It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the EPA began to shift its focus from environmental protection to economic destruction, but the change now is too obvious to be denied or ignored. From the war on fossil fuels to the war on industry to the war on agriculture, it’s clear that this agency has unilaterally redefined its mission and declared the productive American citizen its enemy.
Lois Alt is merely the latest of this rogue bureaucracy’s untold victims. The only reason we know her name is that she had the temerity to defy them.
Owner of the Eight Is Enough chicken farm in Hardy County, Alt was minding her own business and making a contribution to society when the EPA cited her for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act. Much to the surprise of the bureaucratic bullies, she challenged their overreach in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia.
The EPA is not used to having its victims call their bluff. They expect American citizens to be docile and compliant. Like all bullies, they often cut and run when they unexpectedly encounter strong resistance, and that’s what they did – or tried to do – when Lois Alt stood up to them.
The EPA withdrew its complaint and moved to dismiss Alt’s lawsuit. That’s when the bullies got an even bigger surprise.
Concluding, quite reasonably, that thousands of other farmers might be subject to similar EPA victimization in the future if the agency were not reined in, U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey refused to dismiss the case, subsequently issuing a summary judgment in Alt’s favor.
Now the bullies have become crybabies, appealing the ruling in the case they tried to have dismissed because their intended victim stood up to them and refused to be browbeaten into submission.
This out-of-control agency should be slapped down again by the court of appeal – and reined in once and for all by our representatives in Washington.