This land is their land
Man fined $137K for making two ponds on his own land.
9 Responses to “This land is their land”
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August 22nd, 2011 at 9:20 am
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We don’t live in a free country.
August 22nd, 2011 at 9:21 am
This is the result of the EPA. Its designed to raise barriers to entry to keep out new competition, development and progress.
August 22nd, 2011 at 10:30 am
I suppose reading the article would be too hard. He wasn’t fined for making ponds, he was fined for screwing up a nearby trout stream with his sediment.
And he was fined by the state DEP, not the US EPA.
Other articles on the story report that he repeatedly ignored orders to stop construction in 2009 and 2010.
I have a hard time feeling sorry for him. And no, just because you own a piece of property doesn’t mean you get to fill someone else’s trout stream with mud and not pay for cleanup.
August 22nd, 2011 at 11:57 am
You know, if anyone thinks they own their land absolutely then they’ve been under a misconception from the very beginning. This is not a new development, but one that goes back to the very roots of Common Law. Unless you happen to be the sovereign, you own your land in some form of “fee,” meaning that it is granted to you by the sovereign, subject to certain conditions. The term “fee” is from the same origin as “feudal,” and the system’s basis is still, essentially, the same. In America, a landowner has his land under certain conditions, such as payment of taxes and submission to laws and regulations. It doesn’t mean you’re not free; it means that you’re living in America. There has never been a time when it was any different in this country.
Land held not subject to any sovereign is called “allodium,” and there is no allodial land in private hands in America and never has been.
August 22nd, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Wolfwood: Incorrect.
Look up patented mining claims and homesteads.
Fee simple titles are a “service” offered by counties to allow banks something that they can actually attach a mortgage to.
Local governments hate old family homesteads, since there is not anything there they can attach a lien to.
August 22nd, 2011 at 12:48 pm
I can tell you, from personally experience, that the PA DEP is the definition of bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. Want to destroy a habitat? Fine, as long as you grease the right municipality palms and thus have the correct paperwork. Objectively, demonstrably did work that had zero or even positive environmental impact? Oh, but you forgot the paperwork and to genuflect in the proper manner, so you’re boned. A friend of mine was aware that a DEP report was probably being pencil whipped, mainly because the report didn’t really address the operation of his plant and they got better data from sensing equipment the company had put in. You could run a report with minute by minute resolution on what was coming out of a stack, but DEP requires a visual inspection and report. Literally, a guy is supposed to go look at the smoke/steam and write down whether on not it looked ok. Seriously. That’s how they’re protecting the environment. And when someone admitted that they hadn’t strictly speaking been doing that at the required intervals (again, not important since a computer is collecting actual data and not some guy’s guesstimate) all hell breaks loose. LSS, felony conviction and fines (plea bargained down to, they pushed for jail time, even after admitting that there was zero environmental impact), destroyed his career.
You want to beat the Liberal out of someone, let them deal with the DEP for a couple of years. The cost of development is ungodly high in PA because every freakin spot of damp earth is a protected wetland that has to be mitigated before you can legally turn a shovelful of soil, and every river, creek and piss stream contains some protected fish/frog/sea urchin.
August 22nd, 2011 at 12:59 pm
If I were Mr. Bitz, the next time the opera or whatever came calling looking for money, I’d tell them to go visit the PA DEP–they have it.
August 26th, 2011 at 4:54 pm
I have to agree with Captain Holly.
I can’t feel sorry for this guy when he impacts a trout stream. He could have easily avoided this entire mess.
You’d be singing a different song if you owned the adjacent property that was being impacted.
August 26th, 2011 at 4:57 pm
no wildlife was affected.