Liberty Matters News Service
February 13, 2001
Mexican
Biosphere Built With U.S. Tax Dollars
Several U.S. federal agencies are contributing millions of dollars to build a two million-acre “biosphere” along the San Pedro River bordering Arizona. Records show the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the Agency for International Development, have spent almost $2 million tax dollars on the project. Ranchers on both sides of the border believe the wildlife habitat will spell the end of grazing. Mexican rancher, Alice Valenzuela says; “The intent from the beginning was not to protect an existing national park. It was part of a much larger nucleus for expanding environmental protection efforts over a much larger territory.” She added; “Almost 100 percent of the money for park development is coming from the U.S. government or American NGO’s…like the Audubon Society and The Nature Conservancy.” Read more...
“Traditional
State Power” Trumps Corps
The U.S. Supreme Court took a giant step in restoring the federalism doctrine, which lay dormant for decades. In Solid Waste Agency v. Army Corps of Engineers, the Court struck down the requirement for a wetlands permit for dredging and filling on land containing isolated ponds, not adjacent to navigable waters. The Corps claimed jurisdiction because the ponds were habitat for migratory birds. The Court found it unnecessary to reach the constitutional argument stating that interstate bird flight was insufficient to trigger the interstate commerce clause power. Rather, the Court decided that the Corps exceeded its authority, and the regulation was invalid because it constituted a “federal encroachment upon a traditional state power”. The Court went into great detail about federalism by recognizing U.S. v. Lopez and U.S. v. Morrison. They also discussed restricting regulatory agencies to the parameters of congressionally mandated authority noted in FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco.
Enviros
Undermine Norton
Within
48 hours of her confirmation, environmentalists were attacking George W.
Bush’s Secretary of Interior, Gale Norton, as being too pro-private
property rights and constitutionally oriented.
As an olive branch, Dick Cheney quietly tried to have his close
personal friend, John Turner, appointed to one of several political
jobs. The first being Deputy Secretary of the Interior, the
departments number two position behind Norton and the other as head of
the president’s controversial Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ),
where most political environmental policy originates for the federal
land use agencies. But Bush
and Cheney are finding that landowners nationwide have a problem with
Turner. From 1989 to 1993, Turner served under the first Bush
administration and later under Clinton’s as Director of the Fish and
Wildlife Service administering the Endangered Species Act. He then left and became CEO for the Conservation Fund, a land
acquisition trust fund. Hopefully,
Norton will have the opportunity to develop positive relationships with
landowners during her stint at DOI and not be burdened by individuals in
her own department that believe in heavy-handed government programs.
Farmers Sue
Feds Over Water Rights
After
two years of futile negotiations with the National Marine Fisheries
Service over irrigation water use, the Okanogan County Commission and a
group of farmers have given the NMFS and other federal agencies notice
that they intend to sue. Farmers
in the Methow Valley of Washington have been forced to cease irrigating
for two summers to accommodate steelhead and spring Chinook salmon,
leading to loss of crops and, in one case, bankruptcy.
The NMFS rules dictate that stream flows must not fall below
“pre-civilization” levels meaning that farmers cannot irrigate in at
least five of every ten years. The
commissioners contend water management belongs to the states, not the
federal government. “We
have tried to reach a reasonable agreement over water use, but it has
become clear that the federal government doesn’t want to be
reasonable,” said Commissioner Craig Vejraska. Read
more...
New
Mexico Authorizes Tree Thinning
The New Mexico Senate
has overwhelmingly approved a measure to allow counties to log national
forests to remove overgrowth and dead wood.
The legislation is in response to last summer’s devastating
fires that destroyed more than 500,000 acres of New Mexico’s forests. After years of federal mismanagement, the forests are
not only choked with dead wood, but with underbrush causing the loss of
an estimated one million-acre feet of water per year.
The federal
Read the New Mexico Bill