Lol, haven’t spent much time on a farm have you. Most don't drain into anything. They collect runoff for cattle to drink. Hot summers they dry up.
Read the argument the EPA used in Vanz example. I am surrounded by farms, and generally the bodies of water don't drain onto one another; until we have record floods like last year.
H4... I know you've got an engineering background and you have some common sense. Take a look around brutha. Compare that little pond's algae bloom to the anti-freeze, oil, hydraulic fluid, diesel fuel, etc etc.... that builds up daily in parking lots and on our streets. Daily. Then a big rain comes and there it all goes... straight into the storm sewer, then straight into the nearest waterway, then straight into the next biggest river... and on and on from there. That sh*t doesn't go away. We pollute our world in a big effing way. I'm not saying its right, but it is what it is and its the reality of our life today. I don't think Bubba's catfish hole merits a $750,000 fine on top of probably 3X that in legal fees that wipes out him and his family just to make a point.
Most liberal municipalities have a tax on your parking lot just for that. Pollution’s ok as long as we can tax you.
And that's why we got regulation against emission (including fluid emissions) from vehicles. By law, a vehicle off the lot can't be spewing liquids onto the road. And by common sense, you compromise by allowing some pollution for the "greater good"...that is transportation for everyone. Some dude wanting to have a little luxury in his back yard benefits only his kin. Sure the EPA probably went HAM on him. It's what federal agencies do to make an example of people and keep others from following this dumb ass. I don't know the particulars of it, but wouldn't surprise me if the dude kept at it after warning from the EPA. Common sense tells anyone that creating a lake has an environmental impact and common sense would've factored in the risks of going rogue and the legal costs that would entail.
Yadda yadda yadda, all these concerns regarding land were all ready address by the States. The opposition to Obama’s 2015 WOTUS was started immediately after he picked up his pen, not by Trump. It was an overreach by the federal government.
Pffff. H4... how many POS cars reside all over the hood? About a gillion. Guess what buddy, rainwater and its ultimate path into our streams and then our rivers know no socio-economic breakdowns. Next time you're at a stop-light, look down. Ditto a convenience store. And as Wallet pointed out, they tax parking lots in some cities. Yeah, first that money just feeds the pig and nothing that actually helps results from it, aside from a do-nothing govt employee that drives around and does 15 hours of actual work in a 40 hour week and harasses hard-working business people... because he can. Common sense: the ratio of parking lot sqf to road and driveway sqf is probably .0001. So Bubba has a pond for his kids. Has the EPA studied any of the environmental benefits of that pond? There are huge benefits to the eco-system created. Think about how much surface area that was once water, is no longer there. I bet migratory waterfowl love Bubba's pond as much as his kids do. As do the birds and bats that feed on the mosquito's, and the frogs, mollusks, and crayfish that have a nice new home. ....As opposed to the 1000's of gallons of diesel, oil, ethylene-glycol, biological hazards etc., that hit our waterways daily in hundreds and hundreds of cities across America and the industrialized world for that matter. Stuff that takes eons to biodegrade. Its there forever. I mean dude.... its like lets fine a piss-ant while the elephants in the room can't be stopped... "for the greater good". Its stupid and 100% completely ineffective where the rubber ultimately meets the road. Our water is trashed. Period. That cat's pond has ZERO effect on anything and he has a right to dig a hole on his land and let it fill with water because... that's all it is... a hole in the ground with water in it. Mother Earth could give a f.
As to the rest, it's really all unsubstantiated feel good opinion. You can justify a million different wrongs a million different ways. You want to live in a country w/o environmental protections fine, I do not.