[Vision2020] A E. Kirsten Peters article thread

[Phil Nisbet]

Mark

That the police powers of local government have the ability to condemn uses 
under the common law is well supported by SCOTUS rulings.  Of course those 
regulation have to protect the rights of some by removing the rights from 
others.  Some recieve a benefit, have an afirmation of their 'property 
rights', but the restrictions remove rights from other folks.

The balancing act of local government is to see that the common good gets 
protected and that the few rights are removed from people in the process.  
If the rights lost by the few to benefit the many are great enough, then a 
takings has occured and the loses sustained by those few to the benefit of 
the many have to be compensated for under existing SCOTUS rulings.

I did not hear a single speaker say that the county should not perform its 
function in protecting the many, only that they felt that the restrictions 
on the few should be less than contemplated by the regulations.  The term 
performance standards was used in that element, suggesting that if people 
could show that their activities were not harmful to the many, that they 
should be allowed to operate conflicting uses that are restricted or banned 
by the proposed regulations.

Yes, our groundwater need to be protected as a common resource and one that 
is precious.  But if only a few are expected to bear the weight and cost of 
the regulations that heap benefit on the many, why should those few not seek 
remedy and compensation from those who have recieved that benefit.

The fact that housing developers are given a perfomrance standard and that 
commercial developers are given a perfomrance standard, but other users are 
not was interesting in and of itself.  EPA in its work on commercial and 
residential development's impacts on groundwater quality was pretty clear 
that the largest impactor of groundwater flows and purity in the USA is from 
those sources.  In Latah county, construction within the GWPZ gobbles up 40 
acres of land a year and is growing at an increasing pace.  Add to that the 
annexed portions in direct proximaty to Moscow and the obvious large scale 
impacts to groundwater resources are not crushed rock and gravel pits or 
people running some horses, its building more and more commercial and 
residential structures with their resulting runnoffs.

So the regulations as proposed will stop people from having clunky noisome 
gravel pits and too many stinky old farm animals, but those particular uses 
are acutally less groundwater impactive than uses which have been allowed 
and encouraged in the GWPZ.  Why could the regulations not have been 
developed to allow perfomrance standards for the less impactive uses?  Is it 
because the regulations as proposed were not about grondwater, but about the 
restriction of use for things that some people find less than desirable for 
completely other reasons?

And if cattleman, stable owners and gravel operators are not granted 
performance standards that have been allowed for more impactive users, why 
is it that they should not seek compensation for the restrictions that they 
have to bear?

Phil Nisbet


>From: Mark Solomon <msolomon at moscow.com>
>To: "Tom Hansen" <thansen at moscow.com>, "'Phil Nisbet'" 
><pcnisbet1 at hotmail.com>,        <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>Subject: RE: [Vision2020] IDWR distribution of funds to water projects
>Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 06:29:11 -0700
>
>Following is the letter to the editor I submitted yesterday upon reading 
>Kirsten's "article":
>
>Another take
>
>Daily News reporter E. Kirsten Peters could have written her article on the 
>proposed groundwater ordinance (Daily News 7/20) with journalistic 
>integrity. Instead, she chose to editorialize. Having attended the meeting 
>myself, Peters' slant that "property rights got a black eye" could just as 
>easily have been "property rights defended" but that is not apparently 
>where her personal beliefs lie.
>
>As was clearly stated in the proposed ordinance and by members of the 
>public in their testimony, property rights are not just about how someone 
>can develop new uses on their land but also how existing uses and 
>landowners are protected from harm by new development. The proposed 
>ordinance, I believe, does an excellent job of balancing those sometimes 
>conflicting demands in regards to our most precious local natural resource 
>- our groundwater.
>
>Editorials belong on the opinion page, not in the news.
>
>Mark Solomon

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