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> it's very, very much more bad than it is good

Is it? I don’t have a clear picture in either direction. What does an environmental impact assessment for a housing project typically result in?

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Well, I've witnessed this on dozens of houses in the town where my ex-wife grew up. The local river was slow-moving in a shallow river valley. Every spring, it would flood, and houses built within a half-mile of the main river would flood up to the second floor.

Would the environmental assessment help? I'd like to think so, but when I almost bought in the area, I discovered that the floodplain maps were "optimistic."

Insurance solves this for you. You don't need government. I bet that town allowed those houses anyway, so zoning didn't prevent it.

That's not what an environmental impact assessment is. Environmental impact assessments look at potential harms to the environment, not the property. It would look at if building a house would impact the wildlife, and sometimes other related phenomenon

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