Eighty Thousand Wise-Up Reminders
Butch Otter must be wearing those tight-fittin’ jeans again.
Why else would he ignore federal rules three times and destroy wetlands on his 60 acres near Star, Idaho? His trousers must have cut off circulation to his brain. That, or Otter doesn’t think he has to obey federal and state laws - a strange position for a congressional candidate but one that plays well in anti-government Idaho.
Otter was playing to the crowd in his role as a casualty of big government when he told The Spokesman-Review: “As long as I’m not polluting anything and as long as I’m not damaging the environment, and as long as it’s my property and I have to pay taxes on it, why can’t I do this?”
Neither Otter nor anyone else has the right to mess with wetlands without proper oversight. That’s not to say that all the areas designated as wetlands are legitimate. But Idahoans, who prize wildlife and the outdoors, should be concerned that half of the state’s natural wetlands have disappeared since the settlers arrived. Cavalier attitudes by elected state officials endanger the rest.
This is not a case of Joe Citizen accidentally stepping across an obscure bureaucratic line. Before Otter drained and bulldozed 2.7 acres of wetlands on his place last fall, he already was a two-time environmental loser. He’d been slapped with fines in 1992 and 1995 for violating wetlands law. Something needed to be done to get Otter’s attention. And the $80,000 fine imposed on him by the Environmental Protection Agency was just the thing.
Unquestionably, Otter’s land looks better today than when he bought it 11 years ago. He’s pulled car bodies and noxious weeds from the waterways that criss-cross his property. And he has installed waterfalls and rock-lined ponds. In the process, however, he destroyed wildlife habitat, riparian cover and a filtering system for surface water. He also reconfigured his part of the Boise River flood plain, which may have prompted a neighbor to turn him in.
If he had worked with them, regulators say, Otter could have done some of the things he wanted to do without harming the wetlands. However, he was impatient and chose not to jump through the hoops - a lousy example for someone who wants to legislate what hoops others jump through.
Otter is a charismatic cuss in the libertarian mold of former Idaho U.S. senator Steve Symms. Former U.S. representative George Hansen. And even the woman he hopes to replace, Rep. Helen Chenoweth. At the Statehouse, he does a superb job presiding over the Senate. Outside, he’s survived a drunken driving arrest, a tight-fittin’ jeans contest and a divorce from potato king J.R. Simplot’s daughter to win four terms as Idaho’s lieutenant governor. He finally seemed ready for bigger and better things. Until now.