Dry lands become Wet land of no return?

thcri · Dec 2, 2004

Henro,

My father in law out there in North Dakota has a whole bunch of slews on their farm. They use to drain them slews into other slews to have more tillable land. The DNR came in and stopped them from doing that. Once the land has water on it, it then belongs to the DNR. Were talking small slews here. Long story short the majority of the farmers posted their land from hunting. This did hurt the revenue of the DNR.

There is an office in Grand Rapids Michigan that is pretty much up on all the rules. I have attached a link with this persons address on it. You may want to contact them and see what they say.

Department of Environmental Quality

Some of you may have seen this before /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

murph

dummy · Dec 3, 2004

The word pond is never coming out of my mouth on this one.
 Put some decorative touches around/near/in it and call it a "water feature". Sounds a lot better than "big mud puddle" doesn't it?

chim · Dec 3, 2004

Henro, here in my end of the Commonwealth there was just such an incident several years ago. Here's the way I heard it:

The owner of a piece of land (PA Route 72, entering the South end of Manheim) decided the manmade pond should go. He contracted an excavation firm to make the pond into a big yard. Along comes the PA DEP and says "Yo, you ruined the wetland. Put it back." He did, at his own expense.

As I get older (more crotchity?) it is more difficult each year to accept the losses of personal freedoms and the increases of taxes, regulations and senseless government spending.................chim

Varmintmist · Dec 3, 2004

If you want to get rid of the pond, hire muskrats /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif They will drain it and the EPA cant fine them.

This is pretty good

http://www.warroom.com/beavers.htm

/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

bczoom · Dec 3, 2004

( If you want to get rid of the pond, hire muskrats )

I can attest to that!!!

Re. warroom, I haven't caught Quinn & Rose in awhile... I don't get a chance to listen to the radio in the am anymore. It's a great show... I miss it.

Henro · Dec 4, 2004

As I get older (more crotchity?) it is more difficult each year to accept the losses of personal freedoms and the increases of taxes, regulations and senseless government spending.................chim 

Funny you should mention that. I find my self more and more thinking exactly same thing! I thought it was just me...

rlee6 · Dec 4, 2004

Henro,
That is a very interesting question. Wetland is basically under water constantly or some of the time with anaerobic soil (or muck, as far as I understand) This falls under the jurisdiction of Army Corps of Engineers. No one can touch this land without making a huge compensation like 10x or 20x (in size).

Since yours is a small pond that is isolated from other wetlands, I doubt Army Corps of Engineers would be interested in claiming it as their jurisdiction. But your state will have some saying over it.

I was looking for a vacant land not long ago. Being in Florida, I have come across many wetlands and had to educate myself on the subject. But I didn't think there was a hard rule that a resident could interpret and implement himself (except Army Corps of Engineers' Jurisdictional Wetland, which means off limits) If the land is wet, owner basically needs to go through the state for development. Agricultural use is much different. I honestly don't think any TBN'er can give definite yes or no.

Someone mentioned drainage ditch being a wetland. But that is different. State needs that land for surface water control and is eager to protect it. Your small, less than an acre pond hardly fits that category.

Still, it is my 2 cents, not state's.