Posted on 02/04/2005 7:51:29 AM PST by Ellesu
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) -- Property rights advocates are asking the Supreme Court to reconsider the case of a Michigan landowner who faces prison time and millions in fines for destroying wetlands on his property.
The Pacific Legal Foundation wants the high court to use the case of John A. Rapanos to settle the nationwide debate over the extent of government power to protect privately owned wetlands - something the justices refused to do a year ago.
Rapanos, a Midland developer, has been feuding with regulators since the late 1980s.
"This case isn't about protecting wetlands. It's about federal power," Reed Hopper, an attorney with the Sacramento, Calif.-based foundation, said Thursday. "Agency bureaucrats are exploiting an ambiguity in the law to run roughshod over property owners."
Property rights advocates contend the law, the 1972 Clean Water Act, covers only wetlands abutting navigable waters such as rivers and lakes. Environmentalists say it grants protection to virtually all wetlands, including those with no direct surface connection to navigable waters.
"You might have wetlands that seem to be all by themselves, but hydrologically and ecologically they're important to the overall system," said Jim Murphy, an attorney with the National Wildlife Federation.
Rapanos says his parcels of land are up to 20 miles from navigable waters, to which they are linked only tenuously by drainage ditches.
He bickered with state and federal agencies for more than a decade over whether his properties were wetlands that made them unsuitable for development. He spread dirt, dug ditches and cleared vegetation, defying cease-and-desist orders.
A federal jury convicted him of illegal wetland fills in 1995. He was fined and put on probation, but the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals instructed the judge to impose a sentence of 10 to 16 months. The Supreme Court refused last year to intervene.
The judge has yet to carry out the sentencing order.
Meanwhile, the government won a civil suit against Rapanos, a verdict the Sixth Circuit upheld last July. The government is seeking $13 million in fines and fees and wants Rapanos to set aside 80 acres of his property as permanent wetlands.
The foundation's petition to the Supreme Court seeks a review of the civil case, even though the issues differ little from those in the criminal case that the justices declined to hear.
Just wondering: when did swamps become "wetlands"? When leftists control the language, the battle is already half-lost.
A wetland is simply any land that has hydric soils, hydrophytic vegetation, and the presence of water or saturated soils. Your swamps are perhaps one of the most important functioning ecosystems on the planet. The provide many services that you probably take for granted.
They do "swaps" all the time in boggy land around the Twin Cities. If these little kettle pools are valuable where they are, how can they be swapped ?
Mitigation banking has some serious flaws in that respect- it was done as a sort of compromise. The thinking is that if you must destroy this wetland, you must ensure that another will never be destroyed. It doesn't take into account local value or importance.
All soil has moisture and believe me the government will teach you about how just about everything can be considered a wetland if you simply do a survey and call them in.
No doubt, but that was all still true when they were called swamps. Clearly the introduction of the term 'wetlands' was a calculated strategy by the environmentalist left to give the areas a special cachet.
These little pools are full of seeds and other items that can't be duplicated. Either they're valuable or they're not.
I'm sure it was a strategy to introduce the term wetlands, however, I think it was needed as these oft described insignificant wetlands have been shown to be the most important. Navigable lakes and streams (while important for many reasons)do not provide us with the same ecological services. Toxins aren't removed from water in a lake, while and peat bog is rather good at removing toxins.
I say pave 'em all over. Our Wal-Mart needs more parking.
Just kidding, but I'm not about to worship wetlands.
Trust me, I do think they are very valuable but most people do not highly regard wetlands such as swamps. I suppose mitigation is better than simply destroying without creating or preserving wetlands, but yes you cannot duplicate a wetlands local importance.
I am a firm believer in individual property rights and that people who have a vested interest in their land (private ownership) will take better care of it. I do have a problem with personal actions that infringe on other individual rights. Water and air are of the utmost importance. If one choses to pollute the water or air on his private land, the impact to others can be immensly significant.
I have also done a lot of work with storm water run off and the CSO issue (combined sewer overflow). Is it fair for some communities to dump their untreated raw sewage into a stream so that other communities are affected? This causes unsafe drinking water, beach closures, fish consumption advisories, etc. etc.
I think they're important, too. This should be a case where the owner should be compensated for a government "takings."
I agree. I know in several states you can designate areas as classified wildlife and/or classified wetland areas. In addition to having to pay no property taxes you also get a stipend to manage/improve the land. I know a few people who actually profit from it. They essentially get paid to maintain thier hunting grounds.
Yeah, like being breeding grounds for mosquitoes, snakes, biting bugs, aligators, and other creatures that are giant nusiances.
Drain the swamps, log the forests, and repeal EASA.
The Supremes should take the case and issue a decision that federal gov't has no jursidiction over "wetlands."
Have fun importing potable drinking water from canada and your crops from who knows where, because it wouldn't be here anymore. I wouldn't even know how to begin to explain to you how disasterous it would be to log and drain everything. I'll gladly tolerate a few mosquitoes and biting bugs.
Very true!!! Now they are trying to utilize the CWA to protect all wetlands. What they need is new legislation so that there is some protection to ensure that individuals do not infringe upon others rights or property. Water and air by nature are problematic in this sense.
Unfortunately this isn't the case in all states. In the Peoples Republic of Wisconsin, the DNR has convinced the local tax districts that swampland should be assessed as "valuable recreational property" and as a result the land is valued way above productive farmland or other comparable properties. As a result many landowner are forced to sell land which they have had in the family and have been responsible for conserving for generations. Of course the principal buyer for this property is the state, which again takes more property off the tax roles and further escalates the raising of taxes.
In the Peoples Republic of Wisconsin the average citizen faces a greater risk of losing their freedoms and property from the DNR than from any terrorist group. IMHO
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