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A Test Case to Expose the Tyranny of the Administrative State
by Janet Levy American Thinker
Let us suppose you draw water and sediment in small quantities from a stream bed. After removing some solid material, you let the remainder flow back into the stream without adding anything. Are you polluting the stream? Common sense dictates one answer. But an overzealous Idaho green group and a federal court do not see it that way.
So Shannon Poe, a suction dredge miner, ended up paying a $150,000 fine after a citizen suit was brought against him in 2018 by the Idaho Conservation League (ICL). Technically, the fine, imposed by Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Raymond E. Patricco in September 2022, was for not obtaining permits for suction mining (NPDES permit IDG370000). Which means the activity isn’t banned outright as polluting. But before that, Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald E. Bush (see page 11 of his judgement) had determined that “the very nature of Mr. Poe’s suction dredge mining added pollutants to the South Fork Clearwater River.”