Just imagine. You want to build a home, so you buy a $23,000 piece of land in a residential subdivision in your hometown and get started. The government then tells you to stop, threatens you with $40 million in fines and is not kidding.
That's the case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, with briefs being filed today by the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of a Priest Lake, Idaho, family, Chantell and Mike Sackett.
Attorney Damien Schiff, who will be arguing before the high court in the case, said it's simply a case of a government run amok, and it poses a potential threat to perhaps not every landowner across the nation, but untold millions.
The Sacketts, Schiff said, "bought property, and the government in effect has ordered them to treat the property like a public park."
"The EPA has not paid them a dime for that privilege," he said. "The regime we have operating now allows the EPA to take property without having to pay for it, or giving the owners the right to their day in court.""
The organization has prepared a video to explain the case:
The case developed when the Sacketts bought a .63-acre parcel of land for $23,000 in a subdivision in their hometown of Priest Lake, Idaho. The land is 500 feet from a lake, had a city water and sewer tap assigned, had no running or standing water and was in the middle of other developed properties.
The couple obtained all of the needed permits for their project and started work. Suddenly, the Environmental Protection Agency showed up on the building site, demanded that the work stop and issued a "compliance order" that the couple remove the fill they had brought in, restore the land to its native condition, plant trees every 10 feet, fence it off and let it sit for three years.
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