Free Republic

No one told Jack LaPant that he could be in violation of the Clean Water Act for farming his own land. That’s mostly because the federal law includes a clear exemption for “normal” farming activities. But it’s also because the government officials LaPant consulted didn’t view overturned dirt that has been tilled and plowed as pollution. In 2016, the Army Corps of Engineers, which administers the Clean Water Act with the Environmental Protection Agency, began legal action against LaPant for plowing he did in 2011 to plant wheat on a ranch property he owned in Northern California. But in March...

Earlier this month a federal court in California ruled that a farmer plowing his land without a permit from the federal government is breaking the law. In 2013, the Army Corps of Engineers, without any notice or due process, ordered the owners of Duarte Nursery to cease use of their land for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act (CWA). The violation: plowing. The California court agreed with the federal government’s action, despite the fact the CWA specifically exempts normal agricultural activities like plowing from regulation. This overreaching assertion of federal power is not an isolated incident. For decades, the EPA...

Leaders in a St. Louis suburb are urgently calling on top Obama administration officials to quickly clean up a landfill with radioactive waste that they believe could catch fire. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been working for 25 years on the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Mo., which has housed barium sulfate waste from the Manhattan Project since the 1970s. The EPA is still studying the site and considering a wide range of actions to contain the radioactive material under its Superfund program for cleaning severe environmental contamination. But with an underground, smoldering fire in an adjacent landfill, residents...

NEW ORLEANS — Nearly 10 years on, one might assume that the case of Hurricane Katrina is closed. That the catastrophic flooding of this city was caused not merely by a powerful storm but primarily by fatal engineering flaws in the city’s flood protection system has been proved by experts, acknowledged by the United States Army Corps of Engineers and underscored by residents here to anyone who might suggest otherwise. But the efforts to establish responsibility with ever more precision — to ascertain just how many of those flaws were due to engineering, politics or money — have not stopped....

Despite bombs, boats and rubber bullets, dozens of sea lions are continuing to kill salmon near the Bonneville Dam. This month, biologists are trying one last time to scare off the problem sea lions, but if that doesn't work, they may try to kill them. Sea lions could kill as much as 10 percent of this spring's salmon run and biologists say if they cannot get the problem solved soon, the situation could get ugly. The problem is that the salmon are disappearing. An estimated 8,000 salmon will be lost this spring at Bonneville Dam. "The difficult part about it...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15, 2005 – The Army Corps of Engineers continues working with New Orleans' authorities to repair levees damaged by Hurricane Katrina and to pump out remaining floodwater in the city, the corps' senior official said today. The Army's military and civilian engineers are in New Orleans as part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to the disaster, said Army Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commanding general of the Corps of Engineers, told reporters at the Pentagon. Besides fixing damaged levees and ensuring that the Mississippi River is navigable, the engineers also are providing emergency electric power, as well...