How you doing, hedgetrimmer. Here's a court decision from your neck of the woods that people might be interested in -
Should government ever take natural resources from private property, landowners now have ammunition to demand payment.
In this precedent-setting case, the Court of Federal Claims ruled that four California water districts must pay $16.7 million to farmers for water the government took for fish.
The case arose after the federal government withheld billions of gallons of water from California farmers and diverted it to protect winter-run chinook salmon between 1992 and 1994.
Senior Judge John Wiese ruled in December 2003 that the government’s halting of water constituted a “taking” or intrusion on the farmers’ private property rights. This latest ruling set the price for that taking. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from taking private property without fair payment.
So-called “environmentalists” are steamed because now taxpayers will get a bill every time private property is taken for their questionable pet projects. In other words, property theft now comes at a price, as it should.