Posted on 08/27/2019 7:17:53 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Back in 2015, we covered the Obama administration’s far-reaching Waters of the United States (WOTUS) Rule and the pushback it received at the time. States’ suits are making their way through the courts, and there is good news to report!
U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood has handed a victory to the state of Georgia and nine other states that sued the federal government (and to the rest of the nation) by declaring that the WOTUS Rule is unlawful.
Wood stated that the rule, which was intended to provide better protection of the nation’s water, violated the Clean Water Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, and she remanded it back to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers for further work.
She wrote that while the agencies have authority to interpret the phrase “waters of the United States,” that authority isn’t limitless, and therefore their decisions in doing so do not fall under what’s called Chevron deference, a matter of case law in which — for lack of a better phrase — the tie goes to the agency.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall that implementation of the rule led to a Wyoming farmer being fined $37,500 a day for constructing a stock pond on his own property.
The American Farm Bureau Federation, which earlier this year won a decision in Texas that also found the rule legally wanting, praised Wood’s decision.
“The court ruling is clear affirmation of exactly what we have been saying for the past five years,” AFBF General Counsel Ellen Steen said. “The EPA badly misread Supreme Court precedent. It encroached on the traditional powers of the states and simply ignored basic principles of the Administrative Procedure Act when it issued this unlawful regulation.”
(Excerpt) Read more at legalinsurrection.com ...
Up yours, Odumbo!
Hooray
My toilet bowl is mine again.
Once again, a Republican judge who would NOT be on the courts ruling in our favor if not for enough RINOs winning November elections to give Republicans a MAJORITY in the Senate.
YES! :)
Still not tired of the winning.
It may be yours, but you still have to flush twice.
I believe I read that the law also included rain collected in cisterns as “waters of the United States.”
That Wyoming farmer’s fine rose to $20 million. The good news is that he settled with the EPA and got to keep his land and his money because it was decided that a stock pond was exempt. He also agreed to plant willows around one part of the pond and limit his livestock’s access to another.
Ridiculous. His farm is only eight acres, so how big could this pond have been?
and put the seat down.
Huge win! That was a POS rule.
Obama was never eligible to be President.
He is not a natural born citizen.
I wonder, does it depend on the state? Here, in California, these toilets don't flush crap. Twice is the rule. My wife tried to get a custom toilet while we remodeled her mom's house, and ran into difficulty trying to buy a toilet approved for California rules. Low-flow rules and all that. At my daughter's home in Iowa, I'm amazed at the powerful flow of her toilets. Whoosh, anything in there is gone!
Pour buckets of water in. That’s what I do. Works GREAT
If you like your rainwater pond you can keep your rainwater pond.
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