Wetlands expert suspended by DEP after she refuses to approve permit

She refuses to bend the rules so she gets suspended.
Par for the course. What the hell is going on in this country that I dearly love?

have decided to destroy the middle class so their "rulership" class makes all decisions in their favor and destroys the working class, with more massive transfers of all of our money to them. That's what's happening in this country, it's being destroyed.

And how about this for an understatement? .
Yup, it sure does, as in . .reeks to high heaven.

We have to have to stand up to these dangerous people. We need to outvote them, outmaneuver them, outfund-raise them. .we have to take our country back.

sick of it. When I've blown the whistle on my CT town's questionable doings to the state of CT, I've been told, "hire a lawyer." Instead of the agency's enforcing wetlands laws of the state, I, an individual citizen, have to sue my town and in some cases, the state itself, to get the wetlands laws enforced. Who has the $$ for that when hiring a lawyer for $400/hr?

Florida is notorious for defying wetlands laws and regs. One only has to look at the many projects beside each and every road where diverting wetlands for golf course ponds and the like is going on. I was crying when I was in FL last (around 2007) about this. Developers and their pal Jeb Bush have ruined the state.

Thank you, one FL regulator, for standing up. Wish there were more like her.

Grateful for your involvement.

One of the very few in public office always willing to stand up for the environment and for a non-toxic lifestyle for us "real" people was Elliot Spitzer.

And we all know what happened to him. After he pulled off such admirable actions as fining Monsanto for false advertising (Monsanto had no right to state certain products were "safe,") he gets followed by Homeland Security,. And the entire apparatus of Homeland Security is used to detail his bank transactions, one of which led DHS to the fact that he wired money to the Washington DC brothel.

Little concern to anyone that a whole roster of politicians went to that brothel. What was important is that the Monied and Political class got rid of the "real" people's one and perhaps only protector.

Almost everyone else in public office only cares about the "real people" that are Big Corporations.

Isn't it always about money?

Seems like they have their evil hands in everything....,

Indeed, all this phony Christianity is to disguise what they really worship: money.

- the Vatican
- environmental "protection"
- finance
-"free enterprise"

It's all a disgusting ruse.

After 40+ years of activism, caring, volunteerism, and donating...I'm almost ready to just withdraw and give up. There seems no countering it. I'd almost be happy if that nice family in the White House retreated to their private lives, and just roll over and end the slow death of the strangulation of the common people and the earth. Get it over with quickly and let some new species or extra-terrestrial to take this thing over and see if they can do it better.

Death of optimism.

We have crooks at the highest level of public government. We are so undermined by our local agencies that the conclusion can only be, that we have the kind of government that Republicans are rooting for.

And believe me, these wetland mitigation properties are not the panacea. Not when you have lawyers who own them and nobody keeps track of the information. If you did, you would probably see a huge inconsistency with who gets the credits. Lots of room for good ole boy deals.

... but when the penalty is being fired, who can blame people who fall in step with the program?

The most tragic thing about this country is, IMO, that if we just followed the rules that are in place already, we'd be so much better off.

-- Mal

Hey! Got a bad feeling about that chemical spill wiping out those critters? Feeling blue about turning that old growth redwood grove into decking material for Las Vegas casinos? Step on up and buy some of Highland Jack's Feel Good Wetland Credits! Never mind the fact your just adding further support to the very thing causing all the destruction in the first place this will fix you up real nice!

his driveway crossed below the stream, ergo there would be no runoff from his driveway. Meanwhile, this same wetlands group. which is appointed by our repug mayor, allowed 15 ac. of upland in an Aquifer Protection Area to be leveled for a project that drains into wetlands just below the hill. But, that was OK. They also allowed a school to build 50' from wetlands in the "regulated area" because it's a school, dontcha know.

n/t

The GOP really do lack the irony gene.

My first and only guess was precisely these guys. I might have guessed the attorney as well, but it could have been other attorneys, there are a small number of potential candidates for that. The number of guys who have the pull to get someone as far up the food chain as Ms. Bersok was summarily suspended are few. But in these times, when they pull the trigger, things happen fast.

Despite the article, credits are given for restoration of land that "is not wet" all the time, and it is a good thing. Wetlands function best as part of a larger natural area which has a diversity of food sources and nesting opportunities. The question comes down to how much better, what are the bankers doing to improve it, and how much improvement is likely to occur. There are ways to measure this stuff.

The bottom line is literally "credits" worth roughly 100K apiece, the bankers always want more of them and more of them sooner.

The bankers tried the the normal application process to get what they wanted, when that failed, they resorted to the courts, when that failed, they went political.

It's a shell game with big developers behind the table.

I actually do this for a living. I meet with big developers every week and sit across the table from them. Most of the players in this story know me by first name and I meet with them on occasion. It is not a shell game. Real and measurable ecological benefits come from mitigation and the concept has gotten much more effective over the 23 years I have been in this profession.

Early on we "created" little postage stamp wetlands and placed them into the hands of homeowners and businessowners to manage. This sort of worked when the designs were good, because a good design takes care of itself. When the designs were bad the results were poor and the people involved were not ecologists, so they did not improve with time.

Banks and regional off-site mitigation areas in the hands of restoration biologists and ecologists do work, some of them quite well. This is because they take lands that were naturally wetlands but have been degraded by previous owners, and just undo the damage and let nature take over. The agency I work for successfully restored 250,000 acres of headwaters wetlands this way. It can be done, and doing it is important.

This does not mean that it is all good, but a good portion of it is.

and while I respect your professional expertise, I am cynical about mitigation.

For example, mitigation for loss of valley elderberry longhorn beetle habitat is usually elderberries planted in a monoculture without any habitat context.

The money would be better spent buying areas of intact riparian habitat that have no elderberries and planting some, but for whatever reason that's not how it's done.

from the article:

to 'play the game'.

I think that is the real reason so few hold positions of real power.

Watch this intrepid human disappear...