More Bad News
Oh jeez. You want some more bad news today? I've been behind in my reading since I went to Eugene, and frankly I was a lot happier when I wasn't reading about this kind of depressing news:
Federal wetlands regulators have dropped a bombshell on environmentalists with a little-publicized proposal to relax restrictions on filling in certain wetlands along the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast to speed recovery from Hurricane Katrina. [...] The Corps’ proposal would allow property owners and developers to skirt the conventional "regional general permit" process for any projects that fill up to 5 acres of “low-quality” wetlands in the six southernmost Mississippi counties. Especially galling to environmentalists: The new process would also eliminate the requirement for public notice of such projects.
And call me a cynic, but somehow I doubt that the developers who are so antsy to get to work along the Gulf are planning to build low-income - or even affordable - housing on these wetlands. After all, there seems to be an insatiable appetite across the country for golf courses and condos these days.
Evans said his group’s chief concern when it comes to filling in wetlands is the potential for flooding. “People died unnecessarily in my watershed because of the Corps’ previous willingness to develop housing in places where housing does not belong," he said. “Floodwaters that instead would have been dispersed ended up in my mother’s living room, 4 miles from the beach.”
One of the reasons the Katrina fallout was so bad in the first place is how terribly the Army Corps has managed Louisiana's wetlands and water systems. And now they want to go and make it WORSE?
(MSNBC, via Facing South, which also hits on a new report slamming the Corps for claiming that it and its contractors were never guilty of negligence or malfeasance post-Katrina. You've got to be kidding.)