Posted on 02/06/2015 7:20:02 AM PST by reaganaut1
When Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, it was exercising its power to regulate interstate commerce by prohibiting discharges into the nation’s “navigable waters.” If a body of water could be used to transport goods from one state to another, it was covered by the Act.
Like so many other statutes enacted over the last 80 years – that is, since the advent of the administrative state under FDR – the Clean Water Act (CWA) depends on bureaucratic interpretation and enforcement.
The two entities involved with the CWA are the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers. Both have tried to expand the scope of their regulatory power by issuing rules that defined “navigable waters” so broadly that they have (or at least claim to have) authority over many bodies of water that couldn’t possibly be used to transport so much as a paper clip between states.
Twice, the Supreme Court has slapped down rules that amounted to a rewriting of the law to suit the zealous regulators.
First, in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. Army Corps of Engineers (2001), the Court ruled that the Army Corps had no authority to assert control over isolated bodies of water – in that particular instance, an abandoned sand and gravel pit.
You might think that the lesson would have sunk in, but in 2006 the Court had to deal again with another creative interpretation of the CWA in Rapanos v. United States. The EPA had asserted that it could prevent a landowner from doing anything with a wetland that was near a ditch that eventually drained into navigable water. The Court again ruled that the agency had overstepped its bounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
The EPA thinks that the water coming off your roof during & after a rain event is under their control. In Oregon, they fined a man for using barrels under his downspouts to contain roof runoff & then using the water in a controlled manner for his garden.
The EPA is completely out of control.
Au Contraire! Mon ami!...........It is in COMPLETE CONTROL............of the Left.................
And how much money could be saved by eliminating this parasite of an agency?
The man in question had large reservoirs on his property. He was issued permits by the state of Oregon. They later decided it violated their 1925 law and told him to drain them. He refused and was sentenced to 30 days. I think he’s right because they allowed it and he spent considerable time and expense to do it. However, the EPA had and rain barrels had nothing to do with it.
bump for later read
Sure it wasn’t a troll?
Well said.
I was just thinking about this last night. Control the water and you control everything and everyone. You can’t control the weather, but you sure can dam everything up. The EPA is like a president overdoing executive orders. Get rid of it. Period.
I want to know what the least amount of bureaucracy America needs and I am not necessarily pro-big business because power corrupts and they all need oversight.
I agree with you. The EPA is a thoroughly corrupt organization run by anti-American eco-terrorists. It outlived its usefulness more than 30 years ago.
“Some people, even some FReepers, just can’t see the forest for the trees! They actually think that the EPA is still helping America. I believe that if the EPA does ANYTHING that actually helps America, it is simply a by-product, NOT the desired end result. “
Dude you will find that there are Freepers on here that believe all kinds of non conservative, non personal freedom stuff. LOL!
Tens of billions of dollars a year in direct tax dollar savings.
Incalculable dollars in indirect benefits to industry, business, and the overall economy.
Money quote:
“With the constant expansion of the regulatory state since the 1930s, Americans have gotten used to having to obey (although sometimes battle) rules decreed by those bureaucrats. It is a bad habit that we should break, argues Columbia Law School professor Philip Hamburger in his powerful book Is Administrative Law Unlawful?
“His unequivocal answer is that it is unlawful.”
The problem with the argument’s legal reasoning is that such cases of “administrative laws” are simply a result of (1) Congress validly delegating powers of implementation to administrators and (2) failing to write any system of redress into those powers. The intent of Congress was a radical imposition of burdensome environmental laws; they just did it such a way that they could duck responsibility when their constituents got angry.
The key is to realize WHY Congress limited the Clean Water Act to navigable waterways: it was how Congress claimed the authority to pass such legislation in the first place. By applying it to “navigable waterways,” they are invoking the Commerce clause. The outrage is that states’ attorney generals aren’t defending state territory from federal domination, and leaving these poor farmers to fend for themselves.
At the rate they are going, if you break out in a heavy sweat on a hot and muggy day, you will need a federal permit and a remediation plan, if they don't just let you off with a fine.
The left thinks this is just peachy. After all, the EPA already claims jurisdiction over the carbon cycle, so it can theoretically regulate anything that grows, breathes, dies and decays, or burns. If your goal is a comprehensively federally regulated society in which government can control any activity it desires, this is a blank check, which is what our would be dictators desire.
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