Articles

On Wednesday, February 4, a rare joint hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee will examine a controversial draft rule by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps). That rule would expand the agencies’ jurisdiction ove ...

As previewed here a few days ago, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee conducted a joint congressional hearing yesterday to consider a proposed “waters of the United States” regulation by the federal government. The regulation has drawn almost one million public comm ...

On Thursday, Pacific Legal Foundation and The Heritage Foundation are co-sponsoring a panel discussion on a draft regulation that would vastly expand the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ jurisdiction to regulate the nation’s water and land. PLF’s Reed Hopper is one of the panelists. As ...

POTUS’s WOTUS headed for SCOTUS? The President’s EPA minions issued the long-dreaded Waters of the United States rule this week, guaranteeing another clash before the Supreme Court of the United States. For more, and a link to our comments on the rule as proposed, see this blog post. Ever since our victory in Rapanos over EPA’s ...

WOTUS WOTUS every where, nor a drop to drink We filed this challenge in Minnesota District Court on behalf of a variety of landowners and organizations to EPA’s new Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule,  This rule, like the stuff of the alchemists of old, creates water from dry ditches and federal jurisdiction from whole cloth.  R ...

If forced to describe Pacific Legal Foundation as only one particular organization’s bête noire, I would find it tough to pick just one. The California Coastal Commission? The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service? Your average state regulatory agency? The pickings are vast, and Constitution-violating government entities numerous. But if forced ...

This week, the leading public-policy think tank in Tallahassee, the James Madison Institute, published a new WOTUS piece by M. Reed Hopper and yours truly. You can read the piece, a JMI Backgrounder entitled, “Waters of the United States: A Case Study in Government Abuse,” at this link. Although the article applies to all land across ...

WOTUS halted! A federal district court judge in North Dakota enjoined with this order EPA from enforcing it’s new breathtakingly illegal Waters of the United States rule.  The court found that the harm to the states who had sued was potentially considerable and that there was a likelihood of success in the merits.  This result … ...

Liberty Blog readers know that the “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule issued earlier this summer is not only a brazen power grab by the U.S. EPA and Army Corps of Engineers that will create additional costs, risks, and confusion for ordinary property owners, but that it is also blatantly illegal. Last week, as … ...