OPINION:
Just after taking office, President Obama gave the Environmental Protection Agency executive marching orders that it has used to invoke its Waters of the United States (WOTUS) regulation. The regulation gives the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers complete control of the way in which all of the lands, private as well as public, can be used.
This is a federal-zoning power grab that usurps all state and local government control of zoning for the entire United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. It is a travesty of unimaginable dimension and its repercussions will be felt by millions of homeowners, farmers, businesses, and more.
The effect will be small in the first year, but the disruption to life and the economy will grow each year thereafter as the EPA exerts its will through the requirement for federal permits for everything from plowing corn fields, to installing backyard swimming pools, to building sun rooms on existing homes. Soon enough there will be no land use that won’t have to be approved by the federal government.
This all sounds just a bit to much like Soviet Russia of the 1960s.
JACK DUCKWORTH
Burke, Va.
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