Meet the West’s Multiple Land Use Sheriffs [Hugh Hewitt on the Klamath Basin Crisis]

Thursday, September 06, 2001

Meet the West’s Multiple Land Use Sheriffs

By: Hugh Hewitt, TCS Corespondant

California and its neighbors to the north are closing in on the status of ward of the federal government. With every new listing of a species as endangered, and with every administrative ruling of the Army Corps of Engineers as to what is a "jurisdictional water" of the United States, the federal overlay on the West Coast grows larger and thicker. Other agencies have joined the assault on state sovereignty, including the Environmental Protection Agency. Private litigants have figured out how to use the federal courts to add their names to the unelected authorities wielding enormous power over the lands and people of the West.

Some West Coast folk applaud these developments. The city-dwellers are, in large numbers, believers in the danger of "sprawl" and boosters of "open space." Environmental activists long ago recognized the limits to influence with elected officials who must, ultimately, answer to voters. These activists would much rather petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to designate "critical habitat" for the San Bernadino Kangaroo Rat or the Quino Checkerspot Butterfly than seek even simple majorities in Sacramento. The zero-growth movement requires like-minded allies within federal bureaucracies. The Clinton-Gore years was the golden age of bureaucratic co-option. At every level, from GS-2 to SES level 6, the feds are full to the brim with ideologues whose claim to expertise is quite simply laughable.

Bureaucratic power does not require expertise because it comes without accountability. The West is full of stories -- real, live dramas -- of landowners ruined because some federal official said, "Make it so." The cost of delay is so huge that landowner after landowner is shaken down without objection. Klamath Basin is just the best known of a long list of land use coups executed in the name of exotic species. Is there anyone who really believes that the sucker fish will perish from the Earth if the farmers are allowed to irrigate their fields? Some no-name biologists speculated that could happen and the bureaucratic bulldozer kicked in. We have seen it before with fairy shrimp and Delhi-sands loving flies. We will see it again. There is no will among Congress to demand change -- no upside to defending property rights.

Nor outside of the Fox News Network does any media outlet seem to care. Fox's William La Jeunesse owns the beat and has scooped all the other networks time and time again on these stories. If he doesn't win an Emmy it will be because of environmentalist criticism of the stories selection but not of the accuracy of the accounts. The other nets just aren't interested, even when the news value of, say, the loss of firefighters' lives to species concerns is obvious.

Here's a big "for example" of an unreported story involving bureaucratic abuse. Under the Clean Water Act the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is supposed to decide when applicants are given permission to work in or around the "navigable waters" of the United States. Set aside the fact that this definition has grown to absurd proportions or that the agency is resisting the clear command of the U.S. Supreme Court that it stop and reverse this appetite for power.

The Corps eventually does get around to issuing some permits, and evidently a different branch of the feds thinks it does so too often. The EPA has a limited authority to intervene in these permit decisions. If the EPA sees a permit on its way to being issued that involves "an aquatic resource of national importance," it may object and so inform the Corps, causing lengthy delays in the permitting process. Not surprisingly, the EPA has abused this authority, and routinely labels even a few hundred feet of dry streambed an "aquatic resource of national importance." The EPA staff then parlays the delay it triggers into more concessions from the applicant. Occasionally, the Corps will stand up for the law and reject an EPA demand for more mitigation. The local EPA staff simply waits until the matter threatens to end up back in D.C. only to fold at the last minute. No harm in trying, right?

Except that it is an abuse of power by individuals unqualified to wield such authority. More and more applicants are finding that bureaucrats are dropping even the pretense of environmental concern. It’s just about the power.

The Bush Administration will find it hard to restore a respect for the rule of law at the lower levels of these agencies. It will need to demand wholesale transfers in order to break up existing rings of regulatory zealots. But there is one thing it can do, and should do. Now. Tomorrow.

Many senior jobs are empty within the agencies. The head job of the powerful Region 9 office of the EPA is and has been vacant for months. Other senior positions can be filled at the other key agencies. The Bush folks have followed a top-down model which makes sense when lower levels of an organization will take cues and guidance from senior management headquartered far away. It makes no sense when the lower levels are daily issuing rulings that, if they were publicized, would be repudiated from the top.

White House personnel needs to get off the dime and begin to staff the senior level of the field bureaucracies. Wise appointments could quickly tame the worst abuses of law and regulation and at the same time could begin the effort to reclaim some key constituencies in the West. The political geography does not favor the President out here. But it is a political dynamic that only gets worse when the Administration does not bother to fix what it could even as it plans longer term relief where its hands are presently tied.

Hugh Hewitt is a syndicated radio talk show host and environmental lawyer. He can be reached at www.hughhewitt.com.

Read top then posting #32, and #60 then scroll to #111 to see the four firefighters who perished.

Thanks for the info, Spunky! That is a GREAT thread!

#32 - TIMELINE
and
#60 -

quote. "Within a Riperian habitat conservation area,( that is a stream,) AN EXEMPTION MUST BE GRANTED BY A RESOURCE ADVISOR, (thats a biologist,) with the advoidence of adverse effects to listed species as a primary goal."

Hannity said: "So they needed the approval, so my point is correct.
then scroll to
#111 to see the four firefighters who perished:

The four fighterfighters had names and faces. Click on the names for a larger photo and a bio.


Tom Craven, 30	Jessica Johnson, 19	Devin Weaver,21	Karen Fitzpatrick, 18

Along with your idea(s); how about we get a handle on these renegade, activist Federal Judges who've long ago stopped interpretting law in lieu of writing it!!
These clowns are infuriating to watch as they decimate our nation's law(s) while they turn those laws into assinine instruments of Leftist-inspired insanity.

Did you hear USC professor John Eastman (and the better half of Hugh Hewitt's Friday morning "Smart Guys" segment) on this morning's show?

Hugh asked him what the U.S. Supreme Court might do about a case decided by the ULTRA-left Ninth Circuit, and he said that if they take it, they have a special [ALT-9] macro to automatically insert at the end of any opinion involving a case from the Ninth Circuit the following conclusion: "The opinion of the Ninth Circuit is reversed; the decision of the Court is unanimous." - since those black-robed Left Coast bozos are reversed so often by the REAL Supremes.
(Thank God for Chief Justice-to-be Scalia.)

---well, time for mr. quiet work behind the scenes shrubya to do his job then, and not nominate a buncha norton clones to these positions. It's his ball, see who he passes it to. He has a chance every day he wakes up to start to show he's got some brains and nads, so far it's sorta on the wimpy side, way too concerned over being re elected, same as other pols. Way too concerned with creating the northern hemisphere new nation of meximerica with his buddy fox. He's got the juice now to MAKE things happen, every day he waits it means "nothing is happening". Or even worse, what is happening is really what he wants to happen. the big lie. One or the other george, pick something to stand for, or be labeled just another mediocre has been politician. Make you mark, do good, be smart, or constantly worry about so many things that nothing happens but the maintainence of the status quo of institutionalized theft and misery by the "poll". The inertia of the dee cee pork and graft. Rule by bribery and influence. He can show that it's a different game if he chooses to. He could do it tomorrow, heck, he could do it tonight. he could just decide to "do it" and kik booty and help to remake the US back to what it's supposed to be. Can you imagine having that position and sitting on your hands? What a sheer utter WASTE that would be! What's he waiting for, an invite? maybe we should start a campaign with a RSVP invitation sent directly to him "You are cordial invited to the rebirth of the Constitutional Representative Republic. Casual attire, we expect this to be a working party, first on the agenda is to reinstall the headgate water mechanism in Klamath, then we have this other list here, lotta roads to re open, lot of people who need to get back to work, too....."

The big picture short term though is these agencies need to be scrapped, completely, the employees and appointees fired, and then the needs that first required these agencies to be re debated and rebuilt to what they were supposed to be. How to do that is open for debate, but the need is apparent. I'm frankly just plain tired of 8 million people being on the tax payers pay roll at huge expense, destroying peoples lives, and receiving pensions and credit cards and vacations. Government in general is just out of control huge, a lumbering mostly incompetent monstrosity, a golem of gluttony, a goliath of greed. Hands fulla gimme and a mouth fulla *&*^%^k you civvie! Do what we say or be killed! I honestly don't see how people in those positions can cash their checks and not be full of shame, just plain old vanilla old fashioned shame. Did ja see that article today, half a MILLION dollars to house those fed agents at the headgates at the motel? Like WHAT FOR? I hope the townspeople keep up the shunning and they include local quisling businesses as well. Collaborators is more like it.

You can't and shouldn't negotiate with terrorists. Waste of time. Opens you up to the stockholm syndrome, too, which is a *true occurence* that effects victims sometimes. They wind up making excuses for the terrorists who are victimising them. "Oh, the terrorist is just doing his job", and etc. "mustn't upset the terrorist" "the terroists told us the proper way to think and act and they are so smart and kind, let's just do what they say".

No easy answers here other than realise that the land, the water, the money, the born-with freedoms up and down the list- all hijacked by a consortium of big government, big corporations and big non governmental organizations. They are terrorists in suits. They don't necessarily look like osama bin laden, but there's really no difference. Some have badges, some have briefcases, some sit in front of benches, but the results are "terrorism" so that makes them "terrorists". Until enough people realise that these terrorists will continue their outrages. Every day it seems there's a new one, not only out west, all over, for years now, usually it's a lone family, or a very small area, never gets any press or media coverage, people destroyed, and partly destroyed by realising they are totally alone, abandoned by their neighbors and attacked by the Big 3 terrorist cartel. No redress, no hope, they bleed you to death, or stomp you flat, that's the two choices of legal suicide they give you once a royal edict is spewed.

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