Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.New American
May 16, 2016
May 16, 2016
In a settlement announced on May 9, President Obama and his Justinian scheme of ruling by regulation was dealt a judicial blow by one American with the will to withstand the federal assault on his freedom.
Two years ago, rancher Andy Johnson (shown) was forced into a fight with the overweening and overstepping Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over his building in 2013 of a stock pond on his property located near Bridger, Wyoming.
How the stock pond came to the EPA’s attention is still a mystery, but the agency’s determination to leave Johnson, a father of four, penniless was all too clear.
According to a conversation I had with Harold Johnson of Pacific Legal Fund (PLF), the law firm representing Johnson, the EPA threatened Johnson with the imposition of exorbitant fines, (reportedly $37,500 a day), the amount of which totaled nearly $20 million!
A story in Hotair published last year set out the sinister nature of the EPA’s abuse of Johnson:
Amazingly, Johnson had filed for and been granted the appropriate local and state permits to have a stock pond, and stock ponds are specifically excluded from the traditional wording of the Clean Water Act. No matter … the agency felt that action was required to save the world and they were going to “leap to the rescue.”
The truly ironic part is that Johnson had the water in the creek tested above and below his pond and the results indicated that the downstream water was actually cleaner than when it came in because the pond allowed sediment to settle out.
All of this is nothing new, though. Under the Obama administration, Americans have become accustomed to the unfettered and frenzied enforcement of usurped “authority.”
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