Duvall, continued
troubling questions regarding the Government's
power to cast doubt on the full use and enjoyment of
private property throughout the Nation."
This isn't news to Farm Bureau: For more than
a decade, we have been battling overreach by both
the Corps and the Environmental Protection Agency,
which share limited jurisdiction under the Clean
Water Act. We weighed in several years ago in the
so-called SWANCC case when the Corps claimed
jurisdiction over any water body (no matter how
small and isolated) where migratory birds might
land. The Supreme Court said no to that scheme.
EPA also tried to impose federal permitting on any
livestock farm with the "potential" to discharge
pollution, even if the farm never had a discharge
and even though the law only regulates "discharges"
to waters. Farm Bureau filed suit together with the
pork industry. The court ruled against the EPA:
livestock farms don't need a federal permit to
operate. But both EPA and the Corps keep trying
to push the boundaries--to regulate by any means
possible, no matter how they have to stretch logic
and the law.
Again, Hawkes isn't the first time EPA has been
caught overstepping its bounds. Take, for example,
the case of Andy Johnson, a Wyoming farmer
who recently won a long battle with EPA over an
environmentally friendly stock pond for cattle on
his property. Besides watering Johnson's cattle,
the pond fostered wetland grasses and provided
habitat fo