It becomes increasingly difficult to conclude that, for legionsof politicians, bureaucrats and activists claiming the mantle of environmentalism, the goal is merely to clean the air and water. Rather, it is to add to the already massively overgrown federal Leviathan vast new regulatory powers of such magnitude and reach that hardly any daily activity will be exempt from bureaucratic oversight and supervision. There was a time when we Americans declared our independence from a sovereign in part because “he has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their substance.” Today, thanks in great part to environmental legislation, it is difficult to do anything anywhere without first getting multiple permits, performing numerous impact studies and submitting to endlessly repeated inspections, assessments and determinations. And it is quite possibly about to get much worse.
Consider, for example, the Clean Water Restoration Act, a proposal sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., and Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn. It’s not enough that the original Clean Water Act of 1972 gave the federal government regulatory authority over all “navigable waters” of the U.S. Feingold and Oberstar want to expand that authority to cover “the waters of the United States.” That would include all waters within the U.S. that are affected by ocean tides, as well as all “lakes, rivers, streams, mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds and all impoundments.” And don’t forget “isolated basins,” which are depressions that capture water only on a seasonal basis. No wonder the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Reed Hopper recently told USA Today that the Feingold-Oberstar proposal “would federalize literally every wet spot in the United States.” Inevitably, expanded federal authority requires bigger budgets and more rules.
Then there is the “cap and trade” anti-global warming bill sponsored by senators John Warner, R-Va., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., which the Senate will begin debating when it returns from the Memorial Day recess. All three remaining presidential candidates support either Warner-Lieberman or nearly identical alternatives, all of which establish a economywide cap on allowable carbon emissions, then allow companies that come in under their government-created annual quota of emissions to sell “credits” to companies that miss the mark. If this legislation becomes law, rank upon rank of new bureaucratic positions and reams of additional red tape will be required to define and enforce allowable emissions levels on an industry-by-industry, company-by-company basis. See the pattern? Then, it was George the III. Today, it is Washington loosingthe swarms.
