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I cleaned up my dry arroyo. Took out the salt cedars and dead pinons, picked up the garbage that had accumulated since the beginning of time and graded out the ruts so I could get in there with my brush hog to keep it maintained. Now I am charged with dredging and filling “The Waters of the United States”. Water only flowed when we had a cloudburst last year – two hours later it was gone. Have any of you out there had any experience with the Corps of Engineers and the Clean Water Act. I have decided to fight this so I would appreciate any words of wisdom or warning.
Cheers, Peter
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How did they find out? Do you have a neighbor that hates you? Can you prove you needed to do the work to reduce flooding on your property?
Your going to have to do a lot of research on that law and it wouldn't hurt to talk to a lawyer about it. You will end up fighting the Corp and the tree huggers so you have to know all the laws involved.
At some point you will find out who reported you.
You will probably lose the battle because it's the goal of the Corp to flood everything and fine everyone. It's the goal of the tree huggers to keep the woods burning by not allowing them to be cleaned up for fire control.
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Carl,
A neighbor about a half mile away who used to walk his dogs in my arroyo.
We don't have floods here in the high desert. In fact water only flows in the arroyo once or twice a year for an hour or so each time. Some years it doesn't flow at all.
I need to do the work because I choose to – it's my property. The salt cedars are “weeds” which take over making it impossible to walk through the property, plus they create a fire hazard.
I have done considerable research. Basically it is Obama and the EPA trying to control everything – similar to greenhouse gasses and the flatulent cows. They are doing an end run around congress. You should see the proposed new corps guidelines for identifying waters of the United States. http://www.regulations.gov Docket ID No EPA-HQ-OW-2011-0409 (I am public comment no 2136). Roadside ditches are not exempt.
I think I will not get my lawyer involved yet. I'll see how far I get on my own. Sometimes being an innocent unsuspecting homeowner can have its advantages. Hope they don't discover I'm a tea drinker. Yes, I will probably lose but rest assured they will remember me.
Cheers, Peter
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Hmm, I tried to read your page but when I entered the numbers it would not show the page and the page turned colors and I was not allowed to make any changes or entry's. I closed the site and tried again and was not allowed to even search.
A friend lives in Utah and he said the BLM is closing almost all the old roads and trails in the state. The tree huggers are harassing the BLM to close the entire state to any off road driving. There are still some trails open on government land but you have to fill out a form well in advance and tell where your going, how long you will be there and they have a limit of how many vehicles can go. You can't pee or crap anywhere and if you do you have to take it home with you.
We really do have to take our country back from the radical do gooders that think everyone should just stay in their homes all the time.
I finally got to the page you listed but I don't understand much of what is there.
A friend here got into serious trouble with the Ky state water people by just putting some rocks in a creek that runs through their property to form a pool about 2 feet deep for their kids to play in. He had a hell of a time getting out of that mess after a neighbor turned them in.
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There are some real goofy things going on, for sure, but not much stranger than what went on years ago, probably. I grew up in Colorado, where more people have been killed over water than al other causes combined, according to something I read years ago. Western water law is vastly different than the riparian right that prevails in the East, and that only adds to the confusion and tension. You can have a spring on your land but if the guy downstream from you puts the water to use first, he then has an essentially inalienable right to that much water forever. Should you do something to deprive him of the water you are dead wrong – or maybe just dead.
The whole thing with the waterways of the US used to be just the “navigable” waterways, as I understand it, but the Corps of Engineers seems to have decided to expand that to every little pissant trickle of water anywhere, anytime. Seems like a bureaucratic empire-building scheme, to me. I don't think Obama had squat to do with it, though I know the Republicans like to use him as the whipping boy for anything they can. That's because they're trying to suck the last damn dime out of every little guy in the country so they can keep on living high.
Ah well, end of rant.
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I have to agree, this agency has spawned nightmare stories for years.
In Oregon we have a “State Boiler Inspector” who randomly checks shops air compressors. .The “inspection” costs $75.00 and if you don't pay it in time it doubles, quadruples, etc.
When is the last time you saw an air compressor tank explode?
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Tin asked, “When is the last time you saw an air compressor tank explode?”
1961, and I was very fortunate not to have been injured. I was a 13-year old kid with a penchant for building things but no knowledge of even the most rudimentary engineering, of course. I cobbled together a homemade compressor from a scrapped refrigeration pump, an old washing machine motor and a salvaged pressure tank from a well water system. No pressure switch and the tank was one of the old riveted ones designed for probably about 20 psi. One day I plugged it in to charge it up and got distracted by something – I happened to be in the other building when the tank ruptured, blowing the end cap through one of the wooden garage doors. The parents were not amused at all by the damaged door, though it didn't even occur to me until years later that I could easily have been killed. I wish I could honestly say that was the only dumb thing I've ever perpetrated, but….
Ah, the hubris of youth!
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Dang , I have not logged in here in a
while and the first thing I see pisses me off the the max. I used
to live in ABQ and I know what the country is like around there.
The clean water act used to apply to wetlands only. These sound
like a whole new set of regulations.This sounds like the Obama/Eric
Holder/ATF “gun walker” program where they let large numbers of
firearms “walk” into the wrong hands deliberately so they can complain
about the violence and push for more gun regulations. But when their
own ATF agents get shot with those same guns they blame the head of
the ATF and he resigns in disgrace. But who do they get to replace
him???? Obama's buddy from Chicago. I feel safe now.
Ok back on subject:
Some years ago I helped a farmer build
a pond to water crops. We did this by building a dam in a
creek that would fill. The regulations said that we could not
“permanently” alter the flow or route of the creek we were not.
We looked at getting a dredge and fill permit but determined that one
was not needed because the regulations said that it was needed when
we were changing the elevation of the bottom of the area in question
which we were not. We built the pond. Once it was full the water
flowed on as it always had.A few months later here came a low IQ
oxygen parasite from the EPA saying that we had violated all kinds of
things and sounded like we had killed his first born child. He was
targeting me as I am the one who actually did the work. Most of
these morons make up part of the rules. They quote laws but leave
out words like “permanently” when referring to altering the flow
of a creek. He said we could not alter it at all. That's not what
the law said. He said we were dredging and filling even though the
law said we were not as we did not alter the bottom elevation of the
stream.These people are told that they can't
be held personally liable for doing their duty. But when they start
making up their own regulations they are no longer doing their duty
nor do they represent any regulations set forth by the agency they
work for. I told the guy that he could plan on ligation. He told
me that his agency has done well in court against people like me. I
told him that I was not talking about his agency. Since he was
quoting rules and regulations that were outside of his agency that my
law suit would be against him personally for harassment and
misrepresentation. I am the type of person that people will take
seriously and they should. The guy left and I never heard another
word about it. But I did know enough about the regulations at that
time to be able to call bull shit when I needed to. -
Spring, I think you are right on the money. And it doesn't matter which side of the border you live on, the individual inspectors are given a uniform or badge or some other ID, and all of a sudden they think they are God. And making up the rules IS part of the game. These guys also get rewarded (raises & praise) based on the number of successful citations they issue. Only with clear & overwhelming evidence will they (or their bosses) ever issue a retraction, and that is where you got your guy up against the wall. I once had an insurance inspector go to the head of our Corporation without telling us at the local level and tell him that they were going to shut down the mill b/c of a “concern”, at an approximate cost of $1million/day. I was the engineering guy, and after doing lots of back flips (including hiring a firm that specialized in engineering for nuclear power plants) the problem was resolved without shutting down the mill, and the inspector was promoted. The phrase “absolute power corrupts absolutely” comes to mind. So does “common sense is uncommon”.
Mike
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