Posted by David Sherman on Saturday, July 31, 2004 at 12:10PM :
In Reply to: Thats Awesome! posted by Chris Lube Lublin on Saturday, July 31, 2004 at 11:50AM :
I'm sure happy to hear that John's perseverance paid off. Maybe he even set a precedent that others can use. When I read that he had several lawyers and read the list of witnesses he took, it was clear that he put a whole lot of work into defending himself. It would have been a lot easier and cheaper to just pay the fine.
He's very fortunate to have the county commissioners on his side. We have one good one up her in the skinny end of Idaho whose working the RS2477 issues, but the FS is still closing roads.
Unfortunately in most areas the county commissioners are more like what Chris is dealing with. In any place where there's "growth", the commissioners are owned by the real estate developers and they'll bend over backwards to make sure that if one of their friends wants to put 100 houses in the middle of a cow pasture, the buyers of those houses won't have to have their bucolic view disturbed by looking at a farmer's boneyard. Add to that the state environmental police who are hard-pressed to justify their bureaucratic jobs now that all the genuinely polluted places have been cleaned up. I know many stories of the environmental police flying over rural areas looking for anything junky hidden in the trees and then telling the property owner that he has to get rid of it.
I suppose the only way to put a stop to this is for every one of us to fight back like John did, but not everybody has the time and resources to do so. And if you're in an area that's already been overrun by yuppie busybodies probably all you can do is get out.
Follow Ups: