Po Monkey Lounger wrote:Alternative Headline:
Under the cloak of darkness, without any public notice or opportunity for public comment, Secretary of State Delbert Hoseman, with the aid of the MDEQ and MDWF&P, aided 3 MS landowners with donating private lake bottoms of Six Mile Lake, the waters over which were part of a public waterway and already in the public domain and available to the public for fishing and duck hunting, for the purpose of generating generous tax credits for the landowners and creating a "refuge" which will later be turned over to control by a national conservation group to be managed as a waterfowl/wildlife sanctuary.
In order to maximize the monetary value of the land gift to the state, the MDEQ was persuaded by Hoseman to further define the banks of the public waterway in the subject area in such a fashion that resulted in some of the gifted land appearing to lie under private waters as opposed to public, all in direct opposition to a previous ruling by the MDEQ Commission back in 2001 that held that the lake was public water from "bank to bank". The evidence presented at the hearing and in legal filings by the MDEQ staff at the time of that proceeding approximately 14 years ago, including an expert hydrologist map depicting Six Mile Lake at bank full stage, clearly indicated that "bank to bank" meant the large prominent levee on the north side of the lake, and the raised roadbed on the south side of the lake. The affected landowners who had unsuccessfully attempted to privatize Six Mile Lake 14 years ago, and did not appeal the referenced Commission ruling, include the same landowner donors for the new "refuge".
The bottom line, our state has turned public waters available for duck hunting into a non-huntable refuge to give the owners of the bottoms of a Publuc waterway a generous tax credit and to protect adjacent private landowners with duck holes a state created "buffer" between them and the public. Not one acre of the donation of land to the state included anything but lake bottoms lying beneath public waters.
Yep, A CROCK!!!! "The truth is what I say it is" is the motto of this clan. This has me madder than a hornet!!! Max, we need some help with this. How can we stand by and let things like this happen?
waterfowl sanctuary, coming to a duck hole near YOU!!!!!!
