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in the preservation of our environment. By an injunc- 

 tion requiring the issuance of a permit to fill in eleven 

 acres of tidelands in the beautiful Boca Ciega Bay 

 in the St. Petersburg-Tampa, Florida area for use as 

 a commercial mobile trailer park, the District Judge 

 held that the Secretary of the Army and his function- 

 ary, the Chief of Engineers, had no power to consider 

 anything except interference with navigation. There 

 being nio such obstruction to navigation, they were or- 

 dered to issue a permit even though the permittees 

 acknowledge that "there was evidence before the Corps 

 of Engineers sufficient to justify an administrative a- 

 gency finding that [the] fill would do damage to the 

 ecology or marine life on the bottom." We hold that 

 nothing in the statutory structure compels the Secre- 

 tary to close his eyes to all that others see or think 

 they see. The establishment was entitled, if not re- 

 quired, to consider ecological factors and, being per- 

 suaded by them, to deny that which might have been 

 granted routinely five, ten, or fifteen years ago before 

 man's explosive increase made all, including Con- 

 Igress, aware of civilization's potential destruction from 

 breathing its own polluted air and drinking its own 

 infected water and the immeasurable loss from a si- 

 lent-spring-like disturbance of nature's economy. We 

 reverse. 



Genesis: The Beginning 



In setting the stage we draw freely on the Govern- 

 ment's brief. This suit was instituted by Landholders, 



