Conflicting thoughts:
How can a swimming pool damage wetlands? It's even wetter than the wetlands. Buy a pet seagull and it'll be better than a beach.
The pool, and area around it no longer have any resemblance to a wetlands. Yes, there is water, but no hydric soils, no wetlands floura. May or may not still have high ground water elevation. Having 2 out of 3 of these things is what defines a wetland. (I get that you're joking, but a swimming pool clearly does not function in any way like a wetlands.) Also, I don't know the specifics, but if the pool/patio/fill separated what was previously a contiguous wetland, that would be another big concern to the City. (Turning a larger wetland into two smaller ones.)
He probably didn't get the wetlands permit, because it is an onerous, time consuming process involving the Dept. of State Lands and the US Army Corps of Engineers. They don't have much of a sense of humor if their processes are ignored, and as an attorney he knows that. In order to get a permit to do the work, he would have probably had to mitigate the impact on the wetland. That would mean buying mitigation credits from a wetlands bank....at (at least) $50,000 per acre of impact.
Why isn't the construction company partially liable? Why did that company proceed without seeing a permit?
It is not uncommon for a contractor to have a provision in their contract that the owner is responsible for all permits. If the contractor isn't in hot water over this, I'd guess that is what happened.
Lawyers are people who show no mercy and put people into jail for disobeying an arbitrary set of rules called law. This lawyer says he ignored the law because a politician verbally advised him to. Being a lawyer, he's supposed to follow a higher standard than that.
This may be the first time I've ever heard of someone that believes that lawyers are supposed to follow a higher standard. My experience is, mostly, that lawyers do just the opposite.
Go Blazers