"Harry K" wrote in message
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On Mar 22, 4:34 pm, "Robert Green" wrote:
"Oren" wrote in message

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On Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:11:41 -0500, Hell Toupee
The SC ruled that property owners have the right to contest the EPA's
ruling that their property falls under the Clean Water Act. They now
get to have their day in court. That's all this ruling gave them.

Right. Now people are no longer at the mercy of the EPA. They can
challenge in court; instead of having the EPA have the final word.

If you've ever been involved in a lawsuit with a Federal agency, you might
reconsider the words "no longer at the mercy." Maybe "not completely SOL,
but still pretty close" applies. The EPA has a virtually endless legal and
investigatory staff. They can, in legal parlance, "turn on the taps" so
that the legal fees a litigant faces might in many cases outweigh the cost
of the property in question. They can paper a citizen to death with
motions
and look into all the deep, dark corners of their lives. SCOTUS just
closed
a loophole, and not very tightly. A private citizen facing the array of
resources the Feds can bring to bear in various legal actions is still in
a
very, very shi++ty place.

--
Bobby G.

But at least now they _can_ have their day in court, before it was "I
sadd it ws wet" that ends it.

Agreed. But the case was merely a correction to a badly written law (hence
the unanimity - they have no qualms about bashing Congress - they are
slightly more reluctant to overrule their predecessors). Some people were
hoping for a much more powerful ruling, as in the Feds have no inherent
right to protect wetlands or whatever they *decide* is a wetland on a
Constitutional basis.

With the hideously crowded court dockets the recession has created, I really
don't see much change. The horrendous fines reporters are writing about
almost always accrue on paper only. Judges routinely stop the fine clock
from the day a suit is filed unless the ligitant does something to really
**** them off. From what I've read, the long times to trial are a strategy
aimed at encouraging abatement before litigation.

Anyone familiar with disaster caused by hog waste pens (they call them
lagoons) being overrun in North Carolina's hurricane Floyd knows that the
EPA, as pesky as it might seem, actually does good work. At the very least
they serve as an "institutional memory" for disasters like the NC hog lagoon
releases. Agricultural stormwater discharges and irrigation return flows
were specifically exempted from permit requirements of the Clean Water Act
and now those sorts of discharges represent some of the worst and costliest
water pollution events in the nation. That was rather a predictable
outcome.

Pigs generate an enormous amount of manure that sits around in lagoons,
stinking to high heaven but eventually decomposing. North Carolina faced
enormous water cleanup costs after Floyd from all the pig crap that got into
the drinking water when the lagoons overflowed with storm water. Walled
enclosures and even better lagoon siting rules could have and should have
prevented that disaster. But the EPA can't regulate those sorts of
situations, to the best of my knowledge, although they're moving in that
direction now that it's clear how much a cleanup of such a disaster costs.
Now that states are going broke they don't want to get stuck with costs of
such cleanups when the proper solution resides with the hog farmers.

--
Bobby G.