Supreme Court Affirms Wetlands Protections

[AnOhioan]

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the government can block development on hundreds of millions of acres of wetlands, even on land miles away from waterways, as long as regulators prove a connection to the waterways.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in his first major environmental case, came up one vote short of dramatically limiting the scope of the landmark Clean Water Act.


The key decision was by Kennedy, who agreed with the liberal members that federal regulations can apply to land adjacent to tributaries, including tributaries that are not filled with water all year.

Kennedy, however, joined conservatives in ruling that regulators may have misinterpreted the Clean Water Act when they refused to let two Michigan property owners build a shopping mall and condominiums on wetlands they own.

More at http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5897891,00.html

[Biernuts]

1. You should use quotation marks when you lift material verbatim

Otherwise, the writing may be attributed to you.

This ruling is no slam dunk, has several parts and complex voting pluralities.
Even though the court allowed the federal government to block development in the specific case at hand, it came with a big qualifier: 'if it proves development would "significantly affect the chemical, physical, and biological integrity" of nearby navigable waters.' <http://apnews.excite.com/article/20060619/D8IBIB000.html>

Although not permitting development without limit, this could be a very significant ruling because the court's plurality also restricted the (Army's) Corps of Engineers jurisdiction.

[AnOhioan]

2. The box format indicates I did not author the post

Also the actual link to the news article indicates the same.

[merwin]

3. I don't think LBN really requires quotes around the article snippet.

It's a given that postings in LBN come from the article cited in the link, since you're only allowed to post articles :-)

[Doremus]

4. From DU's HTML lookup table:

"Create a styled, indented blockquote (useful for posting excerpts from articles) - {div class ="excerpt"] Text

Quotes would be redundant.

[Moderator]

5. duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2345405