Posted on 01/02/2012 5:27:12 PM PST by WilliamIII
PRIEST LAKE, Idaho — Chantell and Mike Sackett’s dream house, if it is ever built, will have to be situated just so in order to minimize the view of neighboring homes and maximize the vista of pristine water and conifer-covered mountain.
But their roughly half-acre lot in the Idaho Panhandle has proved to be the perfect staging ground for a conservative uproar over the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency.
This month, the Supreme Court will review the Sacketts’s four-year-long effort to build on land that the EPA says contains environmentally sensitive wetlands. A decision in the couple’s favor could curtail the EPA’s authority and mean a fundamental change in the way the agency enforces the Clean Water Act.
Even before the court takes up the case, the couple has become a favored cause for developers, corporations, utilities, libertarians and conservative members of Congress, who condemn what one ally told the court is the EPA’s “abominable bureaucratic abuse.”
It is a familiar spot for the agency, which has come under withering criticism in the political arena. Republican presidential contenders routinely denounce the EPA’s actions and regulations as “job-killers,” while GOP House members have voted to ban the agency from regulating greenhouse gases and tried to cut its enforcement budget.
The Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents the Sacketts, features their saga on its Web site under the headline “Taking a Bully to the Supreme Court.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sacketts? Hmmm, I wonder if they are aquainted with Louie La’mour’s westerns, may he RIP?
We can get rid of the EPA but that’s not going to help us one bit. They will just get rolled into Interior or some other agency.
What needs to be done is change the Endangered Species, Clean Water, Clean Air, and other enviro legislation to reflect accurate science and a fair balance of business and enviro interests and focus on conservation.
I hope they don’t look at my new wetland back yard! This year we got 65 inches of rain compared to and average of around 37 inches.
If the EPA thinks there are wetlands on a property, they need to decide. No maybees.
Anway, like unions, the EPA is now part of the problem.
I hope they don’t look at my new wetland back yard! This year we got 65 inches of rain compared to and average of around 37 inches.
If the EPA thinks there are wetlands on a property, they need to decide. No maybees.
Anway, like unions, the EPA is now part of the problem.
Here’s looking for the demise of the entire EPA, both act and agency, and a Mexican privatized prison for the employees.
These Federal dictators think they can spit in the dirt and declare it a protected wetland. They have no standard other than pandering to any individual or group opposed to development on any particular piece of land.
Ex Post Facto means nothing to them and they make it up as they go along.
“Double-Secret Probation” is the standard for this administration.
In New Jersey we have major, major problems with flooding that is caused by overdevelopment and filling in of wetlands.
Local corruption --i.e. land developers in bed with local pols and planning boards-- is what got us into this terrible situation. Land that should never have been developed, because of the threat development posed to existing neighborhoods, got paved over and covered with McMansionvilles and strip malls.
Sometimes the only weapon we have against this (I say "we" because I am anti-corruption local official) is the EPA or the state DEP.
I don't claim to know exactly what is going on in this case in Idaho, but I remember from previous articles that this couple illegally filled in the lot. We see that kind of behavior in NJ all the time. I am not sympathetic.
What if you had a existing house next door, that all of a sudden began to flood because of this couple's flouting the rules?
Have you seen a photograph of the property in question?
It is a lot that is indistinguishable from the lots on all sides of it. If you had, you would be sympathetic.
And you would be happy to just sit by and bide your time, watch your house flood, see all your belongings destroyed, and then pay a liar lawyer to take ten years of your life and your life's savings while you sue the developer?
You mean a photo of the lot before or after they filled it in?
We need to overturn Wickard v Filburn, and stop Congress from creating bureaucracies to regulate anything they can "find" to have a "substantial effect on interstate commerce". Read Clarence Thomas' writing wrt the Commerce Clause. He gets it.
If we need the federal government to regulate things they weren't granted the power to regulate by the original intent of the Constitution, we can do that by amendment - that's what it's there for. What we have now is an open-ended grant of power with no discernible limits, and they have proven over and over again that they cannot be trusted to exercise that power within the bounds of common sense or common decency.
So far, all the lower courts that have reviewed the claim agree with the government that the agency’s compliance orders are not subject to judicial review. The agency’s orders are not final, the courts have agreed; it must prove a violation of the Clean Water Act to a judge, and it is up to the courts to levy fines.
Not going to disagree with you there.
If we're talking in theory and the couple's illegal filling of their property caused continual flooding of yours, you would have on ongoing problem. Each time there was enough rain you would suffer flooding and a have another cause of action. Awarding monetary damages each time isn't what a civil court would do.
One alternative to treat it like a taking of your land - forcing the couple who illegally filled in their land to buy yours because they've rendered it unfit for its purpose due to the repeated flooding. But that's not fair. You were there first and obeyed the rules. Why should they have the right to break the law and force you to either endure repeated flooding or move?
The other and appropriate alternative is to cause them to remedy the situation that's causing the repeated flooding. Remove the illegal fill. Restore their property to the point that it's not causing flooding on the property of another.
Because repeated civil suits is something the system will tolerate, and you shouldn't have to sue each time there's a flood. And allowing the party that caused the flooding situation to remedy it by buying out the flooding land isn't the just remedy.
Making them return their land to the condition it was in before they took their illegal acts, and before they caused repeated floods on adjoining land, is the appropriate remedy.
Torts of that kind are long and well established. You cannot harm your neighbor’s property. The EPA is redundant when you have a functioning justice system.
If Wickard is undone then we don’t need much more. We hold the Congress for 40 years and let the courts do the rest.
That's the linchpin. Pull that, and the wheels fall off the regulatory bandwagon.
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