noise."Story Notes: The Trouble with Unicorns II · 11:45am Sep 23rd, 2018
Way back in February, when I published The Trouble With Unicorns and followed it with The Trouble With Unicorns IV, a lot of readers were left wondering if there was TTWU 2 and 3. Which, admittedly, is a reasonable thing to wonder.
I’m proud to say that there is! Er, there are.
And they would have been out in a more sensible order, too, if it hadn’t been for the closeness of Superbowl Sunday and Valentine’s Day. And then I wrote some other stuff, and so the other two kinda got pushed to the side for a bit.
I went without pre-readers on this one, but I do want to give special thanks to Jackie, who answered a few questions about real estate agents and commissions for me.
Starting with the characters! Sal is named after Stephen King's Sal Magliore, from the story Road Work. In that story, he's (among other things) a slimy used-car salesman.
Powder and Speckles are both G1 ponies; Copper Glow is G2. Lilly Lightly is G3. Sugarberry is a G1 pony.
Pony genders in this story don’t necessarily correspond to their genders in canon. 
Mostly because especially in the earlier gens, there was a distinct lack of stallions.
Hoxie Brothers Electroplating Company is not based on any real company as far as I can remember. I do, however, recall back in February researching abandoned factories in Michigan (there are plenty) and for a long time considering something named for Hamtramck, which is a great Michigan city, and which does boast several manufacturing plants and I’m sure a large number of closed factories as well.
Soil contamination is a real problem in old industrial sites. A lot of times, especially when regulations were lax, the company would just go out of business and abandon everything that they'd left behind without any attempt to clean it up. That's an ongoing problem in many parts of Michigan, former industrial sites and rivers that were used to dump things in, things that it later turned out you really didn't want in your water.
Sometimes the rules are kind of weird, where if the same business stays there and you don't dig any holes, you don't have to deal with any soil contamination (which is why a lot of auto repair businesses cap over their leaking in-ground hoists and install aboveground, rather than dig up all the old equipment). Lots of businesses used to have underground tanks of one sort or another, and they can be very expensive to remove . . . and industrial sites—if it looks like a good deal for 'prime riverfront property' there's probably a reason for that. There's some stuff that you just don't want to buy, even if it's cheap, because if the old owners can't be found, you might very well be liable for cleaning everything up on your new property.
The human solution to the problem of contaminated soil is that you dig it all up (if possible) and safely transport it somewhere that it can be reconditioned—and that, as you'd imagine, is a very expensive and time-consuming prospect.
Unicorns might come up with a different solution to the problem. One that’s more selective, and—dare I say—more magical.
Also, since I did go without pre-readers, let’s see who’s the first to notice if (more likely, when, honestly) I ever misspelled cadmium.
Well I just worked 10 hours, so I might not be the most attentive, but I didn't notice any major errors. And if you misspelled cadmium, it wasn't by starting it 'cad'.
Heh. These unicorns would have some interesting times in Endicott.
My only issue with the story is that the letters sent to the ponies didn't contain the words, "Soil contamination" or "toxic" or "Health and safety laws"
Nor that their research turned up nothing of a smiliar warning.
The story definitely got a small laugh from me but its hard for me to believe that in the month they researched this they never were informed or discovered, "This is considered a dangerous substance to live near,"
Heck I am impressed they discovered their particular state's rules mineral rights rules were without talking to a lawyer who would have explained away the plot.
((Side note I learned some in Mammoth cave in Kentucky. Under Kentucky law you own everything under your house to the core of the earth which means parts of Mammoth cave are owned by private citizens, even if they can't access them.
The fact that the earth being a sphere you would think would cause issues with this, but thus far we can't dig down far enough to cause overlap issues.))
4942490
Obviously the amount of land you own narrows the closer to the core until at the true center it's a subatomic sized point of ownership :)
Yeah, the story was good for a laugh, and well-written as always However, I think if you were to dump a pile of toxic waste in a parking lot, the EPA is going to have something to say about it. Poor disclosure will allow you to sue the seller for the costs of cleanup, but if you pull toxic waste out of the ground, you still have to dispose of it properly. It's been a long time since my environmental law classes, but IIRC what the ponies did is a straight up violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. (RCRA - Usually pronounced Rick-Ra) There are criminal penalties for improper disposal, which will be between the pony responsible and the federal government, no shady real estate agent involved.
4942312
Huzzah!
More than once in the draft, I spelled it ‘cadminum.’
4942417
Is that a Pratchett reference? I feel like it is.
4942490
I honestly can’t say for sure what form a letter like that would take. Luckily, I’ve never seen one, and hope I never do.
Like, from what research I did, it’s not the worst (but it’s not good, either). Assuming that the letter mentioned cadmium specifically, and they knew what that was, they would probably think of it from a pony perspective, like ‘what do we use that for,’ rather than ‘how toxic is that’ (but then I have a darker headcanon than some when it comes to ponies doing things that are dangerous or with dangerous materials).
That actually could have been explained by Sal when they were signing the papers. “Mineral rights? That just means that you can’t mine for stuff on your property. A previous owner has maintained those rights.” I know that I had a few explanations of things like that when I went through the mortgage contract for my house before I bought it.
The real question is is there someone on the other side who has rights that also end at the core, or does that opposite person’s rights extend further?
4942912
Yeah, I suppose there’s a good chance of that.
If you want to write a sequel where Powder and Speckles deal with the EPA, possibly while also undergoing a civil lawsuit with Sal and his agency, I give you my blessing.
I’d read it.
4943262
No, it's a real town, but they'd have interesting times anywhere on that turtle, I'm sure.
4943274
Your points are all fair and valid and thank you for taking the time to reply the my opinion, even though I completely failed to give a compliment sandwhich. I want to re-iterate I did enjoy the story.
And you are right, ponies tend to be a lot less risk averse then we are in general, mostly because they can get away with it. Given that my own search tends to suggest Cadmium's main issue is that it can be slightly carcinogenic, and we have little evidence on way or the other about ponies getting Cancer, its possible that they would have been completely safe. (I also found it can cause issue in postmenopausal women due to its ability to act similar to Iron in bonding and SUPPOSEDLY postmenopausal women are far more likely to have an Iron deficiency. However....and my lack of horse knowledge is showing here....I don't know if horses or ponies go through menopause.)
My final thought is actually on the nature of Rock Farms. Given that rock farms seemingly create Gemstones using Earth pony magic, do you think it would have been possible to use Rock farming ponies to crystallize the metal as Greenockite? It may take longer, but could it have been done?
4942912
4943276
Seconding Admiral Biscuit's comment, I would totally read that.
I think that the EPA's second reaction to a pile of cadmium in a parking lot would be, "Wait... how exactly did you do that? And we have a list of people and companies that would pay you very well to do it again... and again."
4943384
I did find some Endicotts on Wikipedia, but wasn’t sure which one.
4943393
I seem to recall that you can get heavy metal poisoning from it, too; plus, it bioaccumulates in fatty tissue IIRC. Also from what I gathered on the wiki, it’s bad for a lot of animals, too.
I don’t believe that horses do--I suppose ponies would be up to headcanon, assuming that they haven’t mentioned it on the show.
I’d imagine that as a mare gets older, pregnancies are riskier. I think I read that somewhere.
Possibly? I tend to think that they would want to turn worthless rocks into gemstones (i.e., sandstone to a gemstone, not gold to a gemstone), but I don’t think there’s any settled canon on that.
4943661
Yeah, that sounds about right.
4943276
It's worth a thought, but if I do it it's going to be a while. I'm already working on some other writing that takes a bit of research, and other than my environmental law class 15 years ago I don't know a lot about this subject. We have some environmental compliance people at work whose brains I might be able to pick, though. Whenever I have lead paint or asbestos on a job (and since our projects were built in the '30s to the '60s, we have a lot of it) I rely on other engineers who have experience in writing the abatement portion of the specs for our contracts.
The other consideration is that it'll probably be a real tonal whiplash. This story was lighthearted, but for a realistic treatment of ponies illegally dumping toxic waste, well, the best result is probably a plea bargain.
4945573
I’m okay with that. All the stories in this series are of course simple comedies where the humans ultimately get punished for their transgressions, while in real life when the legal system is involved it doesn’t always turn out so simply. I assume if the ponies got a good lawyer they could potentially plead ignorance, which I assume wouldn’t completely absolve them but might work out in their favor somewhat (and I could also see a clever lawyer on the pony side leaning towards a public service punishment taking the form of cleaning up other toxic sites and disposing of the material in an appropriate manner rather than dumping it in a parking lot.
4943276
I'd read it as well.
4942295
I think you should have gone all British Isles on it and called it "caduminium."
Of course, if some group of ponies catches on fast enough, they could buy up a whole bunch of these properties for really cheap, extract all the contaminants (making all the properties much more valuable), and on top of that probably turn all the various metals into large ingots, coat them with some sort of sealant for good measure, stick them in a warehouse, and sell off the metals at a rate that won't crash the markets on them.
Once everyone else catches on and those sorts of properties go up significantly in value pre-remediation, then they can offer that sort of remediation as a service (for a decent fee, of course).
5630701
They certainly could do that, and you’re right they could make a fortune at doing it. I think the hardest parts would be getting whatever licenses they need to deal with certain hazardous materials, and getting the right kind of documentation in place to show that they had decontaminated the site in a non-conventional manner and that they didn’t do anything shady with the contaminants they removed.
Assuming that they could get the appropriate regulatory blessing, though, they could make a lot of money.
That would probably actually be even easier (relatively speaking), just start their own remediation company. And the best part is it can be expensive, since normal methods are expensive. All they have to do is be cheaper.