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Fischer: Unintended consequences from cobras to real estate

By Jen Fischer - Special to the Standard-Examiner | May 30, 2025

Photo supplied, Jen Fischer

Jen Fischer

Unintended consequences. Sometime during the late 19th century, the British government in India, aiming to reduce the number of cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for each dead snake. Initially, this led to a decrease in the number of cobras in Delhi — initially. However, people began breeding cobras and then killing them to collect the bounty. The program was quickly discontinued. As a result, the breeders released the legions of newly bred cobras, resulting in a larger cobra population than before. This has since been termed the “Cobra Effect.”

More recently, there have been attempts to curb the consumption of sugary beverages by imposing a tax on them. Unfortunately, this increased the consumption of beer among households. Personally, I would rather my Uber driver be hopped up on the sugar from a 2-liter of orange soda than from the alcohol of a six-pack of Coors Light.

I experienced my own rendition of this when my youngest daughter was about 5 years old. I had refrained from giving her anything that contained artificial ingredients, including foods with high sugar content, apart from a birthday party or two, for her entire childhood to that point. One day, I was searching under her bed for a missing toy when, to my horror, I spotted a half empty container of pure chocolate frosting with a spoon in it. To this day, she is still a sugar addict. Unintended consequence.

Closer to home (specifically mine), Wasatch Integrated Waste Management landfill in Davis County has recently announced it will be increasing its fees starting the first of July. Currently, it costs $10 for residents of Davis County to dump a load under 10,000 pounds. It is $25 for nonresidents. If the fees are increased, that cost will shoot up exponentially. If Layton City chooses to leave Wasatch Integrated Waste Management, then the new cost of a load dump would be $50. There are many reasons for this that we don’t have the space or bandwidth to fully explain, but suffice it to say, we’ve simply run out of room.

Why, pray tell, would this be a real estate issue? Settle in, my friends, and I will tell you. If the residents of a city no longer have access to a landfill facility, due to the cost being prohibitive, this could lead to unsightly streets, yards and houses. As garbage piles up, disease-carrying pests like rats and roaches would multiply and noxious gases would begin to pollute the air, contaminating runoff and threatening local water supplies. This could lead to increased illness and neighborhoods would become unlivable. Businesses would shut down, tourism would vanish and the entire destabilization of the city could be the result. Yet, worse than all that put together, property values would plummet. And that is why I care. That is why we should all care.

Fortunately, Layton City has taken up the cause. In a recent letter to the Davis County Commissioners, the Layton City Council gave its notice of intent to withdraw from Wasatch Integrated Waste Management District. Apparently, there are other options for managing waste. This has sparked discussion among the two parties, and they are currently in negotiations. It looks as though there may not be a cobra ready to strike after all.

Jen Fischer is an associate broker and Realtor. She can be reached at 801-645-2134 or jen@jen-fischer.com.

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