Mikaela says:
In a case we should all watch carefully, developers are queuing up to start challenging environmental regulations hard-fought and hard-won in the 1970s. This one's about Clean Water. What's next?
The Supreme Court has been stacked with the last Bush nominees toward supporters of private business and corporations against the public good and welfare.
Let's see how this unfolds.
Reach of Clean Water Act Is at Issue in 2 Supreme Court Cases
WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 — 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 started more than a decade ago by two Michigan developers are supported by a majority of the newly remade Supreme Court.
One case involves a developer who wanted to sell a wetland for a shopping center and in preparation filled it with sand without applying for a permit, in defiance of the authorities. The second was brought by a would-be condominium developer who applied to the Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to fill a wetland and was denied.
Oral arguments in the cases ... will pit developers and a phalanx of their industrial, agricultural and ideological allies against both the solicitor general and a who's who of environmental lawyers in an argument over the scope of one of the country's fundamental environmental laws.The central question is where federal authority ends along the network of rivers, streams, canals and ditches.
(Wetland types collage courtesy EPA)
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