Hacker News Reader

But isn't the land valuable (or potentially valuable) and won't its loss be irrecoverable?

Of course they are allowing commercial developments to continue, check this out:

Louisiana – Other Oil & Gas Infrastructure: http://www.dnr.louisiana.gov/assets/images/oilgas/refineries...

Louisiana – pipelines and platforms: http://www.dnr.louisiana.gov/assets/images/oilgas/refineries...

For some definition of "value". The reality seems to be that much of Louisiana is terribly polluted. People are stuck in homes which have lost much of their value due to both encroaching industrial plants and (thus) poor environmental quality. I just finished reading Strangers in Their Own Land, and the author goes into a lot of detail about this.

I had never heard of salt dome storage until reading this book. Scary stuff.

https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land

I guess the value of the land isn't all that high. It's already a particularly empty part of the pretty empty US.

And as far as protecting land value, that shouldn't be funded at a national level (it could be somewhat subsidized by cheap loans or something), it should be funded by the owners of the land.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com