Dear Editor:
I would like to address the guest editorial by Russ Harding from the Nov. 29 issue of the News.
My first comment is ‘Shame on You!? Mr. Harding. Having been the former director of the Michigan DEQ, you should be well aware of the overwhelming lack of compliance that pervades the Michigan environmental permitting, and the dramatic understaffing of environmental regulators as a means of avoiding enforcement.
This is a trend throughout the U.S. and has been an earmark of the Bush administration as a means for avoiding compliance with environmental regs, something that has been wittled down to being not much more than an empty process with no real life positive impact.
Having been a past regulator myself, I can assure you that the picture you paint of environmental regulators being ignorant of other issues such as private property rights could not be further from the truth. Rather, I would propose that my observation was the opposite, that individuals like yourself, in the position as director, remain married to the development and impact process, completely and totally devoid of the issues that would compel a regulator to deny a permit, something that is, by the way, quite rare.
For the information of the general public, let me just say that as an environmental scientist I believe that we are all doomed.
This is extreme, but is based on pure observation.
Wealthy developers who choose to litigate a regulator’s decision to deny a permit, rather than acknowledge the science behind the denial and seek another means of profit that would be more in balance, create phenomenal financial waste litigiously.
That also impacts your tax dollar expenditure.
It always comes down to who has the financial backing in regard to the environmental decision-making process. Rarely is it about what is best for the whole, the planet or what wise application of science would dictate.
Mr. Harding is correct in that an imbalance exists, however the scales are not tipped in favor of environmental protection. His discussion is nothing more than spin and empty rhetoric.
Very few individuals truly understand the impact that unchecked urban sprawl has on the earth as a whole.
Most have been made aware by now of the Global Climatic Change crisis, yet few acknowledge that an active component of this phenomenon is directly related to increased impervious surface within watersheds, decreases in infiltration and water storage such as wetlands, and the interruption of contiguous open space necessary for wildlife and the ecosystem as a whole to function as a healthy unit, one in balance.
Balance is not something that individuals like Mr. Harding are interested in.
While Michigan is in a crisis regarding jobs, obliterating the environment for the sake of development creates problems that may not be prominent in the public eye, but where responsibility of impact is avoided and passed down to future generations to deal with.
Environmental Regulation exists largely in name alone. The protections they espouse are shockingly non-existent.
While there are many good stewards there are many more who choose a blind eye. One afternoon surveying the Clarkston area alone would expose the overwhelming lack of compliance.
The impact of such non compliance will one day be seen in how it universally affects property value, through artificial lake levels and water quality, increased mosquito population, which is a vector for disease, new flooding issues and ever increasing surface water quality degradation.
Sadly, most circumstances can be mitigated with relative ease and minimal cost, and does not require expensive consultation given a little education.
In general, those who chose to comply with environmental regs discover that in so doing, the efficiency of their process increases dramatically,waste decreases proportionately, and they save money in the long run.
Environmentalism is not a dirty word. The public should be outraged that individuals like Mr. Harding masquerade as a steward for the environment, sitting in positions such as director of DEQ and utilize their title as a means to corrupt the process that was intended to protect.
Rather than educating the public on how development in wetlands is excruciating on wild bird, and deer and etc., etc., population, has an impact on mosquito population and the overall balance of the water cycle; or that wetlands are the earth’s means of mitigating water contamination through natural, cost free, biological processes, and are a necessary and dramatically vanishing ecosystem, at alarming rates, this man instead complains that a development in a wetland was denied the permits and can’t afford the mitigation.
The things we do that impact the environment affect everyone and everything.
It is all interconnected and nothing can escape, despite the obvious ease with which we as a public whole choose to ignore it.
While it is appropriate to address the inefficiency of the permitting process, such as by hiring more environmental scientists to process the permits, perhaps, and provide more public education and outreach for understanding and mitigation at the source, it is inappropriate to suggest that environmental regulation is the problem behind job loss or growth in Michigan, let alone has any negative impact whatsoever.
If it cuts into the profits of a development, or business, to mitigate their impact at the source, install a long-term mitigation device, or avoid development altogether, then that is the true cost of the development and belongs to those proposing to do so.
You do not have the right to pass your responsibility off onto unaware consumers through means that they may not recognize. ‘Personal property rights? does not contain within it the right to develop when its impact extends well beyond the boundaries of your personal property.
Just because you own a swamp or wetland and wish to develop it doesn’t give you the right to do so when the impact is planet wide and affects multiple species for the duration of time.
It’s time that value is measured by tabulating all the variables. Mr. Harding, you presented a biased perspective of the issues that excludes the realities of impact and disregards the truth of the environmental permitting process.
You presented what you would like the public to believe, but is no more than empty rhetoric.
Your idiom is based on liquid cash flow and does not take into consideration the fact that contiguous undeveloped open space is an increasingly valuable commodity, whose worth will only continue to increase and is vital to the overall survival of the planet.
Once development has occurred it cannot be undone.
The impacts are permanent. As humans we’ve been operating ignorantly and living blind to the ripples created by our presence.
Its time to wake up.
Tammie Heazlit
Environmental Scientist
Clarkston