Sifting Through the Muck

Following the rules can start to seem like a fool’s game when many in society begin to tout that regulations — any inconvenient regulations — are an affront to freedom and an obstacle to prosperity. Nevermind that a free market depends on a well-regulated system. This is true whether dealing with home loan approvals, oil rig safety procedures or scrutinizing investment results (Madoff, anyone?). The penalties for recklessness must be severe for the market to make sense.

It is amidst this broader political atmosphere that we on the Vineyard should examine the recent spate of property owners in violation of wetlands protection laws, from West Chop to Chappaquiddick to Crystal Lake. These wetlands laws were born of the Clean Water Act, which, like America’s other bedrock environmental protection laws, was passed on a broadly bipartisan basis. The lawmakers who passed this country’s landmark environmental laws did so, the agency’s chief recently testified, “to protect American children and adults from pollution that otherwise would make their lives shorter, less healthy and less prosperous ... to make the air and drinking water in America’s communities clean enough to attract new employers ... to safeguard the pastime of America’s forty million anglers ... to protect the farms whose irrigation makes up a third of America’s surface freshwater withdrawals ... to preserve the livelihoods of fishermen.”

We on the Vineyard are currently celebrating the return of the migratory birds we welcome as harbingers every spring; these soarers and songmakers feed on the frogs, fish, midges and flies harbored by our wetlands.

We also watch for the next northeaster that may rob our shorelines; wetlands act as a natural buffer between ocean and land, preventing flooding during times of extreme high tide and storm surges by acting like a sponge to soak up excess water. Wetlands, neither fully land nor fully water, are our first line of defense against natural disasters.

The recent Vineyard wetlands violations vary from clear-cutting to filling. Homeowners and contractors who should have known better were involved. Generally, no one involved sought a permit. And yet no one is facing a stiff fine.

On the Island, we like to play nice. But our environmental enforcers, unable to outspend owners in court, end up enabling those property owners who find it easier to play naive and make some reparations after the damage has been done. It’s cheaper than following the rules.

It may be that these property owners really had no idea that, having bought in a precious environment, they ought to take care before changing it. In which case, perhaps it is time then to repeat a simple guideline proffered decades ago by a member of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission: “If you can see water, come see us” before you take action to make human changes to this very finite natural resource.