The Right to Pollute according to the EPA?

Mar 28, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,
Recent letters by Ryhaan Shah, Yog Mahadeo and Malcolm Harripaul have raised the issue of noise pollution and the role of the EPA in Guyana. My recent experience with a wash-bay that has been operating on 5th Avenue, Diamond, confirms my view that the horrendous noisiness in Guyana (which has now increased with the many large diesel-engined trucks that race along our narrow roads, blaring their horns for us to get out of the [***] way), has to do precisely with the EPA’s understanding of its role and functions.
The EPA has clearly concluded, it would seem that it is the (noise) polluter who has the right to pollute. There is a famous eponymous theorem – the Coase Theorem – that says that polluters and those who are affected by pollution could bargain their way to a socially acceptable amount of say noise, as long as there are clearly specified rights assigned either to the polluter or the affected parties.
If the polluter is assigned the right to pollute, then the parties that are negatively affected must pay the polluter not to pollute. The bargaining process is thus a private solution that determines the amount that would be paid, and the amount of pollution that would be allowed. In the context of private solutions, there is absolutely no need for a regulatory agency such as the EPA.
In Guyana’s case, if the EPA has effectively assigned to the polluter the right to pollute, there is no need for its intervention to regulate noise pollution, as it is also signalling that a private solution is all that would be required.
But having effectively assigned to the polluter the right to pollute, and also inserting itself into any attempt to regulate noise, gas flaring, and other forms of pollution, the EPA can assume only one role – that of the policeman protecting the rights of the polluter.
By acting to enforce the rights it has, from all appearances, effectively assigned to the polluter in the Coasain world it has created, the EPA must correspondingly act to ensure that those affected by the pollution (noise, litter, etc.) bear their fair share of the burden of the private solution that it is policing. And we do pay, when we are abused by noisy neighbours and establishments, when we cannot talk to each other without shouting, when life for us ordinary citizens is unbearable because polluters have the right to pollute.
Yours sincerely,
Thomas B. Singh

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