Supreme Court curtails Clean Water Act wetlands protections
Supreme Court curtails Clean Water Act wetlands protections
Property rights defenders and developers hail the ruling as a victory, while others decry it as a giveaway to polluters that will harm the environment.
This is one of those instances where I have a lot of cognitive dissonance between my individual feelings, and the desires for ease and expedience when doing projects that are even within sight of a wetland. In my opinion the existing mitigation techniques are laughable and the permitting process is onerous. At the same time, I'd have liked to see even better wetland mitigation or stricter rules from an ecological standpoint and it being the baby thrown out with the bathwater is a massive understatement.
It feels like one of those things you need to handle at the state level, but I know that some states aren't going to tolerate the level of protection provided in other states.
I guess it does ultimately come to that for the strictest protections, and probably local EPAs are more in tune with the local hydrology so far as making regulations. However, it could raise a big question of "why bother?" if one state has stricter wetlands protections but has major tributaries discharging into the jurisdiction of states that do not have nearly as strong protections and thus have degraded water quality.