Pond owners or want to be Pond or Lake owners....!!!!

[brin]

Just look at what this family is going through after working hard to put in a pond on their 8 Acres....I have a spring fed pond that spills into a creek, that spills into a river etc....so now what ?

Wyoming welder faces $75,000 a day in EPA fines for building pond on his property | Fox News

 

[jlgurr]

Wow! That is awful to read. One sentence said "draconian letter from heavy handed bureaucracy" and that is a fitting description of the government. I look forward to hearing the final outcome of this issue and we will pray for the landowners.

 

[LD1]

And our government has nothing better to waste money on.....

Just sad.

I like this bit:

The authority of the EPA has recently been called into question over proposed rule changes that would redefine what bodies of water the government agency will oversee under the Clean Water Act.

The proposed changes would give the agency a say in ponds, lakes, wetlands and any stream -- natural or manmade -- that would have an effect on downstream navigable waters on both public land and private property.

Doesnt all surface water eventually make it to "navigable" waters?? Road ditches, culverts under my drive, etc.

What about my gutters and downspouts that flow across the ground, into my pond, overflow into a little dry creek, then to a bigger creak, and eventually to "navigable" waters??? What happens if I have a leaf dam in my gutter:laughing:

 

[Hooked_on_HP]

He must have made somebody mad along the way and they reported him to the EPA. There just seems there is more to the story than we are hearing. In my limited dealings with the EPA there had to be complaints before they would do any thing.
Bill

 

[MossRoad]

Just look at what this family is going through after working hard to put in a pond on their 8 Acres....I have a spring fed pond that spills into a creek, that spills into a river etc....so now what ?

Wyoming welder faces $75,000 a day in EPA fines for building pond on his property | Fox News

If you put silt or chemicals into that spring, you can expect a visit from someone downstream... that's what that means.

 

[brin]

If you put silt or chemicals into that spring, you can expect a visit from someone downstream... that's what that means.

No problem then...all that comes out of our pond is pure spring water from the spring I bought 40 yrs. ago with my hard earned money...:confused3: The rules seem to change on all of us that own property...while the ones that don't collect the spoils...

 

[Loren49]

The referenced story does not give any factual details as to the nature of this pond. If a spring fed stream has been dammed it has an effect on all owners downstream. Water temperature can be increased, silt can increase. It is a barrier to movement. Water rights are at the root of many challenges...local, state, national and international. A land owner does not own the right to do anything they want to the water or the air that is on or over their property. There are many examples past and present where regulation was missing as well as instances of unreasonable oversight.

Much more information is required in this case in order to make an informed decision on whether the EPA or the individual is less reasonable.

Loren

 

[MossRoad]

No problem then...all that comes out of our pond is pure spring water from the spring I bought 40 yrs. ago with my hard earned money...:confused3: The rules seem to change on all of us that own property...while the ones that don't collect the spoils...

I don't know. If you think about it, flowing water is rarely ours to own and control. I lived on a lake from age 0-24. However, it was a man-made oxbow lake that used to be a river. In the depression, the WPA cut it off from the main river to make a Riverside Drive and it left a horseshoe lake about a mile long. Even though it was a lake, we had river rights, which are different. Since the river was a navigable waterway, we could enter it from our property and travel anywhere on it we pleased, as long as we did not step out on anyone else's property. If it was a lake with no public access it would have been a bit different. The city owned park that took up the entire other side of the shoreline could have said we could not travel onto their half of the lake. Anyhow, on our rural tree farm, there is a drainage ditch that enters and exits across one corner of our property. It is not a navigable waterway and is a county drainage structure. We are not allowed to impede its flow and any construction projects on our property have to get approval, silt control (even though there's no possible way for silt to travel up a 30' hill and down a hundred yards to the creek), etc... And the ground water under my property extends from there to about 15 miles to the east, but flows over a hundred miles to the west clear to the Illinois border. There's only an 11' drop in ground elevation from South Bend, IN to Kankakee, IL. So if I dump some toxic goo into the groundwater, it will eventually go out my property, over to the Kankakee river a mile away, and then on to the fine folks of northeastern Illinois, into the Illinois river, then on to the Mississippi. Nice guy that I am, I try to keep my end of the bargain by not poisoning the drinking water of several 10s of millions of people.