Ventura County property owners have won at least a partial victory in their ongoing battle to preserve some measure of rights.

Going all the way to the state water board, the Building Industry Association won a re-hearing of new rules that could sharply have increased the cost of compliance with laws governing stormwater — the runoff from rain storms that flows through parking lots and off roofs into drains and eventually into the ocean.

But this particular debate unmasks the enormous chasm that exists between businesses who see progress as a growing economic pie and the combination of government and environmental groups who see the economy as a “zero sum game” where there is no economic progress without an equivalent amount of cost.

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