.
.
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument
Chapter 29
Environmental Impact and
Planning
LEARNING OBJECTIVES Evaluating the landscape for environmental impact and land-use planning is common practice. This section should foster your understanding of the material in the text regarding environmental impact statements, Geographic Information Systems, mediation in environmental law, problems with the development of international environmental agreements, land-use planning, preferable adjustments to natural hazards, population increase and the effects of natural hazards, and the problems and opportunities of global forecasting. A CLOSER LOOK: The Florissant Fossil Beds. A case reported by Yannacone, Choen, and Davison in Colorado emphasizes the power of citizen groups to use the law. The conflict surrounded the use of 7.3 square kilometers of land near Colorado Springs, a part of the Florissant Fossil Beds where insect bodies, seeds, leaves, and plants were deposited in an ancient lake bed about 30 million years ago. Today the deposits are remarkably preserved in thin layers of volcanic shale. The fossils are delicate and, unless protected, tend to disintegrate when exposed. Many people consider the fossils unique and irreplaceable. While the U. S. Congress was considering a bill to establish a Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, a land development company that had contracted to purchase and develop recreational home sites on 7.3 square kilometers of the ancient lake bed announced that it was going to bulldoze a road through a portion of the proposed national monument site to gain access to the property it wished to develop. A citizens' group formed to fight the development until the House acted on the bill. After first being denied a temporary restraining order, the conservationists went before an appeals court and argued that, even though there were was no law protecting the fossils, they were subject to protection under the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and that, furthermore, because the property had tremendous public interest, it was also protected by the Trust Doctrine. An analogy used by the plaintiffs was that if a property owner were to find the Constitution of the United States buried on the land and wanted to use it to mop the floor, certainly that person would be restrained. The court eventually issued a restraining order to halt development; shortly thereafter, the bill to establish a national monument was passed by Congress and signed by the president. The court order prohibiting destruction of
the fossil beds may have deprived the landowner of making the most profitable
use of the property, but it did not prohibit uses consistent with protecting
the fossils. For instance, the property owners are free to develop
the land for tourism or scientific research. Although such use might
not result in the largest possible return on the property owner's investment,
it probably would return a responsible profit. .
|
