People gotta realize that there is no real incentive for government employees to be accurate or good at their jobs. They are actually rewarded for NOT doing their jobs (as 'their jobs' are commonly understood) as long as it is furthering an agenda, and that agenda is often hidden. It's quickly becomming a much bigger problem in the U.S. recently.
Very recently I did some work on my place and gave my state's DEQ an excuse to fuck with me by 'disturbing' more than an acre of land. Having some eco-snitch make an anonymous phone call to gave this totally bitchy DEQ cunt what she claimed to be jurisdiction over my project (before a zoning change which would have made it somewhat more appropriate.) I was unaware of these rules and had designed my project (in conjunction with the state's department of forestry) to create zero sediment discharge.
This lady claimed that she believed that my project could increase the sediment load in the nearby river by 10%. The river flows more than 6,000,000 gallons per minute when it is flooding and is dark brown with sediment and carrying full sized logs with their root wads at that stage. This week it rained a lot for the first time and some water exited my work area. It was crystal clear as I expected.
So, this bureaucrat was totally and completely wrong (through incompetence or malice or both) but it gave the DEQ an excuse to shaft me for $1600. The bitchy cunt also tried to steer me to her friend's engineering firm to do the extensive paperwork which would have cost me another $10k, but I wasn't falling for it. I did my own engineering documents and proposed my 'best management practices' to 'mitigate the risks' as
do nothing. That worked, but I am still out $1600.
The key to success here is to fuck only a small and unrepresentative sample of people. The despicable 'greenies' living in their stack-n-pack condos in the cities are not going to be impacted by the extortion that the DEQ slammed me with, and they can feel all self-righteous that they are 'saving the earth' by supporting the DEQ. Hopefully these bureaucrats and their 'NGO' minions/overloards will get get greedy and fuck to many people and there will be a backlash which will collapse their corrupt scams.
FWIW, to get even I'm now planning to clear-cut the shit out of all of my land even though I don't really need the money. I'm actually something of an environmentalist myself and sacrifice about $100k in value to shade the river with trees in a buffer zone, but I've grown up around clearcuts and understand the ecological factors. Most people don't seem to be able to conceptualize the reality that trees grow back. As for leaving a buffer zone to protect the river, I feel it's important because I've spent 40 years running up and down the river and observing things. The innumerate eco-fuckers and their self-serving pseudo-science does not impact my analysis at all (other than pissing me off.)
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Anyway, I was aware of this $10k problem already. I very deliberately did some Bitcoin cash-out transactions in excess of $10k so I could not be accused of 'structuring' (although, ironically, this very action could also be considered 'structuring'...if they wish to defend the argument in court.)
