Posted on 04/29/2011 5:41:57 PM PDT by Kaslin
Regulation: While we were distracted by the president's birth certificate show-and-tell, his EPA releases its guidelines for expanding federal power under the Clean Water Act. America's economy and freedom are at stake.
President Obama's long-form birth certificate wasn't the only thing released last Wednesday, but it was probably the least important. The Environmental Protection Agency also released its guidelines for expanding federal power over the nation's waterways, ponds and puddles.
These guidelines will take effect after a 60-day comment period and will serve as a reference for environmental agencies in determining their jurisdiction over a particular body of water, large or small. They will eventually morph into binding regulations as damaging to our economy and freedom as the EPA regulation of carbon dioxide emissions.
The 1972 Clean Water Act was originally intended to protect the "navigable waters of the United States" — you know, the kind boats travel down. It was broadly and quickly interpreted to any pool of water in America capable of supporting a bathtub-variety boat.
The word "navigable" was forgotten and ignored, and the act's scope expanded to the point that water that collected after a rainstorm was considered a "wetland" worthy of environmental protection.
A 2006 U.S. Supreme Court case from Michigan produced five different opinions and no clear definition of which waterways were covered. This essentially left the government with a clean slate on which to write its own interpretation — just about everything.
House Agricultural Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., says the expanded EPA guidelines would let the government "regulate essentially any body of water, such as a farm pond or even a ditch." A bipartisan group of 170 congressmen wrote a letter to the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers urging them not to issue the expanded guidelines.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
The standard they sought in law was whether or not a sawed plank could float in it.
Sometimes they won ~ and those waterways (hah!) are still federally regulated waters if somebody ever wants to regulate them.
The base legislation here does need to be rescinded though. It's as much a piece of garbage as the navigability standards of the early 1800s.
Pretty soon it will be like Olde England, where you couldn’t fish the kings pond.
He is an evil bastard.
An associate bought a house on high ground miles from any river, with a drainage ditch in the back yard that is normally dry. He started to inquire about mitigating the erosion and found that, get this, the Army Corps of Engineers claims regulatory authority over this ditch. He also found that it will cost north of $10,000 to perform the required engineering study about his proposed repairs. And he was warned that the Corps would probably object to his repairing the ditch. Whose interest is being protected by such absurd tyranny? It appear that the only “environment” that is protected is the bureaucratic one.
Just defund the damn EPA. I hate the EPA!
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He is an evil bastard.
He certainly is. I never thought I would loathe anyone like I do that evil bastard.
He’s an enabler of the anti-Christ.
That’s been my concern with the eligibility issue all along.
When they want to show you something, never lose sight of the other hand.
I believe this is a United Nations project actually.
Put both his hands in cuffs...
Ever since the election, I’ve been hearing “defund this, defund that.” The fact of the matter is that you can’t defund a damned thing without Senate control. We currently don’t havee it.
Implying the American public can handle only one issue at a time, thus the premise that asking about "A" means "B" cannot be handled simultaneously.
Of course it is not true.
It was a distraction to Obama however, who had to do important things like tape an Oprah show.
sure ya can...but it takes iron balls, which the house aint got...
True.
But that doesn't change the necessity.
We just need to keep looking ahead with these little "projects" in mind and the goal of a willing House, Senate, and WH on our charts.
bump
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