Supreme Court hands property owners a major win in Clean Water Act case

By Eric Boehm  /   May 31, 2016  /   News  /   No Comments

It was a unanimous win for property rights at the U.S. Supreme Court and another stinging defeat for the Obama administration’s efforts to expand the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency.
All eight justices sided with a North Dakota company Tuesday in ruling that Americans have the right to appeal permitting decisions made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under the federal Clean Water Act. In U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co. Inc., the Corps had told the East Grand Forks, Minnesota, company that a planned peat bog expansion would disturb federally protected wetlands, requiring the company to obtain costly federal permits that Hawkes argued were unnecessary.

The property in question was located more than 100 miles from the nearest navigable river – the federal Clean Water Act applies only to navigable waterways and other bodies of water with “significant nexus” to them – and Hawkes argued that those permits were therefore unnecessary.
There was just one problem: that kind of so-called “jurisdictional determination” by the Corps of Engineers was not subject to judicial review under the act.  

Rather than challenging the merits of the Corps’ decision, then, Hawkes challenged the part of the law that prevented them from challenging the permitting decision.........Each year, the Army Corps of Engineers issues tens of thousands of jurisdictional determinations asserting private and public lands are subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act, essentially allowing federal officials to dictate how the property can be used, or if it can be used at all.........The unanimous affirmation of the lower court’s ruling is another serious rebuke to the EPA’s expansive powers under the Clean Water Act.........To Read More.....