Does anybody else see anything mildly comical about this?
State officials are questioning plans by tax activists to dump a crate of tea bags into the Wabash River in protest of excessive government spending.
A spokeswoman for the state's environmental agency said that throwing tea into the Wabash, or any river, could hurt aquatic life by depleting the water of oxygen.
"It would technically be considered an unpermited discharge," said Amber Finkelstein, a spokeswoman for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
She said putting tea in the river would also be a fineable offense, and that IDEM would not be able to permit the protest because the river does not meet minimum water quality standards.
Protesters: Government has gotten too big and intrusive. Government: Sorry, you cannot throw a tea bag in the river. This pretty much captures the silliness:
"Tea is going in the river, regardless. The amount of hoops you have to go through for this to happen is part of what we're protesting," said Jared Fagan, one of the Lafayette protest organizers.
Any river, Amber? Is there anybody in Indiana who could say, with a straight face, that throwing tea into one of Fort Wayne's rivers could "hurt aquatic life by deleting the water of oxygen"?
