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Half of US wetlands lost federal protection. Their fate is up to the states

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Re: Half of US wetlands lost federal protection. Their fate is up to the states

#51

Post by detroitcoder »

thomasahle wrote: post #39
ars wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This decision made no sense to begin with since Again, if Congress wanted to fix this, they have the authority. The decision simply said they have not yet actually done so.

I'm trying to understand if the people saying "congress can just fix this" every time the supreme court makes a ruling, a) Don't agree that congress is blocked and is never going to pass anything. b) Care more about the legalities than the issues themselves, and so don't really care about whether there is a plausible way through congress. c) Are making a cry for help for everyone to come together to fix congress. Hop…

It is often:

e.) Want to limit the federal executive branch of government which some believe has grown too powerful.

Re: Half of US wetlands lost federal protection. Their fate is up to the states

#52

Post by JumpCrisscross »

saalweachter wrote: post #41
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also makes it impossible for someone to decide ex ante if their property is a wetland, a problem with the current process SCOTUS called out. Namely, the government wouldn’t tell you if your property was a wetland until after it thought you’d violated the law.

Is this really the case? I can look up a map of what the State and Federal government consider a wetland on my property. If I need to do eg construction within 100 feet of such an area on the map, I'm supposed to call in the local DEC and they -- for free -- come in and tell me the boundaries of the wetland based on local vegetation. Isn't that how it works everywhere?

> Is this really the case?

Yes.

The Army Corps of Engineers "controls permits for the discharge of dredged or fill material into covered waters... The costs of obtaining such a permit are 'significant,' and both agencies have admitted that 'the permitting process can be arduous, expensive, and long.' ...Success is also far from guaranteed, as the Corps has asserted discretion to grant or deny permits based on a long, nonexclusive list of factors..."

The fact that "agencies never defined exactly what they regarded as the 'full extent of their authority," instead encouaraging "local field agents to make decisions on a case-by-case basis" is specifically called out.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-454_4g15.pdf

Re: Half of US wetlands lost federal protection. Their fate is up to the states

#53

Post by ceejayoz »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24
MarkMarine wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress specifically wrote the law to protect wetlands. The issue of "wetlands" as you put it actually came up while congress was drafting the laws, and congress specifically wrote the law to cover them. The Supreme Court just ignored this because it felt like it. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44585

> issue of "wetlands" as you put it actually came up while congress was drafting the laws, and congress specifically wrote the law to cover them. The Supreme Court just ignored this because it felt like it This is a bad reading of the opinion. Wetlands were broadly undefined in statute.

> Wetlands were broadly undefined in statute.

Probably not because “oops we forgot”, but “we want regulators to handle the specifics”.

Re: Half of US wetlands lost federal protection. Their fate is up to the states

#54

Post by rootusrootus »

thomasahle wrote: post #39
ars wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This decision made no sense to begin with since Again, if Congress wanted to fix this, they have the authority. The decision simply said they have not yet actually done so.

I'm trying to understand if the people saying "congress can just fix this" every time the supreme court makes a ruling, a) Don't agree that congress is blocked and is never going to pass anything. b) Care more about the legalities than the issues themselves, and so don't really care about whether there is a plausible way through congress. c) Are making a cry for help for everyone to come together to fix congress. Hop…

My vote is c. Though hopefully things don't get so bad that we just exclude the SCOTUS from the process. IMO that's a possibility if we continue to rely on them to be the effective source of law.

Re: Half of US wetlands lost federal protection. Their fate is up to the states

#55

Post by detourdog »

lostlogin wrote: post #37
munk-a wrote: post #7

Watersheds aren't a local resource - they're a regional resource. This decision made no sense to begin with since, for instance, Vermont acting like a bad neighbor will cause environmental devastation in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York - water sheds very rarely stay neatly within state boundaries. This becomes an even bigger issue when you look at the Mississippi - mining in North Dakota can cause issues in L…

> Watersheds aren't a local resource - they're a regional resource. I’d go even further than that. Lots of migratory birds and animals use them. It’s pretty amazing being around when the mega flocks of birds land.

I live in a area of Massachusetts and one side of the hill sheds to the Long Island sound and the other side sheds water to the Hudson.

Re: Half of US wetlands lost federal protection. Their fate is up to the states

#56

Post by rootusrootus »

ceejayoz wrote: post #46
ars wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This decision made no sense to begin with since Again, if Congress wanted to fix this, they have the authority. The decision simply said they have not yet actually done so.

They also have had the authority to fix the supposed misinterpretation of their intent for decades, and have not. Meanwhile, Congress watches the Court strike down significant parts of things like the Voting Rights Act. There’s little reason to believe the Court couldn’t possibly have struck down a “fix” on some other premise.

Congress basically has all the power. They could just tell SCOTUS to piss off. Maybe that's why so many people are happy to see the gridlock and dysfunction. Heaven help us if too many congresspeople really agree on something.

Re: Half of US wetlands lost federal protection. Their fate is up to the states

#57

Post by nostromo »

winter_blue wrote: post #45
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they will need to pass a new law to assert that Exactly. The law as written was misinterpreted. Write a new law.

Congress has been deadlocked for 12½ years (i.e. since January 2011) due to the Senate filibuster. Don't expect any meaningful¹ non-budgetary law to be passed until the filibuster² is gone. Since Congress is in a comatose state, executive branch agencies have come to rely on Chevron deference and related doctrines, and the people on the courts to expand executive branch authority. ¹ Congress manages to pass a few non…

This is false. Congress continues to pass a record number of bills, and often does so with broad bipartisan support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_117th_Unit...

The current situation is not at all special or ahistorical.

Every president since the founding has probably felt tempted to become a dictator and work around congress out of frustration -- thankfully we have the court system to (usually) shut them down.

Re: Half of US wetlands lost federal protection. Their fate is up to the states

#58

Post by whythre »

Somatochlora wrote: post #33
neverartful wrote: post #22

I'm all for protecting true wetlands, but I'm aware of a specific instance in my county where a 'wetland' is nonsense. My friend owns rural property that was once mined for coal (not surface mining). He has sinkholes on his property from the former mine shafts. There is a sinkhole that straddles his property line with his neighbor and this sinkhole is from a former mine shaft. The sinkhole has never been filled in an…

Sounds like a wetland to me. You can argue that artificially created wetlands shouldn't qualify for protection but that doesn't seem obvious to me.

Now he doesn’t have to argue anything because the EPA’s broad interpretation of the law was overturned.

Re: Half of US wetlands lost federal protection. Their fate is up to the states

#59

Post by detourdog »

detourdog wrote: post #55
lostlogin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Watersheds aren't a local resource - they're a regional resource. I’d go even further than that. Lots of migratory birds and animals use them. It’s pretty amazing being around when the mega flocks of birds land.

I live in a area of Massachusetts and one side of the hill sheds to the Long Island sound and the other side sheds water to the Hudson.

I forgot to mention about 5 years ago just before we sold the family farm in Central Pennsylvania. We received a notice that we had to start creating a management plan for the manure. We were in the Chesapeake watershed. The farm was sold and a hospital built on top of it all...

Re: Half of US wetlands lost federal protection. Their fate is up to the states

#60

Post by jandrese »

MarkMarine wrote: post #21
zdragnar wrote: post #4

As much as I love protecting wetlands generally, I am personally familiar with the extent to which they can apply unreasonably. I wouldn't be surprised if much of these wetlands were in fact "wetlands". In any case, if the EPA can no longer protect land that Congress hadn't actually authorized it to protect, then let's get something in Congress that better fits the bill.

Congress specifically wrote the law to protect wetlands. The issue of "wetlands" as you put it actually came up while congress was drafting the laws, and congress specifically wrote the law to cover them. The Supreme Court just ignored this because it felt like it. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44585

Honestly the mistake of the original law was to limit it only to "navigable" waters, because the land does not have two different water systems. Most water ends up in a navigable body at some point. If someone is dumping mine tailings in a river but is told to stop so they switch to dumping them in the creek that feeds the river then nothing has been solved.
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