In a 21st century replay of the biblical battle between David and Goliath, Wyoming rancher Andy Johnson felled the most powerful regulatory giant in the country, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The Supreme Court sided against the federal government in another wetlands case, which could make the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to extend its control over more bodies of water on private property even harder.
The Interior Department has been quietly writing new rules and regulations under the Endangered Species Act that will hand broad new powers to federal bureaucrats.
EPA has made a lot of power grabs of dubious legality over the last year, from forcing unpopular regulations through over the objections of Congress to illegally using social media to promote Obama’s policies. So without further ado, here are the top 5 EPA attempts to grab power through quasi-legal means.
In a victory for landowners, a Cincinnati federal court blocke implementation of the EPA's controversial Waters of the United States rules. But the lawless federal agency says it intends to enforce the rule anyway despite the court injunction.
Friday was not a good day for the Obama EPA. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals expanded the stay on the Administration's land-grabbing water rule beyond the states that appealed, to the entire nation. The pushback against regulatory overreach is on!
In little more than 30 days, there have been five distinct cases that you may have missed--each, a victory for responsible land use.
Wyoming farmer Andy Johnson is the unlikely target of an EPA vendetta -- facing tens of millions of dollars in fines for daring to build a stock pond -- which the Clean Water Act specifically bars the agency from regulating -- on his property after obtaining all the required state permits. Meanwhile, the agency is facing no penalties at all for its massive spill of metals-laden water into the Animas River in New Mexico.
At the eleventh hour a federal court ordered an injunction blocking EPA's water rule. EPA was defiant. EPA bureaucrats declared that they will only halt the rule in the 13 states that requested the injunction.
EPA was created in 1970 largely in response to the Cuyahoga River in Ohio catching on fire. Forty-five years later, things have come full circle. Now, it is EPA that is polluting a vast river system in the Southwest. Should EPA be allowed to take over the rest of the "waters of the United States?"
Unless a federal judge issues a preliminary injunction, the definition of the “Waters of the U.S.” will change on August 28—giving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to regulate the water in your backyard (even the water that might be in your backyard due to a heavy rain). Even, according to West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey: “any area where agencies believe water may flow once every 100 years.” Thirty-one states, in four districts, have filed motions with the federal courts to block the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) from beginning to enforce the new “Waters [...]
Twenty-nine states have filed lawsuits against the EPA for redefining the “Waters of the United States,” or WOTUS. Should local streams, irrigation ponds, roadside ditches, and even “connective” dry lands be placed under the authority of the Clean Water Act?
What can be done to curb these abuses and usurpations, and rein in this renegade agency?
Accumulation of fraudulent EPA regulations impacts energy, economy, jobs, families and health.
It seems incredible, but a single missing word could turn a water law into a government land grab so horrendous even a U.S. Supreme Court justice warned it would “put the property rights of every American entirely at the mercy of Environmental Protection Agency employees.”