This agency really needs to have their funding cut by 80% - they did great work when they were first formed but they have become an entrenched bureaucracy looking for more power to grab from We the People.
From The Washington Times:
Obama admin asserts dominion over creeks, streams, wetlands, ditches — even big puddles
President Obama’s administration on Wednesday claimed dominion over all of America’s streams, creeks, rills, ditches, brooks, rivulets, burns, tributaries, criks, wetlands — perhaps even puddles — in a sweeping move to assert unilateral federal authority.
The Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Army Corps of Engineers, says it has the authority to control all waterways within the United States — and will exercise that authority.
“We’re finalizing a clean water rule to protect the streams and the wetlands that one in three Americans rely on for drinking water. And we’re doing that without creating any new permitting requirements and maintaining all previous exemptions and exclusions,” EPA head Gina McCarthy told reporters Wednesday.
Want to fill in a soft spot in your pasture to grow some crops? No!
Have a creek that once flooded and is now filled with gravel runoff - want to excavate back to the nominal creek bed? No!
Own water rights to a creek and want to build a new water system? No!
These should be well beyond the scope of the EPA - these are more suited to the County and State regulatory boards - they know the land in question. The Tenth Amendment comes to mind again:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
If it is not specifically enumerated in the constitution, it belongs to the states or We the People.
Yes, you could defeat this on a case by case series of lawsuits but the EPA has free lawyers on tap and the average citizen would have to spend $300K to litigate up to a higher court. Who has that kind of money just to fill in a soft spot in their pasture.