AUGUST 2016 EDITION

PLF Senior Staff Attorney
Tony Francois
We're approaching September, toward the end of another hot summer in the American West, and as has become the tragic norm, America's National Forests are burning down at an alarming rate. PLF Senior Staff Attorney Tony Francois relates in a series of blog posts how these devastating fires are due in part to the United States Forest Service's policies, which increasingly exclude productive uses like timber, grazing, road building, off-road recreation, skiing, and water development from our National Forests. Tony explains how this wrong-headed approach results in ever increasing fuel accumulation, sadly leading to incredibly destructive fires.



PLF Law Clerk
Robert Fountain
This month, PLF Summer Law Clerk Robert Fountain submitted a comment on the United States Army Corps of Engineers' proposal to modify its Nationwide Permit Program. The Clean Water Act authorizes nationwide permits as a streamlined way for landowners with small projects to proceed with their activities without having to go through the burdensome individual permit process. Unfortunately, many of the proposed nationwide permit amendments would unnecessarily and unreasonably restrict their availability. Our comment letter urges the Corps to follow Congress' clear intent to make the Nationwide Permit Process a means of easing, not worsening, regulatory burdens for property owners.

Christina Martin
PLF attorneys also have been active on the speaking circuit. Christina Martin, Staff Attorney in the Atlantic Center, served on a panel addressing property rights for the James Madison Institute's Annual Policy Summit in Orlando. The panel, titled "A Collision Course:  Environmentalism vs. Property Rights," included Florida State Senator Alan Hays. Christina used the opportunity to address how state and federal environmental regulations threaten to put landowners at the mercy of overzealous regulators. And the undersigned spoke last week to the assembled multitudes of the California Federation of Republican Women, Plumas County Chapter, concerning recent high-profile PLF cases and of not losing sight, in this hotly contested electoral season, of the importance of the judiciary in preserving our liberties. (As always, if your organization is interested in hearing from a PLF speaker, please contact our speakers bureau.)

Until next time,


Pacific Legal Foundation