We're already pretty far along down this path. Way back in 2005 I discovered the last of my land which I was planning to sell as a capital gain and use to draw from for my retirement was classed as part of the "Waters of Indiana"
Even though it had no permanent stream, just a low lying ditch, beginning at the top of a hill which only had water in it in heavy rains, it was regulated environmentally. It was/is now classed part of the natural drainage pattern of the state though its maybe a mile from any permanent stream. The bottom of that ditch, which is nothing more than a low swale, has an environment of it’s own with established microbiology. It can only be disturbed by mitigation somewhere else.
To sell my property, the buyer would have to protect that ditch by encompassing it with a "conservancy easement"
To cross it with a public road (to be built at his own expense which is always the case) the buyer would have to find a similar environment on someone else’s property in a degraded state, convince that property owner to allow them to correct the deficiency and then allow a "conservancy easement" to be laid over that ditch to replace the one which they intended to disturb by putting a drainage pipe in it's bottom; but not an equal amount of ditch but multiples of the amount to be disturbed so as to improve the overall environmental situation; not just to replace it in equal amounts.
Needless to say, not many buyers want property with so called "planning issues" like that laid over it, or to have to negotiate with a seperate property owner to be willing to impose the same state or affairs on their land. Because of the limited use permitted different from when I bought it in 1992, the value in my case dropped from $250K, the amount my original buyer offered in 2005, to only $100K which is what I got for it when it was finally sold as the site for a single home in 2008.
I got one lucky break: Bush’s tax cuts made that net profit capital gain a tax free event.
