Rep. Rob Bishop's bellicose backing of a ludicrous plan to replace a smidgen of critical Great Salt Lake wetlands with a sewage lagoon is an example of how our representatives don't do anyone any favors when they defend the indefensible.

Officials of the city of Perry - a smallish but growing town near Brigham City - understandably feel the need to expand their sewage treatment plant. Their plan would consume some 10.8 acres of seasonal salt marsh to build a 9-acre sewage lagoon.

There are ways to do that and stay within the bounds of the federal Clean Water Act. But they would involve spending some money to replace the wetlands consumed with wetlands reclaimed elsewhere.

The Army Corps of Engineers, lead agency in such matters, dutifully sought expert opinions on the city's suggestion that a year-round sewage lagoon would be as good, if not better, for migratory birds and other wildlife than the existing salt marsh, which does have a habit of drying out each summer.

The expert consensus was that the city's idea belonged in the lagoon.

The feds' Environmental Protection Agency and Fish and Wildlife Service and the state's Division of Wildlife Resources are unanimous in their conclusion that not all slime is created equal. A sewage lagoon, with all of the nitrogen, phosphorous, bacteria and even petroleum to be found there, is a totally different, and mostly inhospitable, environment for the millions of birds that use the lake's wetlands.

Not to mention the environmental catastrophe that would occur if - no, when - a rising Great Salt Lake floods the treatment plant and is poisoned by it.

For its pains, the Corps was rewarded with threatening e-mail from Bishop's staff that condemned the legally required process as “ABUSE OF A MUNICIPALITY BY DOGMATIC FEDERAL BUREAUCRATS” (all caps, the e-mail equivalent of shouting, in the original).

If anyone is being DOGMATIC here, it is the city of Perry and its eager but not too wise congressman.