Wednesday, November 06, 2013

How federal abuse can last for generations

by William Perry Pendley

...Beginning in the late 1960s, Mr. McIlroy’s grandfather, W.C. McIlroy, complained that Job Corps students were trespassing on and littering his property, damaging his fences, and destroying his hay. His objections went unanswered. In 1971, he died and his son, W.L. McIlroy, took over the farm only to discover that the Forest Service had drilled a well on his property. He protested, but Forest Service officials said the well, used as a water source for Job Corps facilities, was on federal land. Over the years, a string of Job Corps directors, Forest Service rangers and Forest Service officials repeated that statement, over the family’s protestations.

In 1973, unbeknownst to W.L. McIlroy, the Job Corps used heavy equipment to tear down a 100-year-old levee built just upstream of the farm at the confluence of Mulberry River and Fane’s Creek to protect the farm and the site of the Job Corps facility. The result was flooding and erosion downstream, alteration of the bed of the Mulberry River owing to silting and deposits of eroded rock, and destruction of 10 acres of the farm. Subsequent actions by the Forest Service, which included removing fill, laying culverts and pouring concrete, only exacerbated the problem: The water widened the channel across the farm to Mulberry River.

In 1998, Mr. McIlroy, who had taken over the farm from W.L., discovered part of his fence had been flattened, a sewage-effluent line installed over it and across 50 to 60 yards of the farm, and Job Corps sewage effluent discharged from his property into the Mulberry River. Subsequently, he discovered the Forest Service installed a “temporary” water line that ran a quarter-mile across his land and blocked entry to his farm. The Forest Service also continued to use the water well — even though a later federal survey proved the well was on the farm; trespassed with heavy equipment onto the farm to blade dirt and drag drainage ditches; built a service road across the farm to access the well and the sewage-effluent line and poured concrete on the road when it eroded; used parts of the farm for heavy-equipment training, digging down to creek rock, causing serious erosion, destroying fences, and resulting in the loss of escaping livestock; and dumped concrete and construction waste on its property near the farm, effluent from which washed onto the farm.

In January 2013, a Forest Service official “document[ed] the encroachment on [the McIlroy’s] property.” Nonetheless, the Forest Service refused to compensate Mr. McIlroy or remove those encroachments. Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which permits recompense when the government’s employees commit torts, Mr. McIlroy filed an administrative claim. He will sue if it is denied. Meanwhile, he wonders whether his Scottish clansmen in the days of William Wallace ever saw greater abuses by “the king’s men.”

William Perry Pendley, an attorney, is president of Mountain States Legal Foundation and author of “Sagebrush Rebel: Reagan’s Battle With Environmental Extremists and Why It Matters Today” (Regnery, 2013).


Can you imagine what would happen if you trespassed on federal land, drilled a well and installed a water line?  Then used heavy equipment all over "their" property?  I'm pretty sure you would end up in jail.  Just hope its not in Deming.



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