Supreme Court Allows Idaho Couple to Challenge EPA on Wetlands Ruling
21st March 2012
The Sacketts wanted to build a home on a 0.63-acre lot near pristine Priest Lake in the Idaho panhandle that they bought for $23,000. But after three days of bringing in fill dirt and preparing for construction in 2007, officials from the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ordered the activity stopped and said they suspected the land contained wetlands.
Months later, the agency sent the Sacketts a “compliance order” that said the land must be restored as a wetlands before the couple could apply for a building permit. The government acknowledged that fines for failure to comply with the orders could be as much as $75,000 a day.
Your tax dollars at work.
The question for the justices was whether the couple had the right at that point to appear before a judge and contest the agency’s contention that their land contained wetlands subject to the Clean Water Act.
The agency didn’t even want to allow them access to a court to challenge the order. That’s the EPA all over.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined in the criticism in a concurring opinion, saying the position taken by the federal government in the case “would have put the property rights of ordinary Americans entirely at the mercy of Environmental Protection Agency employees.”
As if they aren’t already.