Latest Breaking News
In reply to the discussion: Supreme Court rules against EPA in dispute over regulating wetlands [View all]BumRushDaShow
(128,441 posts)to better define what a "wetland" is.
Back 50-some years ago, it seemed more self-explanatory using the simplified language used at the time. But now with the nitpicky nature of jurisprudence, it needs to be spelled out - perhaps even to include illustrations.
I expect climate change itself has actually affected the gradual/sudden presence of a wetland or the gradual/sudden disappearance of one, and how does one write a law to deal with that?
Say you have a private citizen who owns a property that is not geographically adjacent to any rivers or a coast, where the topography gets changed due to a major event like severe flooding from a tropical cyclone that sat stationary over an area for a few days, eventually allowing the water build-up enough to form new creeks and tributaries, that eventually "connect" what was dry land, to a river some distance away, and forms a new natural "basin" out of that land that now stays soggy over a period of several years due to regular, or even above normal rainfall.
Can you call that property a "wetland" and kick the person off the land?
This is just a hypothetical that seems to be some of the gist...