In 2005, Michael and Chantell Sackett were working toward what many American families work toward, their own home on their own land, until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) halted their plans by declaring it a “wetland.”
On Monday, Jan. 9, the Sacketts and their attorneys will ask the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court to not only restore the right to use their own land – but to break the absolute power the EPA has over protected wetlands.
The Sacketts, small business owners in Idaho, located a lot in the northern part of the state in a town called Priest Lake. According to court documents, the lot is less than an acre and is just 500 feet from Priest Lake on its west side. It is separated from the lake by a house and a road and has no standing water or any hydrologic connection to Lake Priest or any other body of water.
There are houses to the north and south of the lot.
The lot is located in an established residential area – a platted subdivision – with the required water and sewer hookups.
In 2005, after performing the necessary due diligence, the Sacketts purchased the lot for $23,000. They sought and obtained the needed permits to begin building their new home.
According to the Sacketts, shortly after they began laying gravel for construction, the EPA came onto the property and issued a compliance order without any notice, telling them that the land had been declared a “wetland,” and ordered them to restore the land to EPA’s liking or face $37,500 per day in fines.
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
7 comments:
I have been keeping up with this for quite sometime. I was very pleases that the US supreme court would here their case. Hopefully, just maybe the Justices will see through the non sense.
Its the same here in Maryland for commercial property in the counties.I know many a developer who gave up trying to develop commercial property because of a wet spot on their land but not a stream or river for miles.
I have eleven acres in the middle of one of my fields, on top of a hill no less, that I can't touch because Bruce Nichols found a certain plant there 20 years ago. I have spent a fortune on appeals, much more than the land is actually worth, all to no avail. Basically, I was robbed of eleven acres of farmland and there is nothing I can do about it.
It is the same for residential property too. Before you buy property on or near the water in Maryland you better find out through your county what you can and can't do with it. There are so many environmental restrictions you wouldn't believe!
This agency, along with many others, needs to be disbanded.
I'm all for protecting the planet but they, like so many others with authority, go overboard and do outrageous things.
Seems they would have enough to do to keep corporations in line.
No doubt the Wicomico Environmental Trust is overjoyed by this land grab.
The Chesapeake Bay Critical Areas Commission is equally as aggressive as the EPA. We have been attempting to get approval for 6 Wicomico river waterfront lots for over 4 years and every time we submit a new plan, which addresses problems the CBCA comes up with, they come up with many more issues based not on COMAR or existing county laws but on their personal ideolgy to ban all waterfront properties. This group is way to powerful and passes judgement based on their own personal agenda against development.
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