Hopefully all of my readers found their way to www.mnpropertyrightswatch.org to read more about the recent goings-on with the water management issues in the Vermillion River Watershed. The looming deadline for ordinance adoption has overshadowed and engulfed local efforts on the Collaborative Water Management Plan.
Last night, Eureka's town board began to address the proposed water management ordinance. At that board meeting, in a roundabout way and perhaps unintentionally, Supervisor Carrie Jennings pointed out a consideration that's been so far overlooked in this discussion and which leads to the conclusion that the Joint Powers Organization should administer this water management ordinance.
She argued that individual landowners should bear the costs of implementing this ordinance because otherwise, taxes would have to be raised.
By that same logic, we should force the landowners whose land is taken by the Met Council for sewer line easements to give free easements and pay for the cost of laying the sewer line across their land because otherwise, the taxpayers would have to bear the cost.
It's fundamentally unfair to saddle individuals with the cost of implementing measures that benefit the public at large. That's why it's unconstitutional.
The ordinance's avowed purpose is to "protect the public health, safety, and welfare through the effective management of water resources in this Community." The plan upon which it is based goes on at great length to explain how the land in the watershed is connected by water, and how actions in one part of the watershed affect other parts of the watershed.
So if conservation easements in buffer areas are intended to serve the entire watershed (and beyond), shouldn't the cost be spread over the entire watershed?
The township doesn't have the power to do that, but the Joint Powers Organization does.
And
if the watershed as a whole doesn't believe that the benefit to be
gained justifies the cost, then maybe it wasn't such a good idea to
begin with.
