Articles

caption id="" align="alignright" width="252" The Brandreths take on the New York State government/caption In 1851, the Civil War had yet to start. Abraham Lincoln was a country lawyer from Illinois. And Dr. Benjamin Brandreth, patriarch of the Brandreth family, bought a plot of land from the State of New York that included non-navigable waterway ...

On Wednesday, PLF and a group of forestry organizations filed a brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in American Farm Bureau Federation v. EPA (15-599), an important case about the federal-state balance of power in the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act is clear about its intended effect on the states: "It is the policy of the ...

Several weeks ago, the New York Times ran a front page article about the Andy Johnson's stock pond and the EPA compliance order threatening him with more than $16 million in fines. Here's a taste: The sun was sinking and the brook trout were biting, so Andy Johnson and his daughter Aspen, 6, stepped onto their sun-bleached pier, hooked some mealwo ...

Last Friday, the Supreme Court extended the deadline for the American Farm Bureau Federation to file a petition for certiorari in its case challenging the EPA's interpretation of the Total Maximum Daily Load or "TMDL" provision of the Clean Water Act. While the details of the case–much like the Clean Water Act itself–get very technical, the case ma ...

caption id="attachment_38450" align="alignright" width="352" By Riverhugger (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons/caption In the Wall Street Journal, attorney and former high-ranking EPA official Bill Wehrum has an op-ed $ arguing that the Animas River spill shouldn't lead to criminal punishment, but neither should similar accidents caused by privat ...

Recent press coverage of PLF's challenge to the compliance order that Andy Johnson received from the EPA has highlighted some of the Orwellian language in the Clean Water Act. As you'll recall, EPA is threatening Andy with tens of millions of dollars in fines for constructing an environmentally-beneficial stock pond on his private property. Some of ...

To honor Chief Justice Robert's first decade on the Supreme Court -- more like castigate him -- the Constitutional Accountability Center has released a series of papers on the court's jurisprudence. The most recent of which addresses the court's environmental cases. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the paper reveals more about the author's views on environm ...

Last year we reported that the Siskiyou County Farm Bureau successfully sued the California Department of Fish and Wildlife over whether the Department has the authority to limit the use of water rights.  The Department subsequently appealed the decision, and today PLF filed this amicus brief, along with the California Cattlemen's Association, in s ...

Today United States Senator Vitter (R-La), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, featured PLF's case on behalf of John Duarte and Duarte Nursery against the Corps of Engineers on one of the Committee's blogs.  Senator Vitter notes that this recent case in California paints a picture of what more Americans would face u ...