Here we go again.

Source

The wetlands are in danger again.

Two cases have been in the courts for more than a decade, and with a newly remodeled Supreme Court, major changes could happen if these two Michigan developers get some support from a majority vote.

The first case deals with a guy who wanted to turn some wetlands into a shopping center, decided to forget about getting a permit, and filled the area with sand in defiance.

The second case was filed by a condo developer who applied to fill a wetland and was denied.

So what this boils down to is there is some confusion in interpreting the Clean Water Act. The new Supreme Court could decide that these wetlands do not fall in the "navigable waters" category, and thus, they lose their protection by the government. Then developers would become trigger happy at the thought of all the "land" this makes available to them, so a buying spree begins because a lot of wetlands in this nation could, technically, be classified as "unnavigable". See where I am going with this? Good-bye wetlands, and eventually, good-bye national forests and nature preserves because that is where we will end up.

I am suddenly reminded of a book I read as a child: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

There is still very limited awareness of the nature of the threat. This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits. It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts. In the words of Jean Rostand, "The obligation to endure gives us the right to know."

It seems little has changed since 1970.