Articles

Author:  Anne Hayes Does anyone believe the Clean Water Act was passed so that federal bureaucrats could force American citizens to pay outrageous fees just to build a little house on their own property in rural Idaho?  Well, the EPA does. Thursday morning at 6:50 a.m. Eastern, Fox and Friends co-anchor Steve Do ...

Author:  Anne Hayes Early this morning, PLF clients Mike and Chantell Sackett had the opportunity to tell the American public about their story of abuse at the hands of EPA bureaucrats, when Fox and Friends co-anchor Steve Doocy interviewed them in his "It's Your Land" feature. Just what is going on here? When the Sacketts started to do groun ...

Author:  Damien M. Schiff World Net Daily has an excellent piece today on the plight of Mike and Chantell Sackett, PLF clients who are fighting for the right to have their day in court against the EPA.  The agency issued the Sacketts a compliance order under the Clean Water Act, contending that they had illegally filled wetlands on thei ...

Author: Damien Schiff This morning, the United States Supreme Court issued an order agreeing to take up PLF's case representing Mike and Chantell Sackett.  The question of whether the EPA can assert federal land use control over any wet area in this country, and deny a landowner a fair and effective means of challenging the agency's actions, is ...

Author:  Damien M. Schiff The Legal Planet Blog had two posts yesterday on the Sackett case, from Professor Richard Frank and Professor Holly Doremus.  Professor Doremus suggests in her post that the Sacketts could have avoided all this trouble had they simply applied for a jurisdictional determination from the U.S. Army Corps of Engine ...

Author: Damien M. Schiff Last week I had the chance to visit again PLF's clients Mike and Chantell Sackett in Priest Lake, Idaho.  PLF represents the Sacketts in their now four-year struggle to build a family home for themselves near the Lake.  Their homebuilding has been stopped since 2007 because of an EPA compliance order which c ...

Author: Anne Hayes Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is bringing greater attention to the issue of EPA's authoritarian behavior with respect to supposed "wetlands" both in an editorial he penned for the Washington Times, and in a recent interview with Lou Dobbs. Among the cases he cited was our upcoming case before the Supreme Court, Sac ...

Author: Anne Hayes Naturally, PLF is extremely pleased that the United States Supreme Court granted the petition for writ of certiorari in the Sacketts' case against the EPA.  However, we should point out that the Sacketts' situation, while a devastating development to them, is not new under the sun.  The EPA has been abusing la ...

Author:  Damien M. Schiff Last week, we received nearly a dozen amicus briefs supporting the Sacketts in their Supreme Court fight against EPA.  The briefs were submitted on behalf of a wide array of public and private entitites (in no particular order):  the American Civil Rights Union; American Farm Bureau Federation, National C ...