“Cumulative Impact” Should Work Both Ways

They’re getting old now, but I still know people who lament the urban sprawl they think ruined Denver. They miss sleepy little towns that used to be miles away from Denver and have completely separate identities – places like Parker, Golden, and Louisville. Today it’s one giant “metroplex,” as the Census Bureau calls it, and Colfax Avenue is the longest commercial street in America.

No single developer caused that extensive sprawl. No single building was said to have ruined the region. But when strung together mile after mile, the result is one giant “conurbanization,” another ten-dollar government word. There are now 149,000 houses in Douglas County, 272,000 in Arapahoe, 200,000 in Adams, and 256,000 in Jefferson – all built one at a time. It is the “cumulative impact” that results in a Front Range metropolis covering 8,400 square miles.

Every house had a building permit, but not from the same authority. No one permitted them all, which has always been the issue with “cumulative impacts.” Our system is designed to guard against abuses by any person or business, but not necessarily to consider the impacts of many developments over a long time period. I once served on a “smart growth task force” Colorado Governor Roy Romer assembled to try and get a handle on sprawl, but it was really little more than an attempt at statewide zoning, without legal authority or widespread public support, so it went nowhere.

We deal with the issue of cumulative impacts, though, in many other areas, from endangered species to western water.

Cumulative Impact was the heart of the debate over listing polar bears as endangered. An Interior Department memo claimed that two-thirds of all polar bears would disappear by 2050, mostly because of global warming, which the government blamed – for the first time – on developments nowhere near polar bear habitat. By doing that, power plants in Arizona could be stopped because they might harm a species in Alaska. Nobody claimed the ability to track pollution from any particular plant all the way to the Arctic Circle, as the memo explained: “It is currently beyond the scope of existing science to identify a specific source of CO2 emissions and designate it as the cause of specific climate impacts at an exact location.” But the “cumulative impact” of many plants around the world was said to be a threat, a strategy that has since been duplicated for numerous other species listings, regulatory rulings, and permit denials.

Another example is the cumulative impact of water diversions – perhaps the most difficult of water quality issues, because there is no one responsible for it, and no specific place where it can be stopped. In short, water is cleanest at the highest altitude. The closer water gets to the ocean, the more pollutants it picks up. Thus, upstream diversions invariably take “cleaner” water out of the stream, leaving “dirtier” water downstream. If one upstream user takes a small amount of water, it is difficult to show that water far downstream is degraded to the point of harming someone else’s water rights. Yet when hundreds of upstream water users divert the cleanest water for more than a century, it clearly has an impact on water quality downstream.

Over 20 years ago, Colorado recognized the problem and updated its century-old water laws, so that water judges could consider the cumulative impact of existing diversions on water quality, before issuing decrees for more upstream diversions. It was a small change, but long overdue.

Here is the great irony in this issue, though. The federal government always insists on considering cumulative impacts of all sorts of developments, but never the cumulative impacts of its own regulations. A recent study by the National Association of Manufacturers found the total economic impact of regulations now exceeds $3 trillion. Regulations cost small manufacturers over $50,000 per employee – no wonder they’re not hiring.

Bureau of Labor Statics data reveal that Americans now spend more on regulations than on food, transportation, clothing, or healthcare – nearly $15,000 per household. “Ten Thousand Commandments,” an annual report on the federal regulatory complex published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, concludes that federal regulations add $1.939 trillion to Americans’ annual expenses.

Since 1976, when the Federal Register first began itemizing regulations, 215,405 final rules have been issued. None of those kill economic growth and opportunity by themselves. But the cumulative impact of all of them is staggering. Colorado and other states have addressed it at the local level. Maybe before issuing any new rules, federal officials, too, ought to be required to account for their cumulative impact.