Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Monday, March 11, 2013
NM: Feds stop calling dry land 'water'
A lawsuit by a New Mexico couple whose dry, sandy homestead had been
classified as a wetland by federal government regulators is being
dropped after Washington agreed to stop mislabeling the land. The Pacific Legal Foundation
confirmed today the lawsuit on behalf of Peter and Frankie Smith ended
after the federal decision to “stop labeling their dry land as a ‘water
of the United States.’” As WND reported, the
couple had been warned by the federal government not to touch trash –
tin cans, broken glass and the like – that had accumulated over the
years on the 20 acres of desert land, because it could harm the Rio
Grande River, 25 miles away. The couple bought the land near Santa Fe to
build a retirement home. The lawsuit claimed Washington was over-reaching in its claim that
the land, which does not contain any “relatively permanent, standing or
continuously body of water,” can be regulated by the Clean Water Act. The Smiths’ land is 20 acres off State Road 14 near Santa Fe. They
had been cleaning up trash, cans, glass and other debris that had
accumulated before they bought the land. The government classified the private property as an arroyo, claimed
jurisdiction and ordered the Smiths to “halt any clean-up of dead trees
and trash that had accumulated under a prior owner.” “The federal government was engaged in an illegal land grab by
mislabeling the Smiths’ property and misusing the Clean Water Act,” said
PLF attorney Jennifer M. Fry. “The Smiths’ desert property is bone dry, and it is 25 miles away
from the nearest navigable water, the Rio Grande. On the rare occasion
when there is rain at the Smiths’ property, water must pass through a
second dry arroyo and then through an intermittent flowing creek and two
dams before reaching the Rio Grande. So the federal government’s
justification for claiming Clean Water Act jurisdiction over the Smiths’
property was nonsensical.” Fry said she and her colleagues “are glad that federal officials have
agreed to back off and stop classifying the Smiths’ dry land as ‘wet.’” “But it’s unfortunate that it took a lawsuit to force the feds to
pull the plug on their plans and leave the Smiths alone,” she said...more
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