decisions by buyers and the city or town when disaster strikes? If the costs were born exclusively by owners financially able to bear the loss and their insurance companies, then we could say that the free market was working just fine, thank you very much.
But that’s not what happened after Hurricane Sandy, was it? Some owners couldn’t possibly cover the costs less whatever they collected from their insurer. Many didn’t know of the risks, assuming that the permitting by the city or town meant that wind and flood risks were minimal or easily covered by federal flood insurance. And while some owners or potential new owners are reconsidering their decision and property prices have dropped a bit, it’s mostly business as usual in NY and NJ
Weatherdude at dKos made some interesting observations about Moore, OK in the aftermath of the tornado this week. His “URBAN SPRAWL” section applies to many places beyond Moore, OK.
Sprawl is a big deal. Americans have a fetish for conquering wide open spaces and turning them into thriving metropolises (metropoli?) with miles and miles of little boxes on the countryside made of ticky-tacky. As we spread out and populate the landscape like rabbits, we’re putting ourselves at greater risk for destruction.
20 or 30 years ago, a tornado over the same area of Oklahoma would have caused a lot of damage, but nowhere near like what we saw today. Moore was a city of about 40,000 people when the horrific F5 tornado struck almost the exact same areas back on May 3 1999. US Census data shows that Moore’s population exploded 33.9% between 2000 and 2010, and has grown even more (2.2%) since then, to a 2011 estimated population of 56,000.
That’s a lot of growth. That’s a lot of growth that wasn’t there 10 years ago. That’s a lot of crap for a tornado to hit and destroy.
Same with Tuscaloosa. Same with Joplin. Same with La Plata, Maryland. Same with the March 2 2012 outbreak across the Ohio Valley. As we grow and expand and pack ourselves more densely than ever before, tornadoes go from a minor tragic incident to a horrific event. It’s amplified an untold amount when an EF-5 tornado tears through a populated area, like what happened in Moore.
Those “ticky-tacky boxes” are attractive to people because they get so much for their money. In large part because the true costs are hidden. (Not so different from corporations socializing the external costs of their private profit venture. Or outsourcing the costs of our clothing to poor workers in the third world.) Houses, schools, a medical center, and commercial buildings all gone. The deaths and injuries were remarkably low (even though each one is a personal tragedy for the families) considering the meagerness of the storm shelter facilities. More importantly, the City of Moore, OK benefited from that 30% plus growth since the last devastating tornado a mere fourteen years ago.
It’s unknown if “global weirding” plays any role at all in tornadoes and it may not. But that won’t be known for many years or possibly decades from now. However, the precautionary principle, which should be used as much as possible in public policy, would have us assume that it does and deal with it accordingly.
In a resource and wealth unlimited world, all the trees felled, steel and plastic manufactured, and cement mixed for the buildings destroyed in the recent large natural disasters in this country wouldn’t matter. Rebuilding creates jobs and that’s good for the economy. But a whole lot more CO2 is released as the rubble from the destroyed buildings is scraped up and hauled away and followed by new construction on that same land. The planet can’t afford too much high resource cost disposable houses.
In the aftermath of the Oklahoma tornadoes as reported by Charles P. Pierce, Sheldon Whitehouse, (D)RI, made a statement tying together the notions of community , enviromental degradation, and natural disasters on.
“So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said. “Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas, it hits Montana with dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together.”
In the abstract and narrow sense, there wasn’t anything wrong with the “Kelo” decision. However, it places a great weight on local government decision makers. And if the City of Kelo can’t even get it right about a new commercial venture that was never built (the land remains vacant after the houses were razed or moved), few have the incentives and expertise required to evaluate proposals in light of climate change.
It’s time to recognize that it’s going to take a really big village to build a village. Whether that’s done through regulations that limit or prohibit new building in certain locations or government issuing clear and concise assessments of the known and foreseeable risks to building in certain locations for property buyers depends on what the public wants and is willing to live with. No need for “we’re in it together” for those that choose the latter.
