From: blagdon@engin.umich.edu (Kenneth James Clark )
Subject: Re: Leasing land (was Re: What, if anything, is a wetland?)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 15:18:30 EDT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor

In article <TSF.92Jul22125430@U.ERGO.CS.CMU.EDU> tsf@CS.CMU.EDU (Timothy Freeman) writes:
>
>Okay, so in the case of the plastic in my keyboard, CMU owns the labor
>that went into making the keyboard from the oil, but "the community"
>owns the atoms that originally came from the oil.  If the scheme with
>the land continues to hold, then the oil has only been leased from the
>community.  When the lease expires, the keyboard will have to somehow
>be converted back into oil and pumped back into the oil well?  I'm
>pretty lost here.

I hadn't heard of this 'permanent lease' idea before, but it sounds 
like it could work.  In this case, it seems that you as the lessor would
be required to return the thing back to its original state.  If you 
couldn't do that, you'd have to pay for it to be brought back as close
to originally as possible.  In this case, you'd pay to have the keyboard
recycled into original components, with the closest thing to oil being
plastic pellets to be reused.   


>I'm equally lost when it comes to the irrigation ditch.  When the
>lease expires, how do I keep the ditch but lose use of the land?  (If
>the lease can't expire, then in what sense is it a lease?)

You don't.  You get what utility you can out of the ditch while you are
leasing the land.  When you leave you are required to bring the land back
to its original state, or pay to have that done.  Ie, you fill in the 
ditch and replant the ground with whatever kind of plant you removed (or
at least some native plants) to make the ditch.  If you don't expect
to get enough utility out of the ditch, don't dig it.


>The scheme where the community leases the land might be workable, if
>the community were an intelligent decision maker (so it could put the
>right restrictions on the lease) and we also feel good about having no
>one plan past the end of their lease.  Unfortunately neither of these
>conditions seems reasonable: communities are made of people who will
>necessarily have less ability and motive to pay attention to good
>resource management of a particular piece than an individual owner
>would.  I also don't like schemes that necessarily restrict people to
>limited-range planning. 


Seems like we do a lot of this aleady (eg, planning commissions, 
legislation, etc).  The big difference is a commitment to return things
to their original state when your lease is done.  Note that the
community decides what is the 'original state', so they could decide
that the changes you made should stay (they become a community asset).

A useful corollary of this is the idea of a security deposit.  When I
build a house, I have to pay the community enough to pay for demolition
of the house and replanting of the area to return it to its original
state when I leave.  If the community decides that this isn't necessary
when I leave, I get that money back, and the next person pays the amount
necessary at that time.  This is basically equivalent to the "polluters
pay" principle we already use, but this way the community gets the money
up front, so no one can weasel out when they go bankrupt.

Actually, it seems like we do a lot of this already, but just include
it in taxes, lawsuits, etc.  Just a change of philosophy.

Ken
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