Ranting

I am frustrated beyond all measures with environmental zealots. AS I have stated in the past I own a small environmental consulting company who specializes in stream bank enhancement and rehabilitation. I have a client in a prominent location in Banner Elk that contracted with our company to complete a project from design to permitting to construction. It is a small project t that only took one day to complete and 10 days to design and 30 days to permit. By all accounts I have a good handle on all the permits necessary and have completed over 300 Army Corps nationwide authorizations. In addition I have coordinated with every imaginable division of DENR. My frustration lies at the set of complicated conflicted requirements. In North Carolina as a requirement of the clean water act which is administer both by denr and the Corps you have to go through a permitting process. If the project is less than 150 linear feet in the stream then the corps will only issue and permit and dent deems it authorized automatically. Our project was under 150 feet and had a corps permit and was deemed authorized by denr. They know that the stream has to get muddy to do the work to prevent long term erosion and sedimentation, but today dent decided that want to enforce a turbidity standard that is violated with has little as a half inch of rain. To me these statues are conflicting and are what is wrong with the environmental statues. They all conflict! It only matters when regulators who become environmental zealots decide to enforce them arbitrarily. So what happens next? Who knows……. Certainly the agencies do not.

P.S. I never intended to rant about business issues and while I am ranting I normally have a very productive relationship and respect for most regulators.