Articles

Author:  Nicholas M. Gieseler Bad news this morning by way of the Eighth Circuit, as its decision in United States v. Bailey dealt a blow to property rights.  The decision granted the federal government jurisdiction over private property located more than 200 feet away from a navigable waterway.  Under Justice Sca ...

Author: Harold Johnson In this comprehensive article, PLF attorney, M. Reed Hopper, critiques the Clean Water Restoration Act pending in Congress.  He exposes the misconceptions on  which the Act is based and argues the Act far exceeds congressional power.  Contrary to common belief and longstanding constitutional principles ...

Author:  Damien M. Schiff Today's New York Times has this article contending that, at least from the US Environmental Protection Agency's perspective, that agency's ability to enforce the Clean Water Act and prevent the Nation's waters from becoming polluted has been seriously constrained by recent federal court rulings. The a ...

Author:  Damien M. Schiff Today the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision in Precon Development Corp. v. United States Army Corps of Engineers.  The case concerned whether the Corps had jurisdiction over about 5 acres of wetlands on the plaintiff's property, located about 7 miles from the nearest navigable waterw ...

Author:  Damien M. Schiff Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an amended opinion in Northern California Riverwatch v. Wilcox, 620 F.3d 1075 (9th Cir. 2010).  The decision, originally issued last summer, concerned the scope of the phrase "under Federal jurisdiction" as it is found in Section 9 of the Endangered ...

Author:  Damien M. Schiff The New York Times ran this piece this week on the struggle the courts, the agencies, and especially landowners have had in interpreting and applying the Supreme Court's most recent decision on the scope of the Clean Water Act, Rapanos v. United States.  My colleague Reed Hopper, who won Rapanos in … ...

Author: Reed Hopper You recall the old line from Otto von Bismarck that to retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.  That's certainly true for the Clean Water Act.  There is general agreement that Clean Water Act jurisprudence is a mess; no one knows how far federal jurisdiction extend ...

Author:  Damien M. Schiff For some time, the Corps and the EPA have been drafting revised guidance governing how the agencies  interpret the scope of their power under the Clean Water Act, following the Supreme Court's decision (and PLF's victory in) Rapanos v. United States.  (The agencies' current guidance document w ...

Some years ago, when I was an attorney here at Pacific Legal Foundation in our Environmental Law section, I worked on a Supreme Court wetlands case called Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. Army Corps of Engineers (SWANCC). In many ways, the Supreme Court’s decision in that case, and in two other cases, … ...