When state highway officials told Carroll County's top elected officials that the long-postponed construction of the Hampstead bypass might be further delayed because of the discovery of a four-inch turtle, community reaction was predictable.
The thrust of the comments was: How dare this puny, insignificant reptile stand in the way of progress?
For many Carroll residents, the possible delay in building the Hampstead bypass is another example of nonsensical environmental legislation designed to protect animals and inconvenience humans.
The bog turtle controversy recalled the travails of the snail darter, the little fish that stopped construction of the Tellico Dam in Tennessee, and the northern spotted owl, the raptor that interfered with the logging of old-growth trees in the Pacific Northwest.
It is too early to tell whether the discovery of the Clemmys muhlenbergii in a small wetland near Hampstead will actually delay the bypass. But this reclusive reptile could easily become a symbol for county residents who feel that environmental legislation has "gone too far."
Sentiment has already been running against other local environmental measures -- from the forest conservation ordinance passed last year to replace trees felled for development, to the water resources management program, which was designed to protect fresh water supplies in streams and aquifers from contamination, but is still under review.
Opponents claim these measures impinge on the rights of property owners and represent the worst in intrusive government regulation.
It is true that before the environmental legislation of the past two decades, every landowner, businessman, manufacturer, farmer and government was free to dispose of waste, effluent, exhaust and toxic waste any way he wanted.
Given the absence of regulation, many people and companies treated the land, air and water as a dump. The result of this behavior was a profound degradation of the environment. Air was filthy, streams were polluted, toxic waste was left along roadsides.
When conditions became so intolerable -- residents of Pittsburgh couldn't see the sun in the late 1940s because of grime in the air, people couldn't swim at New Jersey beaches due to the dumping of raw sewage and the chemical-saturated Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught flame -- a sea change took place in political attitudes. The public wanted the land, air and water cleaned up.
Now the pendulum may be swinging back again. Instead of concern about the condition of the environment, there is a substantial movement interested in protecting property "rights."
The success of many of the environmental protection programs caused this reaction.
Large industrial companies, such as Bethlehem Steel, and cities, such as Washington and Baltimore, cleaned their waste and sewer discharges into the Chesapeake Bay to the point where the treated water looks clean enough to drink. Nevertheless, the estuary still suffers from the ravages of pollution from other sources.
Eliminating these damaging effluents means controlling runoff from farms, developments under construction and parking lots. Thus starts a whole new regime of regulations. Because environmental rules have never applied to these groups, they resent the rules and want them overturned.
For the past two decades, we have said the costs of protecting and cleaning the environment produced the ample benefits and were worth the price.
To recognize the wisdom of protecting the environment, all you have to do is look at the environmental disasters created in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The former communist governments considered the environment a resource to exploit rather than protect.
At the root of the conflict is our ambivalence about protecting communal resources such as fresh water, air, fisheries and wildlife.
These resources have always been available in abundance -- so much so that no one much worried about conserving them. We are beginning to realize that there are limits to these resources. We must protect them.
Unfortunately, we don't seem willing to shoulder the costs of protecting these resources.
It is easy to tell farmers to keep their animals out of streams, but we don't want to pay them so they can build bridges that would allow them to move their animals from one side of the stream to the other. Instead, we tell the farmers to shoulder the cost. It's not surprising they don't like wetlands regulations.
When it comes to protecting wild animals, there is even more resentment because restrictions usually result in an economic loss for someone.
Loggers and lumber mills suffered when the federal government limited the logging of old growth trees as part of its effort to preserve the habitat of the spotted owl.
No one will lose his livelihood if the Hampstead bypass must be re-engineered to avoid the habitat of the bog turtle, but commuters will be forced to contend with the overcrowding on Route 30 and the taxpayers will have to shoulder additional costs.
Spending money on turtles is not a popular position these days.
Brian Sullam is The Baltimore Sun's editorial writer in Carroll County.