>If you ever have a friend or family member who is trying to get around wetland conservation laws, they are contributing to the shrinking of our river systems.
If you ever read/hear a statement like this you can safely ignore it because nobody with any second or even third hand exposure to the true vastness of the scope of wetland conservation laws would say such a thing.
Somebody's little construction project to replace their 25x30 cabin on a lake in the woods with one that's 24x32 isn't material in this context no matter how hard people may dishonestly try to imply otherwise. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of cases of "skirting conservation laws" are cases of people who want to do a nearly like for like replacement of some existing thing that didn't need permission when it was done 40-140yr ago and don't want to pay some guy with a license thousands of dollars for the privilege of a stamped drawing.
You say that like nobody of Hacker News knows anybody who is a land developer.
> some existing thing that didn't need permission when it was done 40-140yr ago
Not every law ever written has grandfather clauses, and where water rights are concerned we are quickly running out of patience for grandfather clauses.
> no matter how hard people may dishonestly try to imply otherwise
Hey you know what else is dishonest? Making a big conversation with wide ranging consequences have to pause to talk about one particular line item you have a problem with. Agenda or no (which you are projecting on others), the results are the same.
Every city is worsening its watershed - through development - except for the few that are actively fighting against it. And so many families are getting burned out by wildfires because we keep increasing the density of cabins out in the woods. It's not isolated incidents when you have 5 million or even half a million people living in a county all trying to do their own thing without The Man trying to stop them.
No single rain drop believes it is responsible for the flood.
Start at the south end of the Colorado for the loudest voices, and then work your way north. So that's the entire country of Mexico who wonders where their river went, and the people upstream who are progressively less effected by the reduced flow.
Then add in environmentalists and conservationists. You can't preserve wetland plants and animals when there's no wetland.
> The loss of freshwater flows to the delta over the twentieth century has reduced delta wetlands to about 5 percent of their original extent, and non-native species have compromised the ecological health of much of what remains. Stress on ecosystems has allowed invasive plants to out-compete native species along Colorado River riparian areas. Native forests of cottonwood and willow have yielded to sand and mudflats dominated by the nonnative tamarisk (also known as salt cedar), arrow-weed, and iodine bush, a transformation that has decreased the habitat value of the riparian forest.[7]
If you ever read/hear a statement like this you can safely ignore it because nobody with any second or even third hand exposure to the true vastness of the scope of wetland conservation laws would say such a thing.
Somebody's little construction project to replace their 25x30 cabin on a lake in the woods with one that's 24x32 isn't material in this context no matter how hard people may dishonestly try to imply otherwise. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of cases of "skirting conservation laws" are cases of people who want to do a nearly like for like replacement of some existing thing that didn't need permission when it was done 40-140yr ago and don't want to pay some guy with a license thousands of dollars for the privilege of a stamped drawing.