Score One For Freedom, One Against EPA

From Paul Mulshine’s post in The Star Ledger Blogs:

You can get a good summation here on the Competitive Enterprise Institute blog.

The EPA has a practice of issuing “compliance orders” to property owners telling them to stop using their land and restore it to its prior condition, under penalty of $37,500 a day in fines, and declaring in such orders that such land is a federally protected wetland. It then waits months or years before actually suing the property owner for the fines, which accrue daily, potentially adding up to millions in fines. But in the meantime, it insists that the property owners can’t challenge its claim that their property is a non-usable wetland in court. If they want to take issue with its claim that their property is a “wetland,” they have to wait until the EPA sues them later on to collect those fines, after they’ve racked up potentially millions in fines under the compliance order.

This is a step in the right direction, but just a step.