Just another bunch of useless and expensive red tape?

There's been a fair bit of press recently in Nova Scotia about people wishing to build wilderness camps-with no septic system-being obliged to go through an expensive bureaucratic process of site inspection anyway, as though they did plan to install a septic system.
Just another bunch of useless and expensive red tape? Not really. Things are actually 'way worse than that.

Departments of the Environment have been charged with protecting our fresh water resources. That's a good thing-in theory.

Because old, leaky septic systems were "polluting" (more on that in a minute) it is now often necessary to place a new septic field far back from any lake or riverbank, even if sewage has to be pumped uphill to the field.

Now, we have to bear in mind that in many areas of Nova Scotia in particular, a little sewage leakage into fresh water would be a good thing. Acid rain has destroyed half the province's fish habitat and sewage provides nutrients that help overcome that.

But, more importantly, we really have an absurd situation whereby it's illegal to risk leaking minute amounts of (potentially beneficial) domestic sewage into a water course-but it's perfectly okay to clearcut a whole damn watershed-or leak farm manure and chemicals-or leak chemicals from golf courses with the following consequences:

1. Heavy machinery activity tearing up the woods leads to siltation and erosion and damaged spawning gravel;
2. Herbicide and insecticide spray washes into fish habitat with sometimes devastating results;
3. Loss of forest cover increases the average summer temperatures in vital feeder brooks by 10 degrees F. This fact can (and often does) cause river temperatures to rise to levels lethal to fish;
4. Removal of the forest also involves removal of water retention in the watershed. Rivers whose catchment areas has been clearcut are subject to unnaturally floods and droughts because runoff has been accelerated. The result is heavy erosion damage during spring ice-out that sees rivers rendered wide and shallow-almost useless as fish habitat; And extreme low and warm summer conditions that cause fish mortality through oxygen deprivation and vulnerability to predators in the clear shallow pools.
5. Pesticides are applied to golf courses at higher concentrations per acre than almost any other type of land, including farmland. Runoff from improperly-designed golf courses contaminates our rivers and lakes.
6. Never before in history have farms applied more chemicals on the land. Agricultural runoff (nitrates and phosphates) has devastated fish habitat in Prince Edward Island, and continues to cause damage with every rain all over the Maritimes.

We saw recent publicity that forest clearcutting, especially in Nova Scotia, is far more extensive than most people thought (and we already thought it was bad).

So: it's illegal to risk leaching a tiny amount of sewage into rivers (that might actually improve water conditions as fish habitat) but it's okay to cut the whole damn watershed and wreck the river; and it's okay to leak farm effluent for years; and heavy metal pollution from mining activity is considered a necessary evil.

That ain't progress.