CAPR's blog

2014 CAPR Legal Fund Wrap Up! 2014 - A BUSY YEAR FOR THE CAPR LEGAL FUND With Your help, this past year has turned out to be the busiest and most active for the CAPR Legal Fund since the King County Critical Areas Ordinance battle in the mid 2000’s. And with rulings expected on several Legal Fund actions, 2015 should be eventful! We are waiting for a court date to be set by the U.S. 9th District Court of Appeals in our suit filed on behalf of the Mills family. The challenge was filed as a Citizens’ Lawsuit in federal court and alleges that the City of Duvall, WA has violated the Clean Water Act by losing control (dumping) of its storm water on the Mills’ property causing flooding and property damage. Duvall maintains that, yes it is using the Mills’ property as part of its storm sewer system and that it is legal in doing so. The laws suggests otherwise.

In a complicated dance between the Federal Government, Corporate Environmental Organizations, Private Property Rights, and Industry a new trend is emerging. Trade your rights for pie in the sky eco-tourism dollars. One step in the dance is species listing; as an example, the Sage Grouse was to be listed as an endangered species prompted by suits from Center for Biological Diversity and Wild Earth Guardians. Population estimates for sage grouse run from 100,000 to 500,000 birds. They range across 290,000 square miles of sage brush habitat in California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Many states reacted in panic not wanting the loss of industry, jobs, and property rights that would go with this listing and opted to plan to protect the grouse through state sponsored efforts.

Suppose an environmental corporate group with an known a publicized extremist agenda were to trespass on your land because some people in the area have granted access for other traditional reasons. Suppose the goal of that trespass was to undermine your way of life and how you provide a service and make a living? This scenario is being played out in Wyoming, admittedly a huge scale, but the premise is the same at any scale throughout the west. Private property is private, and the right to grant or restrict access to private land should remain inviolate. For those who own private property and occasionally grant access to the public for particular reasons, the right to do so without fear of the results of that choice should remain in place.

Citizens' Alliance for Property Rights You Can Help CAPR With Supreme Court Challenge! Supreme Court to Review CAPR “Open Public Meetings Act” Challenge The Washington Supreme Court has announced that it will review the lower court rulings regarding the challenge brought by Citizens’ Alliance for Property Rights Legal Fund against the San Juan County Commission for violations of Washington’s Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA). The suit brought by the San Juan chapter of CAPR alleges that the County developed its current Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO) with little public input in sessions behind closed doors. Surprisingly, the County generally agrees calling the closed door sessions “committee work”!

CAPR Stevens County President René Holaday is interviewed by Missouri's Cynthia Davis on this Home Front Podcast. http://www.cynthiadavis.net/property-rights/ René Holaday's interview is a fact filled talk revealing the incrementally encroaching UN Agenda 21 sustainability planning.

The Army Corp of Engineers and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife continue to provide controversy with their proposed Puget Sound Nearshore Ecosystem Restoration Projects. These 11 Billion dollar tax-payer funded plans most certainly need closer scrutiny by the tax-paying public. Snohomish County Watch provides a closer look at one of the projects this Billion Dollar Boondoggle encompases. http://snoco.watch/2014/12/is-psnerp-site-an-army-corps-make-work-project/ This portion of the PSNERP proposed to undo the lifelong work of Rone Brewer, a member of the Washington Water Fowl Association to help in creating farmed land for waterfowl management and public access as part of a past ACE/WDFW restoration project. Now that work will be destroyed.

Student of the history of Liberty Lord John Acton famously said “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” With this in mind, as Free American Citizens we owe ourselves dutiful attention to the safeguarding of our Liberties. This seems an extraordinary task when we consider the behemoth government has become. It is in consideration of our Freedoms that we reach for what most Americans consider the baseline for the measurement of Liberty, our Federal and State Constitutions. The essence of Political Liberty is self-governance, and this can only be accomplished through interacting with our elected representatives. Americans tend to think we have three branches of government, the legislative, executive, and judicial, however, we have become the Captives of the Administrative.

On behalf of the following groups, a petition to repeal and replace the 2001 Skagit Instream Flow Rule has been submitted. •Washington REALTORs •Building Industry Association of Washington •North Puget Sound Association of REALTORs •Skagit Island County Building Association •Snohomish-Camano Association of REALTORs •MasterBuilders of King and Snohomish Counties •Washington State Farm Bureau •Just Water Alliance Citizens' Alliance for Property Rights supports this petition.

The Puget Sound Nearshore Ecosytem Restoration Project, PSNERP, http://www.pugetsoundnearshore.org/ will have comment on their NEPA until November 24. http://pugetsoundnearshore.org/outreach.html Online comments can be submitted here: http://bit.ly/PSNearshore That said, a project with the intention of destroying farmland that will be ruined for this and future generations could hardly be called a restoration, since it never was what it will be "restored" to. This project can hardly be called wise stewardship of land. What will the citizens of this state have if they do not have adequate farmland?

From Not Without a Fight: http://countieswithnationalforests.wordpress.com/2014/11/17/reader-view-feds-are-the-real-land-grabbers/#more-915 Reader View: Feds are the real land-grabbers Posted on November 17, 2014by ronroizen9 Editor’s note: On Oct. 27th, we published a New York Times op-ed by New Mexico’s U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich — titled, “The Land Grab Out West.” Heinrich, as readers may recall, was critical of the “state ownership of federal public lands” movement that has gained momentum in the American West in recent years, perhaps particularly in the state he represents, Utah.