America needs more energy, infrastructure, and housing. Our permitting system keeps finding strange reasons to stop them. 

Harry Potter fans just gave us one of the strangest permitting stories you’ll ever hear. 

The Greenlink Interconnector is a $580 million, 125-mile power cable connecting the electricity grids of Ireland and Great Britain, with its Welsh connection running through Freshwater West beach. 

Activists objected to the route through Freshwater West – not because of its natural seal habitat or the Iron Age ruins discovered there, but because it contains the fictional grave of a Harry Potter character, Dobby the elf. 

The developer, Etchea Energy, relented and re-routed the cable, its CEO reported in a recent interview.  

Greenlink is now up and running, and Dobby’s fictional grave is still intact. But the episode is yet another reminder of how easily critical energy and infrastructure projects can get upended over concerns that seem decidedly less critical. 

Here are just a few examples from back here in the States:  

Obstructed Views at the Kennedy Compound 

In the early 2000s, developers tried to build the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. Nicknamed Cape Wind, the project would have placed 130 turbines about five miles off Cape Cod and generated enough electricity to supply roughly three-quarters of Cape Cod and the islands’ electricity demand. 

But many wealthy residents of Cape Cod and the islands did not want to look at the turbines. 

And unfortunately for the Cape Wind developers, the Nantucket homeowners included some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, such as the Kennedys and the billionaire Koch family.  

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – then a staunch environmentalist – led the campaign against Cape Wind. In a New York Times op-ed, Kennedy complained that the turbines would “be visible for up to 26 miles,” “damage the views from 16 historic sites and lighthouses on the cape and nearby islands,” and that the turbines’ lights would “steal the stars and nighttime views.”  

Kennedy also cited concerns about wildlife, fishing, and the project’s economics. But he closed his piece by saying the turbines should be built further offshore – presumably just far enough away to not “steal the nighttime views” from the Kennedy compound. 

Ultimately, the Kennedys and Kochs got their way. Cape Wind was officially cancelled in 2017 after 16 years of permitting battles, lawsuits, political opposition, and financial setbacks. 

The View Through Lucy’s Eyes 

A few years later, a Danish energy company called Ørsted tried to build a wind farm off the East Coast, this time a little further south in New Jersey. 

The project, Ocean Wind 1, would have powered 500,000 homes with clean energy while creating construction and turbine technician jobs. But it also would have been visible from 17 historic sites, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).  

One of those historic sites is Lucy the Elephant, a six-story building shaped like an elephant in Margate City, NJ. Lucy was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976, under the classification of “architectural folly.”  

Ocean Wind 1 would have been more than 15 miles offshore. But because the turbines could be seen through Lucy’s 18-inch “eye” windows and from the viewing platform on her back, BOEM concluded the project would affect “the experience of visitors to the site.” 

Ørsted agreed to pay Lucy’s owners $250,000 and made similar deals with other properties in view of the wind farm. But the developers ultimately withdrew Ocean Wind 1 in 2023, citing rising costs and supply chain delays.  

Lucy the Elephant did not single-handedly kill Ocean Wind 1. But requirements like these do not exist in a vacuum: every additional study, negotiation, mitigation payment, lawsuit, and delay adds cost and uncertainty to projects already operating on tight margins.  

Flower Power in Woodside 

These sorts of things don’t only happen to energy projects.  

In 2025, a Silicon Valley town called Woodside tried to build a 200-unit affordable housing complex, hoping to provide options to more families in an area where the average home price is $5.8 million. 

But the California Department of Transportation, which owns the land Woodside was trying to develop, rejected the plan. The state identified three rare wildflowers on the site – the white fritillary, the Marin western flax, and the San Mateo thornmint – and has refused to allow any development, even though the site is right next to an eight-lane freeway.  

If holding up affordable housing over a flower sounds like something out of a dark comedy, that’s because it literally is. The final season of HBO’s Euphoria, released earlier this year, includes a storyline where Nate Jacobs’s Los Angeles housing investment is upended when white fritillary – the very same flower identified in Woodside – is discovered on the property. 

While the real-life outcome may not be as dark as the one in Euphoria, it still means working-class families will remain shut out of Woodside. At a time when America is short four million homes and rents and mortgages are near record highs, policymakers should be looking for ways to make construction easier – not allowing a few flowers beside an eight-lane freeway to make it harder. 

Some lawmakers are trying to rebalance that equation. There are bipartisan, bicameral efforts in Congress to fix the problem. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat, co-authored the SPEED Act, which passed the House in December and would streamline federal environmental reviews and make it harder for litigation to indefinitely delay approved projects. Sen. Alan Armstrong, a Republican, introduced the American Energy and Mineral Infrastructure Act in June to accelerate permitting for major energy and infrastructure projects. And Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a No Labels National Leader, has called for “serious permitting reform,” arguing that “If we want lower bills, we’ve got to get good projects moving, and moving fast.” 

None of this means America should scrap environmental protections altogether. But our goals have to be weighed against something else that matters: actually building things. 

America needs more electricity, more transmission lines, and millions more homes. Every project cannot be expected to satisfy every neighbor, preserve every existing view, or leave every inch of the landscape exactly as it found it. 

A permitting system is supposed to help society decide which tradeoffs are worth making. When a power project can be forced to negotiate over the view through the eyes of a giant wooden elephant, or affordable housing can stall over flowers growing beside an eight-lane freeway, it is fair to ask whether the balance has tipped too far. 

Dobby got to keep his grave. America should make sure its permitting system doesn’t bury the projects it actually needs.