The EPA smacked down for once
From
The Daily Caller:
Court: Stormwater runoff not a pollutant, EPA can�t regulate it
A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency exceeded its authority by trying to regulate water as a pollutant and restricting stormwater flow into a Fairfax County creek.
�Stormwater runoff is not a pollutant, so EPA is not authorized to regulate it,� said federal judge Liam O�Grady, who sided with the county and Virginia in the ruling.
A bit more:
The plaintiffs also argued that the EPA�s plan could cost $500 million dollars, charging that the plan would have required state and local officials to �take people�s houses, evict them, knock the houses down and plant grass.�
And the judges ruling:
�EPA may not regulate something over which it has no statutorily granted power � as a proxy for something over which it is granted power,� O�Grady said. �If the sediment levels in Accotink Creek have become dangerously high, what better way to address the problem than by limiting the amount of sediment permitted in the creek?�
According to the Virginia attorney general�s office, state taxpayers will save more than $300 million in unnecessary costs because of the ruling.
The Washington Post has a
nice writeup from the beginning of the suit in July of 2012.
Thank you Richard Milhous Nixon. Time to defund these asshats -- we were living in a toxic environment. We fixed it and now most stuff is clean. Time to greatly defund the EPA and change its scope to a monitoring agency instead of a regulatory agency.
To quote the last few words of the
Fifth Amendment to the Constitution:
...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Prohibiting the use of private lands without just compensation falls afoul of this Fifth of our ten Amendments to the Constitution -- our Bill of Rights.
Posted by DaveH at January 7, 2013 6:47 PM