Earth news: Supreme Court Almost Kills Clean Water Act

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The Opus Dei Jacobian sector of the Supreme Court wanted to gut all wetland laws across the board but were stopped by Kennedy who hesitated. Why religious bigots want to make the world look like 'Mordor' in the Lord of the Rings baffles me only slightly. I happen to think they are demons and love hell.

Just one vote from disaster.

NYT: By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: June 20, 2006
WASHINGTON, June 19 — The Supreme Court on Monday came close to rolling back one of the country's fundamental environmental laws, issuing a fractured decision that, while likely to preserve vigorous federal enforcement of the law, the Clean Water Act, is also likely to lead to new regulatory battles, increased litigation by property owners and a push for new legislation.

With four justices on one side arguing for a sharp restriction in the definition of wetlands that are subject to federal jurisdiction, and four justices on the other arguing for retaining the broad definition that the Army Corps of Engineers has used for decades, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy controlled the outcome in a solitary opinion.

Justice Kennedy said that to come within federal protection under a proper interpretation of the Clean Water Act, a wetland needs to have a "significant nexus" to a body of water that is actually navigable.

As desertfication spreads and the oceans rise and many species on earth go extinct, the stupidest thing we could do is gut the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. In the news today, many American states are producing more air pollution than ever before. Far from cleaning up, under Bush, the damage to our atmosphere continues unabated.

Just the other day, Texas was plagued by floods and this, after a winter of firestorms. Wetlands are key to preventing both from happening. Pave over paradise and you get more than a parkinglot, you get an artificial desert plus tremendous run offs in storms.

Here is the Federal EPA website concerning wetlands.

Wetlands are important elements of a watershed because they serve as the link between land and water resources. Wetlands protection programs are most effective when coordinated with other surface and ground-water protection programs and with other resource management programs, such as flood control, water supply, protection of fish and wildlife, recreation, control of stormwater, and nonpoint source pollution. This fact sheet discusses the "why" and "how" of integrating these programs.

The quality of the Nation's wetlands and other water resources is directly linked to the quality of the environment surrounding these waters. However, resource protection programs have historically focused on single goals or a small set of goals. These programs have succeeded in identifying and controlling, to some degree, the larger point sources of pollution. Now it's time to use an approach that addresses the interconnections between water resources and the land, air, and water environment surrounding the resources.

Far from needing to be reduced or eliminated, wetland protection must escalate. People would dearly love to exploit marginal lands for the simple reason of them being cheap. Prime land is expensive. This is why builders put things in dangerous places like flood plains, for example.

One of the people suing for elimination of all controls over building on flood plains is a developer who wants to build where desert storms run off. People die in such run offs. More people die in sudden floods in Arizona or Nevada than in New York, for example. I grew up watching this in action. As Tucson grew from a sleepy small town into a city, even before it reached the 100,000 level, the floods got much worse thanks to all the parkinglots and pavements. I vividly remember when the many 'x' lots at the University of Arizona were paved for the runoff ran right into my home which was just off campus! I had to use sandbags to keep out typical summer thunderstorm gully-washers.

To replentish aquifers, one needs swampy wetlands which hold water and lets it perculate slowly into the soil. As the water oozes downwards it is cleaned by the sands and clays which are literally what filters are made of in the first place. Roofs and roads means too much water running too fast to be captured by the underground water systems. Also, wetlands are habitat to important species.

Many of the birds I need on my mountain in summer must hop/fly between one swampy area to another as they hopscotch from the far south, as far away as Central America, to where they lay their eggs and raise their young up here. For example, the flycatchers need to visit many insect rich swamps on their long journey to my mountain. When they come here, they protect the trees by catching and eating the caterpillars and bugs that would overwhelm us if there were no flycatchers.

The flycatchers this year feasted on the gypsy moths, I have never seen them so fat, and each nest had over five chicks successfully raised and fledged. They were overwhelmed by the moth invasion but if there were no birds, it would have been even worse! We need to cooperate with nature in order to coexist. And a key element in this is understanding how nature operates.

It distresses me to see religioius people deliberately refusing to understand how nature works and how to live on this planet. Their faith that they will live forever in Paradise after destroying this lovely planet baffles me. I would think they would want to live in a huge, dusty, echoing warehouse filled with oily fires.

In other words, hell.

Also in the news, our earth creates super-heated bubbles as it plows through the sun's fierce energy stream.

(SPACE.com) -- The space above you is fizzing with activity as bubbles of superhot gas constantly grow and pop around Earth, scientists announced Tuesday.

Astronomers found the activity up where Earth's magnetic field meets a constant stream of particles flowing out from the sun.

While space is commonly called a vacuum, in fact there is gas everywhere, albeit not as dense as the air you breathe.

The newfound bubbles are technically called density holes. In them, gas density is 10 times lower. The gas in the bubbles is 18,000,000 Fahrenheit (10,000,000 Celsius) instead of the 180,000 degrees Fahrenheit of the surrounding hot gas, which is known as plasma.

This is fascinating. The more we look at our own planet, the more interesting it is. It is notable that the Europeans are doing this research, not us. We seem awfully busy running around the earth fretting about who has nukes and killing peasants who don't have nukes.

It is a riddle why the gas inside of the bubbles which is less dense than the surroundings, is many times hotter. This certainly is worthy of learning more since solar radiation varies a great deal and disturbances to our planet's passage affects not only people on earth but also anyone in space and of course, if we plan on star travel, one should understand what is going on around planets that circle stars.

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