Friday, January 6, 2012

Property Rights at Root of EPA Supreme Court Case

When the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a case called Sackett vs. EPA next week, NAR and a dozen other associations will be looking on with more than passing interest.
NAR is part of a group that has submitted a friend of the court brief to the Supreme Court arguing that the actions by the U.S. EPA violated the property rights and right of due process of Chantell and Mike Sackett of Priest Lake, Idaho. Although the Court will hear arguments on a the relatively narrow legal issue of due process and the wetlands appeals process, NAR believes that broader principles are at stake, including the overreaching regulatory authority of the EPA.
Four years ago the couple bought a piece of land of under an acre that sits squarely in a developed subdivision, with a sewer infrastructure already in place, overlooking Priest Lake in the Idaho panhandle. The couple secured local building permits and even received a verbal okay from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that the property, which has water on it periodically but isn’t adjacent to any standing body of water, is not a wetlands. But as soon as the Sacketts started to build their home, EPA officials, citing the agency’s authority under the Clean Water Act, ordered them to stop and restore the property to the way it was before they did any work on it.
They were also ordered to take other costly restoration and monitoring activities. Once these requirements were met, only then could they go through the wetlands permitting appeals process. What’s more, the EPA said it could impose a fine of up to $32,500 a day for every day they didn’t comply.
Although this sounds like a case of over-reach by the EPA, the issue before the Supreme Court only concerns whether the Sacketts have the right to challenge the EPA’s assertion that the property contains a wetlands. EPA says the Sacketts can’t challenge its assertion until after it files formal charges against the Sacketts for building on a wetlands, which it hasn’t done yet. And it won’t consider that question until the Sacketts first spend the money and take the time to restore the property to its previous state.
The Sacketts say the issue of whether the property is a wetlands is central to the dispute and needs to be  resolved in court now if they’re to get their proper due process rights.  NAR agrees, but the lower courts have sided with the EPA, saying regulatory agencies would be hamstrung in their ability to enforce their rules if parties like the Sacketts can chellenge them in court before they’ve taken formal regulatory action.
NAR will be monitoring the case closely when the court hears oral arguments on Monday, Jan. 9, because of its importance to the protection of private property rights.

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