Businessmen constantly complain about regulation and the costs of same.
I suspect the claims of big business are largely overblown. Does regulation cost? Yes, it does. Does it do more good than harm? The answer is likely, yes, it does. Does it kill jobs? Some maybe, although it also creates newer and better jobs.
With regard to all three arguments, I recall one of my bosses bitching endlessly about the $3 million the company had to spend to install a machine that scrubbed rubber solvents — volatile organic chemicals — from exhausted air. Absent other data, you were left to conclude that the $3 mil was a profits killer and a cost the company would never recover.
Internal company data, however, showed that 98% of the VOCs collected were returned to the production floor and reused, saving the company around $10 million a year in costs for new solvent.
Guess that’s an outstanding example of all three arguments, huh? It cost three million bucks; unthinkable! It cleaned up the air; so what? Fewer chemical workers needed; job killer!
But all in all a good deal for the regulated company, if you ask me.
Small businessmen usually operate on a different plane. Many would agree that Obamacare will be a pain in the neck, but not the end of the world. More would agree their complaints revolve around state and local level regulations, and the issues can be complex.
As a past “beneficiary” of a small level of local regulation, I’d say local regulations are often at least as right as they are wrong.
But to complain about them publicly can be seen as a major example of mixing self-interest with high principles. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as George and Jerry used to say on Seinfeld. Toss some altruism in with that self-interest and you got a winnah!
Case in point: Steve Staub, president of Dayton, Ohio’s Staub Manufacturing Solutions.
Ask around about who would be a good guy to know with regard to the manufacturing business in Dayton and many fingers point to Staub.
At 44, he claims to have been involved in manufacturing for 32 years — which sounds implausible until he starts to unwind his biography. Helping out in his Dad’s shop at 12. Operating complicated machines on the shop floor at 16. Going off to college a few years later to study business, then taking a year off from his studies and never going back.
In 1997, he and two colleagues started the company, then known as Staub Laser Cutting. The name was changed several years ago to reflect its gradual change from a company that sliced parts using lasers to a company that slices, bends and forms, welds and assembles more complex things.
One of Staub’s concerns these days involves a set of local government regulations that protect the city’s primary water source, the Great Miami River that winds through western Ohio and Dayton on its way south to join the Ohio.
His concerns are real.
On the one hand, in presenting itself to visitors and possible investors, the quantity and quality of water drawn from aquifers beneath the river are a prime talking point for Dayton.
Ohio, generally, comes up short in terms of scenery and pleasant weather (the temperature is about 20 F as I write this, but the sun is bright. Which means the ice and snow on the streets and sidewalks will soon be sloppy slush, turning to nasty ice by this evening). But water we got.
And pretty pleasant people.
And amenable small towns.
And surprisingly good roads.
And public schools that are considerably better than you might wish to believe.
On the other hand, Staub’s points, as outlined in his company’s Made in Dayton blog, dispute the local regulation of the well fields that line the rivers coming through town. These include the Mad River, and the Stillwater River in addition to the Miami, all three pretty sizable. Add in Wolf Creek, a small river in all but name, and you have the foundations for a water regime of immense value.
But Staub is more than a little cynical about what protecting that water resource has come to mean — he headlined his five articles about the well fields protection program “City of Dayton recognized for killing jobs, not letting companies expand and making land worthless.”
“While we do need to protect our city's water supply,” said Staub, “we also need to use common sense and this is what seems to be lacking when it comes to Dayton’s oversight of the Well Field Protection Program.”
Allow me to point out that Staub’s company owns a nice chunk of land within the Well Field Protection Program are (we’ll call it WFPP from here on out) and would like to expand his business. The WFPP might well prevent said expansion.
Allow me to point out that Staub's company is located within the WFPP by choice. It could have been located in an area outside the WFPP and avoided all this trouble.
Also allow me to point out that the term “common sense” is little more than a dog whistle to too many people who just want to kill or ignore environmental regulations.
The WFPP originated two decades ago following a fire at a Sherwin-Williams paint plant in an industrial park sitting on aquifer land. The park was approved, incidentally, against the wishes of the Ohio EPA, so the potential effects of the fire — paint is, after all, a nasty source of hazardous waste and still liquid paint banned from landfills around the nation — were disastrous.
The Dayton Well Field Ordinance, an outgrowth of an earlier effort to disapprove the proposed park, was passed by city council. It was originally intended to fund a survey of hazardous materials being used within the well fields, but as these things do, it evolved into the WFPP, in Staub’s opinion something much less benign.
The WFPP, in effect, establishes boundaries inside of which hazardous materials may not go, at least not in large quantities. The boundaries are supposed to represent the area from which a spill will migrate to the actual well field within a year. Even if the one-year migration boundaries are correct — and I can assure you, they seldom are — the rigidity of this form of regulation causes numerous inequities.
Staub cites a situation near his own property of a very large plastics manufacturer 40 feet outside the protection boundary, within which Staub Manufacturing resides, at a higher elevation than Staub with many fewer restrictions on materials on the site. Plastics are routinely manufactured by mixing one nasty chemical with one or more other nasty chemicals, and leavings — chips, squiggles of material, removals to achieve shapes — are (mostly) non-recyclable and do not degrade in an environmentally acceptable fashion. This indeed doesn’t seem to be a very smart location.
He also cites a commercial gasoline operation 50 feet from the WFPP boundary that routinely has 41 million pounds of hazardous materials (motor oil, gasoline and diesel, among others) on its grounds, while a manufacturing business just inside the boundary is allowed a maximum of 200 pounds.
Part of Staub’s evident anger is he feels the city’s Water Department has reneged on a promise made when the WFPP was established. (Here’s where the self-interest really kicks in.) The city, through the Water Department, promised to make “whole if they were harmed by the Well Field Protection Ordinance” any business already located within the WFPP area. For that purpose, a $10 million fund was established.
Beginning in 1995, according to Staub, the Water Department began to issue more and more restrictive provisions for chemical use within the WFPP. The effect on the value of Staub’s property was pretty bad. A realtor hired to appraise the area owned by Staub’s family put the value of the land at approximately zero.
Staub requested the cash to be “made whole” from the city’s Water Department’s fund and was summarily turned down.
No blame should be attached to Staub for his anger about this. If it happened to me, I’d be angry myself. As was an otherwise liberal fellow I knew in Oregon some years ago after urban growth boundaries were established and his small property, upon which he wished to build a home, was declared perpetual forest land.
He outlines several possible solutions for the problems with the WFPP.
1. Approve an increase in the total daily maximum inventory (TDMI) of hazardous materials in the WFPP. The TDMI presently allowed in the area is 160 million pounds. Would an additional, say, five million pounds create a significantly increased danger to the water supply? The best answer to that question is, Probably not.
“Oh sure, 100 years ago people used to dump waste material on the ground, but that is a thing of the past,” said Staub. “Environmental practices have evolved, it is time for the Dayton Well Field Ordinance to do the same!”
2. Establish a “cap and trade” system allowing one manufacturer to trade pounds of hazardous materials unneeded by said manufacturer to another. He suggests a board to oversee trading to include a representative from the water department, a representative from the county health department, and seven representatives from manufacturing business located within the WFPP.
3. Install monitoring wells within the WFPP to detect hazardous waste entering the well field quickly and track its migration. “It would be immediately known that there is a risk (possibly much sooner than today) and appropriate actions can be taken to shift production wells utilization while the risk is present,” said Staub.
“This shifting in (water) production was the logic given by the City of Dayton when State officials questioned the development of the Miami North Well Field due to the proximity to the North Incinerator land fill, which is unlined. There’s more than enough cash in the Well Field fund to cover the installation of monitoring wells.”
Staub has three other suggestions — redefine the boundaries of the WFPP using more current data about hazmat migration, change the makeup of the well field fund board and its environmental advisory board, and return to the spirit of the original law, which was implemented as a zoning ordinance.
Personally, I think Staub’s ideas have some merit, but the politics of the situation may be especially difficult. Montgomery County, like most of Ohio, is politically divided, although Dayton itself is a bulwark for Democrats. The city is governed by a council that remains strongly Democratic and strongly committed to retaining its rivers as sources of recreation and clean water, and as draws for industries requiring good water for their manufacturing processes.
I think the most viable of Staub’s suggestions are the cap and trade system he advocates, and the idea of installing monitoring wells in the WFPP. Cap and trade has proved itself several times in the past, although it is a problematic issue for some. The make-up of his proposed board seems overbalanced toward industrialists, so it seems unlikely to be approved that way. But more balance between representatives of public and private interests might work.
Monitoring wells could be used to either verify or refute the one-year migration standards set years ago by the water department. Inject a sufficient quantity of something known to be benign to the water in the aquifer and trace its movements — a simple, scientifically based idea.
Monitoring wells might incidentally allow a redefinition of the WFPP boundaries using actual data rather than relying on what can only be characterized as semi-educated guesses from the past. It would be an even better idea if the plan included monitoring wells outside the WFPP boundaries, especially near the crest of uplands area adjacent to the WFPP and extending downward toward the rivers. For if something is detected from a well inside the boundaries, it neither proves nor disproves the hazardous materials originated inside the WFPP.
Is self-interest involved? Yes.
But Staub’s use of the term “common sense” is not so easy to take. What seems like common sense to one seems uncommonly stupid to another. Should Dayton (or any other city) put its water sources in possible jeopardy based on "common sense"? A better definition is needed if “common sense” is shorthand for “let me and my friends do what we want.”
What do you think? Comments are below. I urge you to weigh in.