You cannot compare post colonial America with the post industrial world of today. Today it is only justifiable to regulate the drainage of private ditches into the local creek because it is necessary to regulate the ability of corporate entities to set entire rivers on fire with their industrial waste. It is difficult to "draw the line" in reasonable places when the polluters have infinite resources to hire lawyers and bribe legislators to exploit every conceivable exception and loophole.

Nobody likes regulation. And no one denies it is often stupid, pointless, outdated, or (yes) insufficient. But it is necessary. It is essential.

Incidentally, it is my understanding Ben Franklin was an enviromentalist.

In 1739, Franklin teamed up with fellow neighbors to petition the Philadelphia Assembly to put a stop to the tanneries waste dumping activities. His key argument was the tanneries were violating “public rights” by causing property devaluation, bad odor and risk of disease within the commercial districts of Philadelphia.

Though the tanneries attempted to counter by citing their personal right to conduct business as they saw fit, Franklin’s “public trust” argument won the cause before the assembly.

http://specenviro.blogspot.com/2008/04/benjamin-franklin-revolutionary-or.html

Even then, private enterprise was constantly attempting to play the "freedom card" so they could pollute with impunity and get their own way at everyone elses expense. "...their personal right to conduct business as they saw fit". What utter balls these people have.

We no longer live in scattered agricultural settlements on the sparsely populated edge of an empty continent. We are now a global civilization where the "private" actions of companies and countries can have national, even global impacts, and not just environmental ones. Your insistence on 18th century examples is, at best, naive. At worst, it is deliberately misleading.