Week 3 (Blog)

Wow, part of me feels a big of ... embarrasment that this is being proposed by fellow Michiganders...

I read the original NewYork Times article... and I feel that some of the important parts were left out... see, basically:
"Tucked into the larger question is the issue of how many of the nation's 100 million or so acres of wetlands hae a close enough connection, or nexus, to regulated waters to fit under teh same regulatory umbrella."
"If the court interpreted the Clean Air Act as controlling only actually navigable waterways and there immediate tributaries and adjacent wetlands, 'then discharges of such materials as sewage, toxic chemicals and medical waste into those tributaries would not be subject' to regulation under the law, the solicitor general, Paul D. Clement, wrote in the government's brief."

Maybe I should've labeled this blog "externalities abound" because I feel I am getting redundant. The only way to rule on such endeavors is by first valuing the services done by these wetland areas. If the wetland provides essential services (without which there could be setbacks for the community such as flooding, sewage buildup, or water loss) then obviously the wetland needs to stay intack. There are some arguments that such information is unobtainable... well, let me pose it this way:

We know that wetlands manage the water table

We know that wetlands have the capacity to filter and clean water

We know that wetlands offer habitat for different species because they are different ecosystems

So, using that we know these things, wouldn't it make sense that there could be people who could evaluate these different aspects and how surrounding wetlands may offer the same services... Or are we getting back to the report we talked about earlier that was so volumous that it didn't actually get used but must be included in development plans... [okay, need to look this up again and obviously take better notes... found a knowledge gap...]

Blog:

How Far Does the Clean Water Act Reach?

From the WSJ Law Blog:

Does the Clean Water Act Reach the Nation’s Arterioles?, by Peter Lattman, WSJ Law Blog: The Supreme Court held oral arguments today in two cases involving the Clean Water Act. The cases pit developers against environmentalists, and according to a story (ProQuest document ID:990122441 for Bereans) in yesterday’s New York Times, “more than half of the nation’s streams and wetlands could be removed from the protections of the federal Clean Water Act if two legal challenges” are supported by the newly remade Court.

Both developers are Michiganders: one is challenging the federal government’s authority over a wetland he owns and filled with sand to build a shopping center; the other is an aspiring condominium developer who was denied a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers to develop a wetland [for clarification, both developers wanted to do the same thing - fill in the wetland for devlopment, only the first one did it without a permit and the second one was denied a permit].

“The central question,” says the Times,

is where federal authority ends along the network of rivers, streams, canals and ditches. Does it reach all the veins and arterioles of the nation’s waters, and all the wetlands that drain into them? Does it end with the waterways that are actually navigable and the wetlands abutting them? Or is it some place in between?