KAPO Meeting, Family Pancake House 3900 Kitsap Way. Bremerton. Come early, meet, mingle and order your no-host dinner; meeting begins at 6pm.
Speaker: Ken Erickson, is a Central Kitsap Fire District Commissioner. He will be speaking on developments in the district.
Come early (between 5 and 6) for meet and greet, ordering the no-host dinner, and getting raffle tickets for prizes donated by members. The meeting starts with the program at 6pm. Bring your questions for Mr. Erickson ’s Q & A time.
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court limited the Environmental ProtectionAgency’s authority over wetlands, the latest in a series of decisions reining in federal agencies.
In a unanimous decision on Thursday, the court adopted a narrow view of what constitutes a wetland falling under the EPA’s jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act, a landmark 1972 law addressing water pollution. The court said the EPA can only assert jurisdiction over wetlands that have continuous surface connection to navigable waters, rejecting a more expansive view proposed by the EPA.
While the justices agreed in ruling against the EPA, they splintered in their reasoning. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority decision. Alito wrote the court’s new interpretation “accords with how Congress has employed the term ‘waters’ elsewhere in the Clean Water Act.”
“The decision is important because it really curtails the scope of federal regulatory authority over wetlands,” said Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. “That’s going to be a relief to small landowners in particular.” Alito’s majority decision adopted an restrictive interpretation of the Clean Water Act laid out by the late Justice Antonin Scalia in a 2006 opinion that didn’t garner majority support at the time.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in the case comes less than a year after it curbed the EPA’s authority to limit emissions from coal plants. In that blockbuster case, West Virginia v. EPA, the court said the EPA had overstepped when it devised the Obama-era regulatory scheme known as the Clean Power Plan.
Thursday’s ruling was a victory for Michael and Chantell Sackett, a couple that wants to build a house on land they bought near an Idaho lake. The Sacketts, backed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative group that advocates for property rights, has been mired in litigation with the EPA since 2008.
This is their second trip to the Supreme Court. In 2012, they won a unanimous decision confirming their right to sue the EPA in federal court.
The Clean Water Act prohibits the “discharge of pollutants,” including rocks and sand, into “navigable waters.” The EPA has interpreted its jurisdiction broadly to include some wetlands that aren’t directly connected to a body of water, an interpretation it says is necessary to protect against water pollution and consistent with Congress’s intent in passing the landmark environmental-protection law.
There has been fierce debate about what areas fall within the statute’s jurisdiction ever since its enactment. Property owners hoping to build on or dredge wetlands are often required to seek permits from the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, which helps enforce the Clean Water Act.
The Sackett family property lies across a road about 300 feet from Idaho’s Priest Lake. Despite this buffer, EPA scientists and the Army Corps of Engineers determined the lot was a wetland covered by the Clean Water Act, citing a “shallow subsurface flow” linking it to the lake. That required the Sacketts to obtain federal permits before developing the property.
Dues are due for 2023 and are $125 per family unit. A check may be sent to KAPO, Post Office Box 609, Port Orchard 98366. The amount of dues was misprinted in an earlier meeting notice, and actually have not risen since before the pandemic when dues were not collected. Insurance and administrative costs have risen, leaving us financially strapped.
KAPO Meeting, Family Pancake House 3900 Kitsap Way. Bremerton. Come early, meet, mingle and order your no-host dinner; meeting begins at 6pm.
Speaker: Ken Erickson, is a Central Kitsap Fire District Commissioner. He will be speaking on developments in the district.
Come early (between 5 and 6) for meet and greet, ordering the no-host dinner, and getting raffle tickets for prizes donated by members. The meeting starts with the program at 6pm. Bring your questions for Mr. Erickson ’s Q & A time.
Join virtual meetings this fall diving into key elements of Kitsap’s plan for the next 20 years
Discussions focus on land use, economic development, housing, environmental and climate change, transportation, capital facilities, Silverdale Regional Center
A series of virtual public meetings is underway this fall to provide a forum for discussion of Kitsap County’s update to the Comprehensive Plan, a guide addressing population and job growth, environmental protection and infrastructure improvements and how these will impact our communities and livelihoods.
Each meeting begins at 6 p.m. on the following dates:
Tuesday, Sept. 13 – Land Use and Economic Development
Tuesday, Sept. 27 – Housing
Tuesday, Oct. 11 – Environmental and Climate Change
Wednesday, Oct. 19 – Silverdale Regional Center
Tuesday, Oct. 25 – Transportation and Capital Facilities
Go to the project website at kcowa.us/compplan for more information and links to join these virtual meetings. If you missed a past meeting, recordings are available at this website.
Each meeting includes a presentation and then attendees can choose to join interactive break-out groups to share their thoughts on issues and opportunities in Kitsap related to the topic of the evening. These may be shared verbally, through facilitated discussion or written in the chat option of the Zoom meeting.
For more information about the update, please visit the project website at kcowa.us/compplan. This site is updated regularly with upcoming public meetings, interactive surveys, policy questions, story maps on planning concepts, draft documents and other informational materials.
If you have any specific questions, please send them to compplan@kitsap.gov or call Kitsap1 at (360) 337-5777 and ask for Planning and Environmental Programs.
Find the project overview and schedule, sign up for electronic notifications, get answers to frequently asked questions, and view the comprehensive plan storyboard, at:
The federal government isn’t going to solve the housing crisis. With its multiple large, redundant, contradictory, unwieldy, and economically illiterate Washington-centric bureaucracies, we should neither expect nor want the government to be in the homebuilding business. Or to tell us how to do it.
In fact, the best thing the government can do for housing is to get out of the way. For as long as federal agencies have affected homebuilding, they have both skewed and inhibited the construction of new homes, especially for the working-class and minorities.
The Kitsap Public Facilities District (KPFD) is an independent municipal corporation managing Washington state sales tax rebate funds allocated to Kitsap County. Projects selected to receive funds from the KPFD have included the very successful Kitsap Conference Center at Bremerton Harborside, the rehabilitation of the Kitsap Sun Fairgrounds & Events Center and the North Kitsap Regional Events Center.
Russ Shiplet, Executive Director of Kitsap Public Facilities District will present a program on the assets of the facilities, ranging from buildings to open space. Come see and hear about the amenities that make Kitsap County a special place to live.
Public and member meeting Thursday, September 29, The Family Pancake House, 3900 Kitsap Way. Arrive early to order no-host dinner and network. Dinner meeting starts at 6pm.
Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners 