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WHITE HOUSE✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Congress tries end-run around Florida court decision protecting wetlands
Filed 1h ago · Via Florida Phoenix · The Buffoon Desk
THIS STORY IS SCORED
The Entertainer
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
In 2020 the EPA, then run by a former coal lobbyist, let Florida take over issuing federal wetlands permits; environmental groups sued, arguing the state's faster process violated the Endangered Species Act, and in 2022 a federal judge agreed, a ruling a federal appeals court upheld this March.
Rather than accept that outcome, homebuilders who spent years pushing the faster permitting system are now backing HR 9017, the Restore Florida Water Independence Act, which would legislate around the court's finding.
Environmental advocates, including Vote Water's Gil Smart and Earthjustice's Tania Galloni, argue the bill exists to speed development, not protect wetlands, noting that in nearly two decades the EPA has vetoed just two Florida permits out of 14 nationwide.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
When you lose the argument with the umpire and then the league office, most people go home. These builders went looking for a new rulebook, and they found a Congress willing to print one. A bill with ‘Independence’ in the name that mostly frees up swampland for subdivisions deserves a hard look before anybody signs, because once a wetland is paved, no appeals court on earth can rule it back.
