(Note: This is an excellent portrayal of one of the many branches of government that have become diseased and are in desperate need of pruning. The 'enforcement arm' of the EPA is the Army Corps of Engineers, an agency that has made coercion and domestic terrorism its hallmarks. Just ask the folks living in the 8.5 Square Mile Area of south Florida. They are only one group of many private property owners that have been torn asunder by a 'law' that even sends honest people like Ocie Mills and his son, to prison, for a 'crime' that they did not commit. It is past time to hold those that are truly to blame for the terrorism in this country, accountable for it. While the Department of Defense 'pleads' for exemption from the Endangered Species Act, the farmer, miner, logger, and rancher are pushed to the brink of extinction by the convoluted interpretation of the ESA and the Clean Water Act. The same directives -- paying for a 'crime' that one is not guilty of -- are happening to the commercial fishing industry and the rest of those whose only 'crime' is resource providing. We had darned well better be standing up for our resource providers, because they are those we should thank for our quality of life -- NOT those in the three branches of 'government.')

January 31, 2003

By William Jud

judy_jud@hotmail.com

The way in which work is accomplished is important.

Let's say that I give you a hundred dollars.

It matters -- and it matters a lot -- whether I give you the money as a gift, or in exchange for goods or services, or you rob me at gunpoint.

The same money changes hands in each circumstance. The way in which that money changes hands is a legal gift in the first situation, a business transaction in the second, and a crime in the third.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) operates under law that was established during the Nixon Administration.

That was when environmental extremism was gaining momentum.

The national mood was, Punish The Achievers, especially Achievers in any natural resources industry who left a mess while producing goods and services for the benefit of their fellow citizens.

The more valuable the Achievers' products to society, the fiercer the attack. That's why mining took such a strong hit.

Mining and agriculture are the twin foundations upon which civilization is built. [The timber industry is part of the USDA.]

The new environmental law was an early expression of the continuing Socialist attack on America, a siege that is still shutting down forests and driving farmers out of business -- to "save" the world and force citizens to provide homes for bugs and weeds -- on private property and at personal expense.

The newly enacted environmental law defined as "pollutants" many materials that formerly were merely considered "waste products," including tailings left from milling lead ore.

Government agents were authorized to pursue EVERYBODY who ever -- at any time, in any manner -- contributed to any form of that newly defined "pollution."

Thus, we suffered the spectacle of government lawyers attacking the leaders of a Boy Scout Troop which had sent one bag of garbage to a dump -- forty years before the law was enacted.

Tailings heaps built with government indifference or approval were suddenly legislated into "hazardous materials" sites.

That asinine assault on American citizens continues today, although not as aggressively due to really bad publicity those pogroms created for EPA.

Although EPA says it 'probably' won't go after people who merely own a home lot contaminated with lead mill tailings -- including people who owned that land fifty years ago -- yet the choice is discretionary on EPA's part.

EPA still has authority to go after private owners of contaminated land -- who had no part in causing the contamination.

EPA claims that necessity of environmental cleanup is its justification for the ongoing assault on productive people and private land owners.

This is a modern illustration of William Pitt's comment in the British House of Commons, who said "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human liberty; it is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves."

There may be justification for making present-day polluters clean up a mess that they created after the law went into effect.

But forcing someone to pay for cleanup -- that created waste before the environmental law was passed -- is not fair and is a clear violation of the Constitutional ex post facto prohibition.

A government agency must not be allowed to change the rules without paying for the results of its change.

If a legal tailings dump was not a hazardous waste site fifty years ago, but has become a hazardous waste site because of legislation, and remediation is necessary -- it is the agency which changed the rules that must pay for site cleanup -- using money from its own budget.

Ex post facto means you are not allowed to enact law today that retroactively makes something a crime that was not a crime when the activity was done in the past.

EPA's lawyers trying to recover money from people and organizations that made an environmental mess fifty or a hundred years ago, before environmental pollution law was enacted, clearly violates the Constitution's ex post facto provision.

If -- according to a EPA representative at the 28 January 2003 meeting in Fredericktown, Missouri -- the Supreme Court has ruled that, because environmental cleanup is a necessity, ex post facto shakedown of citizens who owned contaminated land prior to enactment of environmental pollution laws is legal, then it seems plain that there are a bunch of Supreme Court judges who violated their Oath Of Office and who at the very least need a refresher course on the U.S. Constitution.

Ditto the legislators who created those laws and the bureaucrats who apply the law.

Supreme Court approval of ex post facto sets a terrible precedent.

How can any person or business responsibly plan for the future -- when a government agency and the courts allow activities which are now legal to retroactively become crimes in the future?

Mill tailings and mine waste disposal from early mining activities was not controlled by state or federal law.

Mill tailings more recently created were handled in accordance with state and federal law.

How is it that Congress authorizes -- and the Supreme Court allows -- legal action against people and companies who obeyed the law of their day?

That's exactly why the Founding Fathers who drafted the U.S. Constitution, expressly prohibited creation of ex post facto laws by future law makers -- and enforcement of those laws by courts and bureaucrats.

Site cleanup is a Public Health issue and should be funded from the public Treasury, not by extortion of money from people who caused the problem before enactment of environmental cleanup laws, and not by assigning blame to innocent property owners.

If a site was in compliance with the law when the site was created, but today is leaking materials only recently defined as "pollutants," then funding and responsibility for site cleanup must be handled as a Public Health issue financed by all citizens, not as the legal responsibility of the site's creator, and not as a responsibility of property owners from decades past or modern-day land owners.

No dollar spent for lawyers ever turned a shovel of dirt at a cleanup site.

EPA is overrun with lawyers.

If EPA were to fire its entire legal staff and use that money for on-site cleanup, at least two or three times as much actual environmental cleanup work could be done on contaminated sites.

U.S. environmental law needs revision to eliminate ex post facto assault on American citizens and to bring EPA into Constitutional compliance.

Please contact your Congressional representatives and have them take care of this.

You could be the next home owner extortion victim of EPA's environmental cleanup.

How environmental cleanup programs are conducted does matter. EPA should just get the cleanup job done, not harass property owners.