Originally posted by redmenace
I am not saying I am against protection of species, but I am against people purchasing property and then finding out after their investment that they can't to **** with it. I mean there is no compensation what so ever. There are additional problems with enviromental law. such as owners of a property have to pay for toxic waste cleanup regaurdless of whether or not they did it but based souly on the virtue that they own it.
Well, it should be the responsibility of polluters, not landowners to clean up (where the two are seperate), as well as an onus upon the government to legislate against excessive (note the 'excessive'; I have no expectation that the US gov would be doing anything to actually cut or control overall emissions, etc, except where it has a measured public health effect/risk) pollution & unsafe waste disposal. Although I'm surprised the US doesn't operate a 'polluter pays' system, as most countries within the OECD (AFAIK) do.
That given, a fault within legislation does not automatically invalidate supporting or parallel legislation.
However, if you hold economic concerns as being of more importance than environmental, then there is no point in having environmental protection laws atall. If a developer intends to buy and develop land, then surely they have a responsibility to investigate the legality of that action? Caveat emptor, and soforth.
EDIT; apparently in this specific case, the developer was being requested to remove a fence.