At a certain point, businesses and the world in general focus way too much on the directly measurable rather than the accountance of the immeasurable (downstream effects)

Although, I am all for a data driven world but somehow it is my opinion that we have ended up with the worse of both as combined with the goodhart's law, this measurable thing just ends up somehow getting manipulated for short term gains over real long term damages.

As is your case in the example, the business will ruin the river for everyone having severe damage both culturally and I think financially as well given downstream effects of all people depending upon that river.

But the business has externalized the losses to the people and the people have externalized the responsibility of the river to the government and the government believes in absolute free capitalism! (or sometimes the businesses give the government some money in the pocket ie. corruption. "Cost of doing business" they said.)

I am not against capitalism itself (that Adam smith proposed) but capitalism in its current form is definitely something... and surely some if not most of us might agree to the fact that system isn't working as intended (well not working if it was intended for us ie.)