Bullies by Ben Shapiro

Author:Ben Shapiro
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Threshold Editions
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

6.

GREEN BULLIES

Meet Mike and Chantell Sackett. The couple decided to buy a $25,000 parcel of land, approximately 0.63 acres, near scenic Priest Lake in northern Idaho. Priest Lake is surrounded by a beautiful greenery; its wildlife includes bear, deer, and moose. It also has terrific trout fishing. It’s a tourist hot spot.

In 2007, Mike and Chantell decided to build on their land. This wasn’t rare—their own tract was separated from the lake by several large man-made structures. So they did what people do when building: they brought in dirt and rock, and filled in part of the lot to create a foundation for their dream home.

A few months later, they opened their mail to find a letter from the friendly neighborhood U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). To the Sacketts’ surprise, they were informed that the property “contains wetlands . . . adjacent to Priest Lake.” Further, they were told that they had caused “fill material to enter waters of the United States” and had therefore polluted under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Never mind that their land contained no water.1

Not only were the Sacketts barred from building on their own land, the EPA said; they also had to “repair” the land they had damaged. It would cost them $27,000 to do so—more than they’d paid for the tract in the first place.2 The EPA also threatened millions of dollars in fines—up to $75,000 per day for failure to comply. That’s $9 million per year. Because you never know when fish will need to spawn in the middle of dry land—and you never know when they’ll need a Scrooge McDuck money vault to swim in.

So the Sacketts asked for a hearing on the issue.

And the EPA denied it.

So the Sacketts sued. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which sided with the Sacketts. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote, concurring with the opinion of the Court, “The position taken in this case by the Federal Government—a position that the Court now squarely rejects—would have put the property rights of ordinary Americans entirely at the mercy of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees.” This, in short, was bullying.

What made the bullying worse, Alito noted, was the fact that the CWA is “notoriously unclear. Any piece of land that is wet at least part of the year is in danger of being classified by EPA employees as wetlands covered by the Act, and according to the Federal Government, if property owners begin to construct a home on a lot that the agency thinks possesses the requisite wetness, the property owners are at the agency’s mercy.”3

It was a victory for Americans, who could challenge the EPA’s hegemony now—they’d have a way to yell and scream if the EPA suddenly designated the puddle near their broken garden hose a “wetland.” But the case didn’t stop the growth of the EPA. The agency, which sprang full-formed into being in 1970, was never fully approved by Congress—but it started with a budget in excess of $1 billion (about $6 billion in terms of today’s purchasing power) and well over 4,000 employees.

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