Eastland, you are right, the guy really pushed his luck and got bit. I don't have a whole lot of sympathy. A couple of interesting points in the case that I found though is the definition of wetlands. From what I read, these were not necessarily swamps, but more basins that had the potential to hold water or keep it from going into the ground. Except for lately, I don't think that this area is a particularly rain prone area. The other is that while this particular guy was out for the almighty dollar, he most likely had an attitude that "this is my land, I paid for it, and I can do what I want with it!"
For better or worse, this is the problem with any government oversight. Too little control and the wants of others irreversibly damages the environment not only on their land, but several others as well. Too much control, and you lose the ability to do what you want to do, even though you think there is no or negligible effect on others. Take the Pothole region in the Northern Plains states. Critical habitat for nesting waterfowl. Spring meltoff and rains fill in low lying areas with relatively shallow amounts of water. Unfarmable. The Clean Water Act (the real issue with 404 permits) prohibits filling them in, making thousands of acres unfarmable and the remaining ground difficult. These potholes are generally dry later in the year, but those spring wet months of shallow water provide massive insect crops for growing young ducks, with no 20lbs blue cats or flatheads to gobble them up. Those ducks then fly south in the fall, providing vital revenue for duck hunting outfits in Louisana.
All that said (and I apologize for this getting long winded), most of the time there probably isn't a whole lot of damage that our little old ponds are going to cause. But I also had a NRCS guy tell me that wetlands were 3 ft. or shallower, so my 6-10 ft. pond was "destroying" wetlands, thus under Corps jurisdiction. Now I happen to have my pond situated where I can expand and deepen the pond while mitigating the loss of current wetlands with the creation of new. The Corps generally loves the term "mitigating". A hint for future requests.
