The green police attack...

[billc]

This is what drives me crazy about the government sponsored green movement. These poor people do nothing but try to build a house and the green shirts come in and cause all kinds of problems...

http://pjmedia.com/blog/support-the-sacketts-epa-suit-goes-to-supreme-court/

All of this came as quite a shock to the Sacketts because their sliver of land was located in a platted residential subdivision with water and sewer hook-ups, and was bordered by roads on the front and rear and existing homes on either side.
There wasn’t any natural running or standing water on the property. None of the surrounding homes in the community were designated as having occupied wetlands.
The Sacketts conducted regulatory due diligence before they bought the property. Even the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had been consulted. After buying the property, they applied for and received all of the pertinent local permits to build a residential dwelling as local zoning ordinances permit.
The EPA compliance order ended all of their hard work and saddled them with exorbitant financial costs. They faced monstrous-level fines — currently set at $37,500 for each day they failed to comply with the order.
Today, the Sacketts owe more than $40 million in fines.

This could be any one of us. The EPA needs more adult supervision...

Knowing there was an obvious mistake, the Sacketts attempted to administratively resolve the matter. They requested from the EPA documentation that would identify the property as wetlands. The federal government’s online wetlands inventory did not list their property, so the Sacketts asked the EPA to set aside its compliance order.
The EPA refused, claiming the Sacketts had no standing to question the agency’s decision.
The Sacketts faced a dilemma. It would have cost more to comply with the EPA order than the original purchase price of the property. So, they offered to surrender the property to the agency. The EPA refused and insisted the couple comply with the order.
This forced the Sacketts to file a lawsuit. They wanted their day in court to prove their property was not wetlands. The Fifth Amendment’s Due Process clause offers them this very protection: “No person shall be … deprived life, liberty or property, without due process of law.”
They did not get their day in court.
A U.S. District Court judge ruled against the Idaho couple in August 2008 and granted the EPA’s request to dismiss the couple’s lawsuit and ordered a judgment in favor of the agency.
The agency had argued that affected parties did not have the right to judicial review of the agency’s orders, as this would “disserve” the interest of the government. The Sacketts, the EPA argued, must first comply with the compliance order and return the property to the condition as dictated by the EPA, apply for a wetlands development permit, be denied that permit, and only then could they have their day in court. Not surprisingly, such a cumbersome process usually takes several years and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 

[jks9199]

I've just read the 9th Circuit opinion. The scary thing about where this lands is that it blocks judicial review of a compliance order until such time as the EPA initiates enforcement action. In other words, they can issue the compliance order, leave it there, and never subject it to review if they never initiate enforcement. Meanwhile, the idea that the permitting process allows a review is rather ludicrous. Only at such time as the EPA denies a permit would someone have a chance to contest the compliance order or need for a permit. The instant case is pretty clearly a mistake; it appears that the "wetlands" in question never existed -- or at least hasn't existed in so long that there's a subdivision grown around it.