{"id":758,"date":"2017-09-18T10:42:17","date_gmt":"2017-09-18T14:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/groundbasedspacematters.com\/?p=758"},"modified":"2017-09-18T10:42:17","modified_gmt":"2017-09-18T14:42:17","slug":"lessons-in-the-tricky-navigation-of-drafting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/groundbasedspacematters.com\/index.php\/2017\/09\/18\/lessons-in-the-tricky-navigation-of-drafting\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons in the Tricky Navigation of Drafting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every now and then it helps when you are working on something to see what happened with other things like it. As Congress, the commercial space industry, and lobbyists contemplate legislation for non-traditional private actors in outer space, it may be wise to revisit the perils of imprecision.<\/p>\n

Look what happened to the \u201cnavigable waters of the United States\u201d in the hands of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They grew some. The Supreme Court did a fine job of describing a regulator\u2019s first shy, then creeping, then galloping jurisdictional expansion over the course of five Presidential administrations in Rapanos v. United States<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>by expanding what “navigable waters” mean. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The Clean Water Act requires a permit to discharge a pollutant into navigable water.\u00a0Justice Scalia, with his usual verve, described the predicament that Mr. Rapanos faced starting in April 1989, when Mr. Rapanos<\/p>\n

backfilled wetlands on a parcel of land in Michigan that he owned and sought to develop. This parcel included 54 acres of land with sometimes-saturated soil conditions. The nearest body of navigable water was 11 to 20 miles away. Regulators had informed Mr. Rapanos that his saturated fields were “waters of the United States,” 33 U. S. C. \u00a7 1362(7), that could not be filled without a permit. Twelve years of criminal and civil litigation ensued.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In deciding whether to grant or deny a permit, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) exercises the discretion of an enlightened despot, relying on such factors as “economics,” “aesthetics,” “recreation,” and “in general, the needs and welfare of the people,” 33 CFR \u00a7 320.4(a) (2004). The average applicant for an individual permit spends 788 days and $271,596 in completing the process, and the average applicant for a nationwide permit spends 313 days and $28,915\u2014not counting costs of mitigation or design changes.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The enforcement proceedings against Mr. Rapanos are a small part of the immense expansion of federal regulation of land use that has occurred under the Clean Water Act\u2014without any change in the governing statute\u2014during the past five Presidential administrations.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

One of the statute’s principal provisions is 33 U. S. C. \u00a7 1311(a), which provides that “the discharge of any pollutant by any person shall be unlawful.” “The discharge of a pollutant” is defined broadly to include “any addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source,” \u00a7 1362(12), and “pollutant” is defined broadly to include not only traditional contaminants but also solids such as “dredged spoil, . . . rock, sand, [and] cellar dirt,” \u00a7 1362(6). And, most relevant here, the CWA defines “navigable waters” as “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.” \u00a7 1362(7).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Most citations and page numbers omitted).<\/p>\n

At first the Corps was becomingly modest in its approach, and interpreted \u201cnavigable waters\u201d in the ordinary way, as \u201cinterstate waters that are \u2018navigable in fact\u2019 or readily susceptible of being rendered so.\u201d\u00a0 We might, perhaps, think back to steam boat captains in days of yore asking each other whether a stretch of the Mississippi was navigable or whether they’d run aground on sand bars.<\/p>\n

Instead, as Justice Scalia informed us:<\/p>\n

After passage of the CWA, the Corps initially adopted this traditional judicial definition for the Act’s term “navigable waters.” After a District Court enjoined these regulations as too narrow, the Corps adopted a far broader definition. The Corps’ new regulations deliberately sought to extend the definition of “the waters of the United States” to the outer limits of Congress’s commerce power.<\/p>\n

The Corps’ current regulations interpret “the waters of the United States” to include, in addition to traditional interstate navigable waters, 33 CFR \u00a7 328.3(a)(1) (2004), “[a]ll interstate waters including interstate wetlands,” \u00a7 328.3(a)(2); “[a]ll other waters such as intrastate lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, or natural ponds, the use, degradation or destruction of which could affect interstate or foreign commerce,” \u00a7 328.3(a)(3); “[t]ributaries of [such] waters,” \u00a7 328.3(a)(5); and “[w]etlands adjacent to [such] waters [and tributaries] (other than waters that are themselves wetlands),” \u00a7 328.3(a)(7). The regulation defines “adjacent” wetlands as those “bordering, contiguous [to], or neighboring” waters of the United States. \u00a7 328.3(c). It specifically provides that “[w]etlands separated from other waters of the United States by manmade dikes or barriers, natural river berms, beach dunes and the like are `adjacent wetlands.'” Ibid.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lesson One<\/strong>: don’t rely on the name of the term if that’s what you really mean.\u00a0 That broad definition of navigable waters as “waters of the United States” allowed the Corps endless leeway in interpreting what was meant by “navigable waters.”\u00a0 The word “navigable” in the name didn’t limit the waters to those that could actually be navigated.\u00a0 My own suspicion is that the drafters didn’t mean to include water in prairie potholes.\u00a0 If I’m right, the better place for “navigable” would have been in the definition than in the name.<\/p>\n

Lesson Two<\/strong>: don’t forget that there are other actors out there who will influence the interpretation of the language you have crafted.\u00a0 It was the courts who pushed the Corps toward a more expansive approach.\u00a0 The Corps went with it.\u00a0 How did the courts become involved?\u00a0 I would imagine an environmental group sued the Corps and won.\u00a0 That broad definition gave the Corps all the room it needed to extend its reach.<\/p>\n

Lesson Three<\/strong>:\u00a0don’t rely on the present occupants of an agency to be there forever.\u00a0 Write as if the future depended on it.\u00a0 “Navigable waters” grew to include water in prairie potholes, even though no one’s going to get a rowboat in a pothole, much less a steamboat.\u00a0 These changes took place over decades, but that broad definition provided the tools for the expansion from the outset. \u00a0 Although the Supreme Court finally set some limits on the Corps’ reach, it took Mr. Rapanos a long time and a lot of money to be rescued.<\/p>\n

Note for the non-lawyers<\/strong>:\u00a0 The laws Congress writes go in the United States Code (USC).\u00a0 When regulatory agencies such as the Corps or the Federal Aviation Administration issue their requirements in accordance with the law Congress wants them to administer, the agencies locate their regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations.\u00a0 If there is a conflict between the United States Code and the Code of Federal Regulations, the United States Code wins because the Constitution vests the power to make laws in the Congress.\u00a0 The regulatory agencies are in the Executive Branch, and are merely carrying out the directions Congress supplied through the United States Code.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every now and then it helps when you are working on something to see what happened with other things like…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,83,84,39],"class_list":["post-758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cfr","tag-drafting","tag-regulation","tag-usc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nLessons in the Tricky Navigation of Drafting - 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