Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 01/09/2012 10:26:29 AM PST by WilliamIII
WASHINGTON — Several Supreme Court justices are criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency for heavy-handed enforcement of rules affecting homeowners.
The justices were considering whether to let a North Idaho couple challenge an EPA order identifying their land as “protected wetlands.” Mike and Chantell Sackett of Priest Lake wanted to build their house on the land. But the EPA says the Sacketts can’t challenge the order to restore the land to wetlands or face thousands of dollars in fines.
Justice Samuel Alito called EPA’s actions “outrageous.” Justice Antonin Scalia noted the “high-handedness of the agency” in dealing with private property. Chief Justice John Roberts said that the EPA’s contention that the Sacketts’ land is wetlands, something the couple disagrees with, would never be put to a test under current procedure.
The Sacketts were filling in a lot near Priest Lake in 2007 to construct a house when EPA officials shut down the project, saying the couple had filled in wetlands without getting a permit.
(Excerpt) Read more at spokesman.com ...
It would be nice to see SCOTUS take the case, rule against the EPA and hold the person who chose to make the decision personally responsible for any expenses this couple became saddled with in order to protect their property.
But, what does the Wise Latina from the Bronx think?
well at least there is one sane member of the SCOTUS.. Is there 4 more?
Who pays this couples legal fees if they win?
Ping.
Then the SCOTUS should bitch-slap EPA back to the stone age.
“But, what does the Wise Latina from the Bronx think?”
Call me Karnac but I’m going to go with a thumbs down from the wise Latina to the homeowners on this one.
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The list, Ping
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I'm thinking this case is so egregious, she won't want to stick her fat ***, er, neck out on this one.
The EPA is an anti american fascist organization that needs to be completely defunded and dismantled with all employees blacklisted and deported after serving 10 to 20 years in a federal penitentiary at hard labor.
>> But, what does the Wise Latina from the Bronx think?
She thinks Lisa Jackson is smokin’ hot.
Don’t mess with the Sacketts. Just ask the Higgins!
My parents property in Washington state was starting to get “wetlands-like” in a one acre area. They quietly had it filled in.
These are the same parents that, when they had a home available for rent in the 1960’s told me that if someone called who sounded black, I was to say it was already rented. I was in 6th grade at the time and “aware enough toask them why. They said, and I paraphrase: If we get deadbeat white tenants, we can kick them out, but if we get deadbeat black tenants we’re stuck with them.
It is funny how the government controls the activity of its citizens in so many “unintended consequences” sort of ways.
A weak defense of EPA Analysis
With a federal government lawyer conceding almost every criticism leveled at the way the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency compels landowners to avoid polluting the nation’s waterways, the Supreme Court on Monday seemed well on its way toward finding some way to curb that agency’s enforcement powers. Their task was made easier as Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Malcolm L. Stewart stopped just short of saying that EPA was just as heavy-handed as its adversaries — and several of the Justices — were saying.
Perhaps the most telling example: when several of the Justices expressed alarm that a homeowner targeted by EPA’s efforts might face a penalty of as much as $37,500 each day of alleged violation, Stewart made it clear that the fine actually might be doubled, to $75,000 a day, although he tried to recover by saying that was only “theoretical,” and that he did not think that EPA had ever taken that step.
The argument in Sackett, et al., v. EPA (docket 10-1062) did not appear to portend a slam-dunk loss for EPA during the first half of Monday’s argument, when the lawyer for an Idaho couple faced quite rigorous questioning about whether the couple had exercised options that might have been open to them to avert the dire consequences of EPA enforcement. But the tenor of the session changed abruptly as soon as the line of argument chosen by EPA’s lawyer, Stewart, unfolded.
It all came to something of an explosive verbal climax when Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., suggested that the scheme that Stewart had outlined would be considered by the ordinary homeowner as something that “can’t happen in the United States.” Alito ticked off the situation: the homeowner planned to build a house on a lot, the lot was found to have “a little drainage problem,” the homeowner was soon told by EPA that “you have wetlands,” that steps had to be taken to alleviate the environmental threat, that “you have to let us on your premises,” that every day “you face $75,000 in penalties,’ that the homeowner cannot go to court to make a challenge, and that, if there is a court case, it won’t occur “until we choose.”
Stewart did not dispute the recitation even in that accusatory fashion, and could only answer that such an order from EPA would not have been “the first communication” from EPA to the homeowner, since the agency would try earlier to alert property owners of their obligations under the law.
(NOTE TO READERS: This post will be expanded following the afternoon argument.)
I think this is an extraordinary notice by the Justices to the EPA that they better revise their actions immediately since SCOTUS is very clear with this, that if the case comes to the Court later the EPA won't like the outcome. 'With prejudice' ...
Especially a Clinch Mountain Sackett.
{” Then the SCOTUS should bitch-slap EPA back to the stone age “
This is essentially the same SCOTUS (4 libs, 4 conservatives, and Kennedy) that agreed to allow the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide (necessary for all life on the plantet) as a pollutant...
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