The Government Grab for Your Water – Part Two

By Lowell Ponte

In Colorado it is against state law to capture and water your garden with the rain and snow that falls on your own roof, as we discussed in Part One of this Editorial.

And now 24 U.S. Senators, all Democrats except for Independents Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have proposed legislation, S.787, to assert an even more draconian de facto government ownership over nearly every drop of water in the United States.

Under this measure, which has the noble-sounding name The Clean Water Restoration Act, the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency would have nearly total control over all tidal waters and interstate waters.

This bill would also give these government entities nearly total power over “all other waters, such as intrastate lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittant streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, or natural ponds,” as well as over “tributaries of the aforementioned waters….the territorial seas; and….wetlands adjacent to the aforementioned waters….,” and “ephemeral and seasonal streams.”

These awesome powers also include whatever might “affect entire watersheds.”

In the past, liberal administrations have stretched such powers to seize control of private property.

“Wetlands” were arbitrarily defined as any piece of land dampened by rain for even a few hours per year, and abundant life forms such as brine shrimp were redefined as endangered subspecies whose rain-filled potholes must be preserved as habitat for the endangered.

The collectivists are now back seeking even broader, more vague powers over so-called “wetlands” and “intermittant” and “ephemeral” streams that might be wet for only a few hours each year.

Worse, they want the pretext of water safety to give government total control over all “watersheds,” including your roof, lawn and driveway.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2001 and 2006 struck down some of these water-driven political power grabs. [See Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. United States Army Corps of Engineers, 531 U.S. 159 (January 9, 2001) and Rapanos v. United States, 547 U.S. 715 (June 19, 2006)].

The U.S. Supreme Court, for example, largely restricted the Army Corps of Engineers legitimate sphere of activities to “navigable” waterways used by boats or barges.

If enacted, S.787 explicitly tries to nullify all such judicial restrictions, which the bill itself says “have resulted in confusion, permitting delays, increased costs, litigation, and reduced protections for waters of the United States.” In other words, a few ordinary people have successfully resisted government attempts to seize control their property viaß water regulations.

If S.787 becomes law, warns the American Land Rights Association (ALRA), “the Federal bureaucracies will gain control over all the watersheds in the United States. That includes dry land inside or adjacent to watersheds. That means everything, because all land is in a watershed.”

“The Clean Water Restoration Act is the biggest threat to private property since CARA [the Conservation of Agricultural Resources Act],” warns ALRA, “and actually affects far more land and people.”

If S.787 becomes law, the Federal Government will have de facto ownership over America’s water supplies.

With the ruling party in Washington, D.C., already rushing to seize control of the nation’s food supply, private firearms, and other rights and necessities essential for liberty, this new power grab for America’s water appears to be one more link in the chains we will be forced to wear in an emerging collectivist state.

A government with the power to deny you both food and water will be your master, not your servant.

How ironic it is that the Environmental Protection Agency is grabbing for the power to regulate carbon dioxide, a gas we exhale with every breath and that plants need to grow, and for the power to regulate all water, an element that comprises approximately 60 percent of the male, and 55 percent of the female, human body.

The EPA, in other words, is grabbing for the power not to protect our environment but to control human beings.

You cannot grow survival food if your water supply is taken away, especially in this time of uncertain weather and uneven rainfall across much of the United States, and in this era when most home gardeners lack drought-hardy heirloom seeds and must rely on thirsty hybrid seeds or plants from do-it-yourself chain stores that require ample water.

It is easy to see why wise people are laying in storable food and filling storable water barrels.