And while the Supreme Court decision was a blow against federal authority over wetlands, fortunately, it’s my understanding, that states can and do wield tremendous power over wetlands.

Of course the Supreme Court’s decision on this is just another big illustration of why we need an Obama presidency.

The US will spend $700 million over two decades to revive the Florida Everglades. It will include six artificial wetlands (”storm water treatment areas”), to receive and cleanse excess nutrients from neighbouring farm districts.

While the Everglades plan is great news (though I’ll hold off on the euphoria until I actually see the execution), I fear this assessment of the state of US wetlands may be too optimistic.

Just like with everything else, the Bush admin has sought to gut the CWA and its wetlands protections. The law demands no net loss, with a strong preference for on-site preservation, and failing this mitigation must be in-kind and as close to the destruction site as possible.

The enemy’s (illegal) replacement concept is “mitigation banking”, which would extend eligible mitigation over as vast area, with vastly fungible concepts of acceptable geography and wetland type.

(This also creates a new parasite industry, specializing in Potemkin “wetland” creation. Disaster capitalism in action. But it looks great in the GDP!)

Then we also have the Supreme court’s dubious wetlands decision. Resting on Kennedy’s splitting-the-difference between enforcing the law and allowing the enemy to gut it, this is hardly a strong foundation for wetlands preservation.