CHAUTAUQUA LAKE — Overall, humanity hasn’t been a good steward of Chautauqua Lake over the course of the last two centuries.

Raw sewage, pollution and runoff from various enterprises, and the clearing of so much land along Chautauqua Lake have hurt this body of water.

The scuttling of boats, including steamboats, was a series of fools’ errands, as was dumping into the lake dredged material from elsewhere in the lake.

If only people knew then what we know now, they could have fully appreciated the error of their ways.

Yet there’s no undoing what wasn’t done right. The task is to move on.

One of the most knowledgeable people about Chautauqua Lake has said it needs strategic dredging, and that such dredging, in the long run, would be worth the cost.

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At least for now, though, dredging isn’t the issue at hand.

The issue at hand is regulations that the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, has proposed.

The DEC wants to expand what it regulates as “wetlands.”

Some have denied these proposed regulations would lead to any of Chautauqua Lake, any land along it, or any land back from it being wetlands.

Yet you, faithful reader of this column, already know that DEC officials have told the press they intend to do just that.

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Why does this matter?

The answer is far longer than this column. But let’s take a crack at it.

Over time, what the DEC calls “aquatic vegetation”–that means weeds, etc.–can well get much worse, because the proposed regulations will in effect hinder sufficiently dealing with them.

Think of how much worse weeds, etc., have been in recent years than decades ago. With the proposed regulations in place, don’t be surprised if we look back at recent years as the good old days. You read it here first.

Then what? Fewer people will want to:

≤ Visit a deteriorating lake.

≤ Live on a deteriorating lake, or

≤ Own land that has become wetlands, because–on wetlands–even the owners need permits to do some things and are banned from doing some other things.

Think of how each of those three will ripple through the local economy.

Here’s just one series of examples: The value of property along and back from the lake won’t be as high as it otherwise would.

Since property-tax-collecting jurisdictions apportion their property-tax levies based on property values, the property-tax burden will shift from owners of property along or back from the lake to other property owners, whose property taxes will be higher than they otherwise would.

In effect, that will be a reverse Robin Hood that the “beneficiaries” of the reversal won’t want.

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If you thought Albany couldn’t hurt this region even more than it already has, you might want to think that one through.

It can, and these proposed regulations will.

Furthermore, when proposed law is as complex as the proposed regulations, it in effect discourages most non-experts from trying to understand it. Because opposing it requires understanding it, its complexity in effect discourages opposition. That, in turn and in effect, obviously works in favor of such law and, at a more general level, of the administrative state.

Do wetlands provide a valuable service to land, water, animals, and plants? Of course they do. It doesn’t follow, however, that the DEC should adopt the proposed wetlands regulations, much less that government should do what they’ll empower it to do to Chautauqua Lake, land along it, or land back from it.

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What to do?

≤ The proposed regulations affect much of New York. One way to oppose them is to encourage people from all across the state to ask state legislators to intervene.

One obstacle to this approach is getting enough votes in the state Legislature as currently comprised.

Besides, the better time for such intervention was beforehand, not now: It’s often better or easier to deter or prevent government from proposing bad regulations than it is to fix them after government has proposed or enacted them.

In other words, the better time to shut stable doors is before, not after, the horses even start to run away. Afterward, one has to round them up. The longer one waits, the farther they can run and the harder it can be to round them up.

As to the proposed wetlands regulations, the stable doors–for whatever reason–remained open.

Yet, again, there’s no undoing what wasn’t done right. The task is to move on.

≤ With the horses having started to run away, one way–for now–to round them up is through the executive branch: Urge the DEC to reject the proposed regulations.

≤ Another way is through the judicial branch, where one can challenge regulations.

Whether that’s in a state court or a federal court depends, of course, on what one asserts.

In any such challenge–if it eventually comes to that–the plaintiffs at times may feel like David taking on Goliath.

They would do well to remember who won that one, and get the best slingshot they can find.

Dr. Randy Elf’s paternal grandparents had a cottage at Cheney’s Point on Chautauqua Lake for 40 years. For more on the proposed wetlands regulations, see the interview of him at 0:17.10 to 0:23.10 of https://works.bepress.com/elf/310.

COPYRIGHT (C)2024 BY RANDY ELF