At least such were the claims during two recent public hearings in northern Minnesota organized by the rightwing American Property Coalition (APC) and several counties in the region, including St. Louis County.

The poorly-attended events were held ostensibly to take testimony from northern Minnesotans who had suffered at the hands of dawdling federal bureaucrats, but at least as much ire was directed at environmentalists, who many of the participants clearly see as the shock troops behind Oberstar’s bill. APC President Linda Runbeck, who managed Rod Grams failed 2006 bid to unseat Oberstar, read a quote calling environmentalists worse than communists, while an Idaho county commissioner who had flown in to join the fun, likened them to Islamic terrorists.

St. Louis County officials, including Commissioner Dennis Fink, who represented our county at the hearings, may have been well-intentioned when they signed up to participate, but their involvement with APC taints the whole effort as political at best.

Their cause isn’t helped by the presence of APC Executive Director Don Parmeter, who has made a career of poorly-researched, anti-government paranoia.

Commissioner Fink doesn’t deny that the hearings got a bit crazy at times, but he told me this week that his own concerns aren’t political, ideological, nor part of any dispute over the value of clean water. He said the issue is one of jurisdiction, and when Oberstar’s bill extends the purview of the Clean Water Act from “navigable waters” to “all the waters of the United States,” it all but ends state and county regulation of land use.

“I’m being told by our planning department that they wouldn’t be necessary anymore,” he said, should Oberstar’s bill become law. “If you want to replace the culvert at the bottom of your driveway, you’d need a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers,” Fink added.

But Fink’s claims don’t stand up to scrutiny. Oberstar’s bill, contrary to the claims of critics, actually clarifies the issue of jurisdiction, something that everyone seems to agree has been muddied by two Supreme Court decisions issued over the past several years.

As with most laws, the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 required the agencies charged with enforcement, in this case the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, to develop rules that outlined how the law would be enforced. For 30 years, federal, state and county regulators had more or less worked out the jurisdictional issues based on the rules that the feds had established.

The Supreme Court upset the apple cart when it found that the Army Corps had overstepped its authority in a couple of cases, and questions of jurisdiction have been up in the air ever since. Oberstar’s bill takes the rules that had been in effect for 30 years and enshrines them in statute. In other words, it re-establishes the three-decades long status quo. That means counties would continue to handle culvert permits and most other local land use issues, just as they always have. There’s nothing in the bill that suggests otherwise, unless, of course, you have the vivid imagination of Don Parmeter.

And as for those kitchen sinks, mud puddles, and bird baths, none of them appear in Oberstar’s bill, either. Nor does it regulate whether you can pee in the woods, as one critic charged.

And because the original Clean Water Act specifically exempted most agriculture and forest management activities from provisions of the act, farmers, ranchers, and loggers have little or nothing to worry about.

In fact, there’s no reason to believe that passage of Oberstar’s bill will have any detectable effect here in Minnesota, other than to clarify which agency has jurisdiction over which projects— a development that should actually speed up the issuance of most permits.

Minnesota’s streams, lakes, and wetlands are already governed by stricter state laws anyway, so the less stringent federal rules won’t apply in most cases.

And as for Fink’s claim that the county’s planning department would fall into disuse under Oberstar’s bill, it’s just bunk.

Fink told me that Scott Smith, the county’s physical planning director told him as much during a task force meeting a few months ago, but Smith denied having ever said such a thing. He said as far as he can see the only significant change from Oberstar’s bill will be some much needed clarification of jurisdiction.

Planning Director Barb Hayden gave me a similiar response when asked about Fink’s claim. “I never said such a thing and never would I say such a thing,” she said.

Apparently Don Parmeter isn’t the only one playing fast and loose these days.