User blog comment:Tiredman2/Mass Effect Plot Holes and Contradictions/@comment-1900300-20120821064837/@comment-5379655-20120822011425

Several actually, there is a planet in the Ismar Frontier called Volturno that is in the middle of an ice age and the Elcor have developed helium-3 facilities on the nearby gas giant to attract enough interest in the system to convince the council to terraform it. There's also a planet somewhere in Batarian space that the hegemony is considering crashing an ice comet into in order to introduce water to the planet. I forget the name of that one, but I can look it up for you if you want. I can also provide more examples if that's not enough. In addition to that, it is never stated why Bekenstein is free of resources. It is therefore highly probable that it was or still is resource rich, just that all of the easy to reach deposits have already been mined out and so there is nothing for the Normandy to collect through scanning. I know this because the world is clearly stated as being the first off-Earth manufacturing center and you need resources for manufacturing. It wouldn't make any sense for them to establish a manufacturing colony on a planet with no resources due to the fact that it would be incredibly expensive to ship all of the resources there just for the assembly process. Therefore, it must have resources and you just can't take any. As for the importance of it being a garden planet, even a resource poor garden planet is incredibly valuable as living space, since there are so few planets in the galaxy that can viably support life. In fact, livable planets are so valuable that even planets on the fringe of being able to support life are colonized. This is evident in the Asari planet in ME3 that was an ice world that few new colonists dared to stay on due to it's extreme weather. I can look up the name of that planet as well if you like. Therefore, it makes no sense that the planet would go undeveloped for so long and I highly doubt that council would give such prime real estate so close to the citadel to a species that is viewed as reckless and aggressive, as well as having been introduced to the galactic community only one year prior. If you need me to elaborate more I will.