In a Michigan Business Review piece republished this week, Russell Harding lauded the proposal by Gov. Jennifer Granholm to repeal the state's wetland law and dump the protection of that resource on the federal government. He also said:
It is curious that state environmental groups are now lobbying to keep
the state in the business of issuing federal wetland permits. The
Michigan Environmental Council in 1997 petitioned the EPA to take the
wetland delegation back from the state, claiming the Corps would do a
better job.
The reason MEC filed that petition in 1997 is that Russell Harding was then the Michigan DEQ director and doing his best to undermine wetland protection. He doesn't have that DEQ job now.
And, while the environmental position may seem inconsistent, Harding fails to note his own inconsistency: in 1997 he opposed returning wetland protection authority from Michigan to the federal government.
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