You guys need to take a step back and take a breath. I'm not going to pretend to know everything behind this, but there's a LOT more than what's stated in just the short article.
99.9% chance this individual is involved in a government program and to be facing a fine that large, they are a pretty big operation. These fines go back to any benefits they have received on all of their land back to the year the conversion happened.
They way this will play out is they'll be given a chance to either buy wetland credits (no different than a Walmart being placed on a swamp, they buy wetland credits somewhere else and drain the swamp they want to build on) or more than likely they will be given a chance to break whatever tile they installed and essentially go from there.
Moral of the story, if you want to participate in a government program than you have to follow the rules.
