After years of systematically stripping water rights
from landowners in the Western US, a federal court ordered that the
federal government must pay them for lost property rights according to the
Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, according to the May
4 Seattle Times. "In a case that could affect water wars
across the West, a federal court has ruled that the government must pay
property owners when it takes water away from them to protect fish listed
under the Endangered Species Act," states the Times.
Because water is mostly plentiful, most people east of
the Mississippi River have no idea how critically important water rights
are to people in the Western United States. Water is gold to those who
have to make a living off the land. Without water, they cannot survive.
Through various treaties and legal transactions, the water is usually a property
right of the landowner, or in the case of a river, the state in most
situations in the West. Under the Clinton administration, Secretary
of the Interior Bruce Babbitt used every devious means he could to shift
water rights from private landowners or the state to the federal
government. There is truth in the saying in the West that, "he who
controls the water controls the people," and no one knew that better
than Babbitt.
Not surprisingly, the federal government has been taking
the water from Central California farmers to protect Chinook salmon and
delta smelt after they had paid for it! "It was water
that was bought and paid for," said Michael Nordstrom, a lawyer for
Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage District, which filed the suit. "The
court has ruled they are clearly entitled to do it under the Endangered
Species Act (ESA), but if they do it they have to pay for it."
According to the May
4 Union Tribune, Fred Starrh, a cotton farmer in Kern County,
California believes the judges decision is big. "For the growers
across the United States it's big. If it stands, I think it could bring
reasonableness to the process. We've just been sitting here getting
hammered." Starrh pays about $3 million in June every year for water
he may never receive.
Plants and animals have more rights
than humans
One of the by-products of the ESA has been the
"taking" of private or state land and water to provide
"habitat" for an endangered species. The Act literally puts
nature's needs ahead of man's needs and makes plants and animals legally
superior to people. Even though the Fifth Amendment states, "No person...shall be
compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be
deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
shall private property be taken for public use, without just
compensation," the ESA has always trumped the takings clause of
the Fifth Amendment. It is no accident that the ESA requires that no
person shall "take" the habitat of an endangered species.
Even while the judge was ruling the water taking in
Central California unconstitutional, the US Bureau of Reclamation was destroying the lives of
2,000 farm and ranch families in Northern California and Southern Oregon.
According to the May
5 NewsMax, "On April 7th, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR)
notified rural families in the Klamath Basin Project, a watershed
straddling the California and Oregon border, that nearly all the
irrigation water in the basin had been shifted to save endangered sucker
fish." About 1,200 farmers depend on water from the project to grow
potatoes, grain, onions, hay and alfalfa. Almost 200,000 acres of pasture
and farmland in the Klamath Project will shortly go dry, with lost income
estimated at well over $100 million, notes NewsMax. Since the
announcement land values of these farms have plummeted from an average 0f
$800 per acre to about $50.
Contrary to the Central California Court decision,
Oregon U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken upheld the BOR resolution in Federal
Court. Citing treaty obligations such as the UN Convention on
International Threatened and Endangered Species (CITES) and the US ESA,
Aiken wrote in her ruling, "Given the high priority the law places on
species threatened with extinction, I cannot find that the balance of
hardship tips sharply in the plaintiffs' favor." International law
once again trumps constitutional protections for American citizens.
It is no accident that Judge Aiken cites the UN CITES
treaty in the same breath as the ESA. Under Article I of the US
Constitution, Congress has no authority to create, let alone enforce the
ESA. Only 19 powers were given Congress, none of which could be twisted to
mean nature had more rights than US citizens. Just a few short weeks after
the US Senate ratified the UN CITES treaty, Congress used Article 6 of the
Constitution to justify passing the Endangered Species Act to fulfill the
requirements of the UN treaty.
Turning the US Constitution on its
head
Article VI of the Constitution states:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States
which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or
which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be
the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be
bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the
Contrary notwithstanding.
A careful reading of this provision using the
definitions for the words at the time the Constitution was written clearly
states that the Constitution is supreme over treaties and state law.
However, revisionists have twisted the meaning of the language to mean
that treaties are supreme over the Constitution, including the fifth amendment. In
the Central California decision US Court of Federal Claims Judge John Paul
Wiese in Washington, DC, rightly overruled the UN CITES treaty and the
ESA by saying the farmers are protected under the Fifth Amendment, which
prohibits the government from taking private property without paying for
it.
Until now, the takings clause of the Endangered Species
Act has superceded the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment that supposedly
protects citizens from this kind of abuse by their government. That is the
way Judge Aiken has ruled in the Klamath River Basin. Judge Wiese has
correctly ruled that the water taken by the US Fish and Wildlife Service
was a takings under the Fifth Amendment. But there is a condition that may
ultimately separate his ruling from that given by Judge Aiken. Judge Wiese
ruled it was a physical taking of water rather than a regulatory taking as
is the case of the Klamath River Basin decision. The farmers in Central
California had bought and paid for the water that was subsequently taken.
The farmers in the Klamath River Basin are being denied sale of the water
so the fish can be protected. The fish have more rights than the people.
Never mind that it has always been government policy to
sell Klamath River farmers water for families. Never mind that the lives
of the farmers and the communities that service them are being destroyed.
Never mind that the water in the Klamath River belongs to the States of
Oregon and California, not the federal government. This is the consequence
of having laws like the ESA based on the nature-is-god belief of
pantheism. Romans 1:21-23 says it best; "their thinking became
futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be
wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for
images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles."
That makes the Judge
Wiese decision all the more important because it still makes legal
precedent and opens the door to more rulings that the feds have to pay for
what they steal from citizens in the name of saving mother earth. Pray that the decision is not overturned by
the appellate court. V mc
