Free Republic

Regulations: The Clean Water Act is being rewritten to give a government bureaucracy the power to regulate every body of water from the Mississippi River to a rain-flooded field. The first casualty may be American coal. With all the concern for the harm that cap-and-trade and regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant might do to the American economy and free markets, the Environmental Protection Agency is doing quite enough damage with an existing law on the books — the Clean Water Act. Congress plans to revise it to make it an even more powerful bludgeon against industry, energy producers and...

MADRID (AFP) – Underground fires have been raging for weeks in a wetlands area in southern Spain, sparked by the dry summer and the overuse of water for agriculture, an environmentalist said Tuesday. The Tablas de Daimiel National Park, fed by the Guadiana river, has been drying up since the 1980s, and some lagoons have already disappeared. In late August, hot dry weather caused the peat subsurface to catch fire, and plumes of smoke can be seen rising from the ground, said Jose Manuel Hernandez, head of the environmental organisation that looks after the park. "This is a new phenomenon...

Bismarck, N.D. (AP) -- Armed with a tractor or a backhoe, Alvin Peterson moves dirt to drain prairie potholes on his land, saying he's putting the land back to the way God intended. The 78-year-old retired farmer from Lawton, in northeastern North Dakota, has been in hot water with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over wetlands for more than 40 years. The agency had an easement contract with his father for the potholes to house and feed wildlife. Federal authorities, after dealing for decades with Peterson's pothole-emptying antics, began cracking down on him. Last month — and for the...

The city of Half Moon Bay found itself in serious financial trouble last year after U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that the city had to pay a local developer $37 million - $41 million with legal fees added. The judgment amounted to close to four times the city's annual budget, or more than $3,000 per resident in this city of fewer than 13,000. Bankruptcy loomed. Walker found that a city drain project inadvertently had created wetlands on developer Charles "Chop" Keenan's property. When Half Moon Bay later cited those same wetlands as grounds to stop Keenan from developing...

Louisiana’s Wetlands Are Being Lost At The Rate Of One Football Field Every 38 Minutes ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2008) — LSU and Ohio State University will battle for the BCS National College Football Championship in the Superdome early next week, but if the game was held in the Louisiana wetlands instead, the entire field would disappear before halftime. Louisiana’s wetlands are being lost at the rate of approximately one football field every 38 minutes. To fight against this rapid destruction, the two universities joined forces in 2003, forming an ongoing research partnership with the goal of rebuilding the vanishing coastal...

(12-19) 05:46 PST Half Moon Bay, Calif. (AP) -- Officials in Half Moon Bay will fight a court ruling that would have the city pay a judgment of nearly $37 million. The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to hire a San Francisco law firm to appeal a ruling by a federal judge ordering the city to pay $36.8 million to Palo Alto-based developer Charles Keenan. The judgment is nearly four times the city's annual budget. City council members said in a joint statement the order threatens the "very existence of our city government." The ruling against Half Moon Bay...

Jeff White in the vegetable garden on his 7-acre West Milford property. The state claims part of the garden is too close to wetlands. WEST MILFORD -- He hired experts, tested the soil, planted veggies and erected an electrified fence to keep out the bears. But what newbie farmer Jeff White didn't know was that he also had to shield his garden from red tape.  State officials say part of the 4,500-square-foot garden sits too close to wetlands. Specifically, it is on a "deed-restricted transition area" or buffer of wetlands, and the state wants it dismantled. The state also...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration made it harder Tuesday for non-permanent streams and nearby wetlands to be protected under the federal Clean Water Act. The new guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers requires that for such waters to be protected there must be a "significant nexus" shown between the intermittent stream or wetland and a traditional waterway. And the guidance says a determination will be made on a case-by-case basis, analyzing flow and other issues. Environmentalist argued that would negate the broader regional importance of many such waterways in the aggregate on...

MARTINSVILLE, Ind. - In a town that is one of the key battlegrounds in the Interstate 69 fight, environmental groups Monday announced a federal lawsuit to block design and planning of the Evansville-to-Indianapolis leg of the highway. The plaintiffs, including the Hoosier Environmental Council and several business owners, allege that the Indiana Department of Transportation ignored harmful environmental impacts of building a direct route between Evansville and Indianapolis. It also claims INDOT was biased against a route that would have upgraded the existing U.S. 41-Interstate 70 corridor into a new highway. It accuses 11 defendants - state and federal agencies...

Challenging the widely held view that levees and hurricanes are two of the biggest perpetrators in the ongoing demise of Louisiana's coast, researchers from Louisiana State University say the millions of tons of sand and silt swept in by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita prove that major storms actually help wetlands. Their conclusions, reported in today's edition of the journal Science and based on sediment measurements taken after the storms, call into question the entire foundation of Louisiana's sweeping coastal restoration program. That effort has been driven by the assumption that levees along the Mississippi River starved the coast of vital...

Scientists have long said the only way to restore Louisiana’s vanishing wetlands is to undo the elaborate levee system that controls the Mississippi River, not with the small projects that have been tried here and there, but with a massive diversion that would send the muddy river flooding wholesale into the state’s sediment-starved marshes. And most of them have long dismissed the idea as impractical, unaffordable and lethal to the region’s economy. Now, they are reconsidering. In fact, when a group of researchers convened last April to consider the fate of the Louisiana coast, their recommendation was unanimous: divert the...

Katrina, Rita Actually Helped Wetlands, Study Says Willie Drye for National Geographic News September 21, 2006 A new study makes the provocative claim that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita actually helped stabilize coastal wetlands by depositing tons of silt and sediment—even as the storms devastated dozens of square miles of the low-lying areas. The new findings contradict long-held theories that rivers are the primary source of the sediment that forms wetlands, says research leader R. Eugene Turner, an ecologist at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. The study also counters beliefs that the loss of wetlands—especially on the eastern Louisiana...

Scientists have long said the only way to restore Louisiana’s vanishing wetlands is to undo the elaborate levee system that controls the Mississippi River, not with the small projects that have been tried here and there, but with a massive diversion that would send the muddy river flooding wholesale into the state’s sediment-starved marshes. And most of them have long dismissed the idea as impractical, unaffordable and lethal to the region’s economy. Now, they are reconsidering. In fact, when a group of researchers convened last April to consider the fate of the Louisiana coast, their recommendation was unanimous: divert the...

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, July 13, 2006) – The Department of the Army advanced on its goal to prevent encroachment by establishing a new partnership between the Army Compatible Use Buffer Program and Ducks Unlimited July 7. The partnership allows Ducks Unlimited – an organization committed to the conservation, restoration and management of wetlands and associated habitats for North American waterfowl – to work with the Army to identify opportunities for wetland creation and management near installations participating in the ACUB program, said Chad Henry, director of training for the Training Lands Office. “It gives the troops more area to...

John Batchelor on Eminent domain via enviorment Protection

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Monday that regulators may have misinterpreted the federal Clean Water Act when they refused to allow two Michigan property owners to build a shopping mall and condos on wetlands they own. At the same time, justices could not reach a consensus on whether government can extend protections for wetlands miles away from waterways. The decision is the first significant environmental ruling for the high court headed by new Chief Justice John Roberts, and justices were so fractured that the main opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia only had the votes of four justices. Roberts,...

As you prepare for the summer golfing season, a word of warning before trying to retrieve your ball from that water hazard on No. 2 at Stoneybrook West. Chances are, you're encroaching on a federally classified wetland. True story: Gale Norton, the former Secretary of the Interior who just quit a few weeks ago amid the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, called a news conference before her resignation to trumpet a U.S. Fish & Wildlife study claiming the nation had finally put an end to the ongoing depletion of federal wetlands. It was all part of President Bush's promise of "no...

Disturb a frog's vernal pool habitat: Pay $300. Alter a marsh, meadow, bog, bank, or pond of any size: See you in court. The potential fine and enforcement actions are some of the teeth in a proposed wetlands protection bylaw that would give the Belmont Conservation Commission greater authority over what happens in or around wetlands. The proposal, which voters will decide at Town Meeting on April 24, would reinforce a state law that more than half of the communities in Massachusetts have found lacking in some way. Belmont would join at least 180 others with a new wetlands bylaw,...

To: National Desk; Supreme Court, Legal and Environment Reporters Contact: Dawn Collier of the Pacific Legal Foundation, 916-419-7111 WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- When John Rapanos began moving sand on his property in 1988, federal officials showed up, ordered him to stop, and began what has turned into an 18-year battle over the federal government's authority over wetlands. On Tuesday, Feb. 21, Pacific Legal Foundation will argue the case of Rapanos, a 70-year-old grandfather of six, before the United States Supreme Court. The case will decide whether the federal government has authority over virtually all water in the United...

We may as well abandon the Big Easy because the White House is killing a plan to protect the city from the next Katrina. By Mike Tidwell MIKE TIDWELL is the author of "Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast" (Pantheon, 2003). AS WE NEAR the 100-day mark since Hurricane Katrina hit, it's time we ended our national state of denial and abandon New Orleans for good. We should call it quits not because New Orleans can't be made relatively safe from hurricanes. It can be. And not because to do so is more trouble...