Cowboy Confessional

I’m a fan of small government, thus I am perpetually disappointed. I would gladly settle for no government than a large and oppressive one.

I may have found a way.

Seems the city of Half Moon Bay (a rather charming place otherwise) overstepped it’s bounds and made a man’s property effectively out of his control. By digging a poorly placed storm drain and strategically piling the excess dirt, they turned his land (which had been approved for development) into “wetlands”. The allegedly unintentional conversion put his property under environmental protection, and cost the owner both the million bucks he paid for the turf, as well as whatever profit he would have made by putting 83 residential units there.

So he sued, won, received a judgement for $36 million, and may force the city into bankruptcy.

Good for him.

The primary benefit to mankind is that there soon may be one less government entity, and in this case one so evil and/or inept that by installing a storm drain (as part of the pending development project) they robbed the property owner. Such a government has no right to live.

Just as delightful is that the inanity of this particular environmental regulation has been exposed. The goal of this regulatory rubbish was to protect existing wetlands — to make sure nature’s water recycling system survived. Yet an arrogant city found a way to create new wetlands (which really stretches the definition “wetlands” to begin with) and remove it from legal private use. A law so poorly written — that the very definition of “existing” could be buried by a backhoe — should be annulled.

Now if the owner could sue the EPA out of existence …

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This entry was posted by Guy Smith on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 1:33 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.