Supreme Court’s WOTUS ruling will shake things up across the board

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. June 23rd, 2023 44 Comments @ CFACT

Last month’s landmark Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA not only narrowed the scope of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate wetlands, but it will also have reverberations far beyond the Clean Water Act (CWA).

What began as an effort by Michael and Chantell Sackett to build their dream home on their 0.63-acre lot near Priest Lake in northern Idaho morphed into a 16-year legal battle that ended in a victory for the couple and a defeat for EPA when the High Court ruled that their property was not a wetland and thus not subject to EPA regulation under the 1972 CWA. But in decreeing that the only wetlands EPA could regulate were those with a “continuous surface flow” to a navigable water, such as a lake or river, the court rendered a judgment that will affect other federal environmental statutes as well.

Removing the need for many projects to obtain permits under Section 404 of the CWA, which governs dredge-and-fill discharges, will erase important triggers for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Endangered Species Act (ESA) reviews, according to George Glicksman, a law professor at George Washington University.

Effects on NEPA and the ESA

“The programs are intertwined in ways that aren’t immediately obvious,” he told Greenwire (June 15). As Greenwire explained:

“Both NEPA and the ESA require federal action to trigger a review, which in turn forces developers to consider their project’s effect on the environment and vulnerable species. Otherwise, a Section 404 forms this federal connection. But without a Clean Water Act permit, that federal nexus – in some cases – disappears.

Depending on the complexity of the project, NEPA, for example, can require either an environmental assessment or a much more comprehensive environmental impact statement (EIS). It can take years for federal officials to complete an EIS, prompting some developers to walk away from a proposed project out of sheer frustration. Before the Supreme Court’s May 25 ruling, an EIS, which included a project’s effect on a wetland with no continuous surface connection to a navigable body of water, prolonged the permitting process. With wetlands lacking that continuous surface connection no longer subject to CWA Section 404 permits, some environmental reviews will be shorter.

As it happens, the court’s ruling coincided with the enactment of a debt-ceiling agreement, which put time limits on the issuance of some federal permits. The result of both developments is less red tape.

Similarly, determining what constitutes a threatened or endangered plant or animal’s “critical habitat” under the ESA will become simpler in some cases because the types of wetlands subject to federal authority have been reduced.

By declaring the Sacketts’ bone-dry property a wetland, and then putting the couple through 16 years of litigation hell, EPA ultimately wound up diminishing its own authority under the CWA. As Professor Glicksman points out, the Supreme Court’s decision also affected two other environmental statutes. For decades, provisions of the CWA, NEPA, and ESA were skillfully used by regulators and special interest groups as a form of federal zoning to snuff out development not to their liking.

To be sure, the ESA is still a hopelessly cumbersome law with a terrible record of recovering vulnerable species. And NEPA still makes it difficult for the United States to carry out much-needed infrastructure projects. But the administrative regulatory state has been dealt a setback, and the country has moved a few steps closer to restoring the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Author

• Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

  Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Busines Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country. He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh. He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.

Does America Deserve Another Kennedy as President?

By Rich Kozlovich 

He's been censored by the social media, the left is calling him a Nazi, claiming he's a threat to "our democracy:", an anti-science lunatic with harmful views.  Wow! They just won't let up on Donald Trump....oh....wait.... they're not talking about Donald Trump.  Watch out now, here it comes..... it's not Trump, it's  Bobby Kennedy Jr.   I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.  So, why?  Well, it turns out the left hates Kennedy because he's not part of the vile rottenness of establishment Democrat leadership, and he's winning against a mentally deranged, totally corrupt old dotard they're able to totally control, and they don't like it.  Make no mistake though.  He's not on any higher moral ground, he just not playing in their ball park. 

On  June 23, 2023 Monica Showalter published this article, Tucker Carlson says the quiet part out loud about RFK Jr. and pointed out some interesting information.   First, I'm surprised to find:

Polls show that most voters, including a large plurality of Democrats, do believe that elections are tainted with fraud.  The establishment dismisses anyone upset about this as a conspiracy theorist and suggests to the public that they take its word for it that it wouldn't dream of committing election fraud instead of proving it, and the discontent that comes of that sits there steaming.

It appears that even with all the media hype, lies, and corrupt claims the 2020 election was an honest election, those of us who've been insisting from day one that Biden became President via a massive, coordinated national effort to steal the election through voter fraud must have had an impact, and it's playing out in this contest between the Biden cabal and Kennedy.

It turns out he and Trump have one thing in common.  Neither of them owe anything to anyone, as a result their party of choice isn't in charge.  That hurt Trump, and badly, since the Republican establishment backstabbed him for four years, and is still doing so.   Yet, in spite of that he accomplished more in four years than did the previous four Presidents did in16 years, since Ronald Reagan.   There have been 22 Presidents since the beginning of the 20th century and only three were worth spit, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, and the greatest was Calvin Coolidge.

RFK Jr'. is a Kennedy, and he knows all the dirty tricks of Democrat politics, after all, his Uncle Jack was elected through voter fraud, and he won't be easily overcome by his party.  They view him as a threat to "their democracy", which is defined as their power to control events, and mostly, the money.  Does he share their goal of destroying America?  If history is anything, I think so.  the Kennedy's, including RFK Jr. had a love affair with Castro, and his mother really liked Che.  And that affection was returned, as Castro said in 1960:

"We'd better hope Kennedy wins this election," Fidel Castro confided to a subaltern in 1960. "If Nixon wins our revolution won't last."

The end result of "Camelot" was Jack Kennedy was played by Khrushchev like a violin, was responsible for the Bay of Pigs disaster, turned Latin America over the Castro and communism, and made sure Castro was there for the rest of his life, and in power.   I think that says volumes about the Kennedy's, their leadership, intelligence, courage, and morality.  As Nixon noted; Kennedy gave the Soviet Union squatters rights right in America's back yard.

Compared to Biden or Kamala he's considered a "formidable" speaker, which is interesting since he suffers from "spasmodic dysphonia, a specific form of an involuntary movement disorder called dystonia that affects only the voice box",  and for some reason America's middle class seem to like him.  Even while being censored and excoriated by the left, with no media support and media attacks, he's showing a 20% approval rating in the polls. 

Before everyone wets their pants over this nutroll, please remember, he's a Kennedy.  Nothing they say or do can be relied on, and truthfully, I think the whole family has a screw loose, and I think America needs to ask.  Does America really deserve another Kennedy as President any more than America deserved another Bush? 

Jack Kennedy, in spite of the media Camelot spin, was a disaster.  This Kennedy, if elected, won't be any different.  While he ended up being right about these false vaccinations for covid 19, for which I defended him, and almost broke out in hives.  But even a blind monkey can find a coconut occasionally, that doesn't make the monkey smart.  He's actually against all vaccinations, and according to Andrea Widburg,  he's comfortable with anti-semites, as are almost all leftists.  His grandfather Joe Kennedy detested Jews.  RFK Jr is a Climate Change nut, and he demands actions that will bankrupt the nation and western civilization, and wants to throw anyone who disagrees in prison.

The fact he's chosen Dennis Kucinich as his campaign manager gives insight to his character.  Kucinich is a heretic and an intellectually corrupt opportunist, who after a lifetime taking a Catholic stand against abortion, all of a sudden had an epiphany that abortion was just fine and dandy.  Why?   He was running for President, and no Democrat could possibly get nominated unless they approved of abortion.   So he sold his soul trying to become President, and never even got nominated.   A real object lesson in self delusion.  He abandoned any sense of morality because he's a ideologically corrupt political opportunist.   It's my view both of them are blatant liars, and far left nutrolls, it's probably a toss up which is worse. 

 Let's have no delusions.  If this Kennedy has the same moral fiber as the rest of that brood, and based on his personal history I think that's the case, then this is a man with a moral compass that has no idea which way is north.