Here in Georgia, we've got too many law enforcement people who are willing to look the other way while the law is being broken, too many officials reluctant to protect the public's interest and do the job they are supposed to do.

Take, for example, the state's Coastal Marshlands Protection Committee. Under a 1970 state law that was remarkably visionary for its day, the committee is supposed to protect Georgia's unique coastal marshes "to ensure that the values and functions of the coastal marshlands are not impaired and to fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as public trustees ... for succeeding generations."

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As legislators recognized almost 40 years ago, Georgia's marshes are a unique resource that would be costly, if not impossible, to reconstruct or rehabilitate once adversely affected by man-related activities. Those marshlands provide coastal Georgia a critical buffer against storms and hurricanes — one of the reasons Hurricane Katrina was so destructive is because so many coastal wetlands along the Louisiana coast have been destroyed. Salt marshlands are also the breeding grounds for shrimp, crab and many valuable species of fish.

Then there's the fact that early in the morning or right at sunset, the eerie glow of light that comes off the marshes of coastal Georgia looks like something from another, more beautiful and peaceful world. That too is irreplaceable.

The responsibility to protect Georgia's marshes has never been more important than it is today. The world is discovering our coast, and development pressures and property values in the region have begun to soar.

In 2006, a Georgia Tech study predicted that the population of coastal Georgia would increase by 50 percent by 2030, and those numbers are already taking real form in hundreds of construction sites up and down the coast.

With so much growth looming, precedents and practices that we establish now will decide whether we succeed in our duty "as public trustees ... for succeeding generations" in protecting the coast.

Unfortunately, the coastal resources committee seems unwilling to use its legal authority to do its job. In at least two important cases in recent years, the committee has claimed it had no power under the law to regulate various forms of development along the coast, even though they would seriously damage marshlands that are the property of the people of Georgia.

When Georgia environmentalist groups challenged those claims in court, judges ruled that the committee does indeed have the power it pretends not to have, and also has the responsibility to use that power.

Today, the Georgia Supreme Court is hearing a third case, this one involving a proposed 1,000-acre housing development, surrounded by marshlands, near Cumberland Island National Seashore.

Built out, the marina-based development would comprise 1,200 residences with more than 800 boats.

Once again, the marshlands committee claims it does not have jurisdiction to regulate how that development handles stormwater runoff, even though the science is perfectly clear that if left untreated, the polluted runoff of freshwater will do serious harm to surrounding salt marshes.

"The damage is not theoretical," says Gordon Rogers with the Satilla Riverwatch Alliance, one of the parties in the dispute. "But we're not trying to stop the development, we're trying to fine-tune it" by requiring steps to mitigate that damage.

No agency gets every decision right. Every bureaucracy is going to find its decisions questioned from time to time, and the courts are there so those challenges can be heard.

But agencies such as the Georgia Environmental Protection Division and the Coastal Marshlands Protection Committee — bureaucracies whose sole reason to exist is to protect the environment — ought to err on the side of being overprotective. That's their job.

• Jay Bookman is deputy editorial page editor. His column runs Monday and Thursday.