KAREN BUDD-FALEN
BUDD-FALEN LAW OFFICES, LLC
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Getting Defeated by the Environmental Litigation Gravy Train –
$37 Million and Counting
As any sportsman, property owner, off road vehicle enthusiast, rancher, logger, or
other user of land knows, we are under assault – by Endangered Species Act (“ESA”)
listings, petitions to ban lead shot, rule making to raise grazing fees to price ranchers off
the public land, litigation to eliminate noxious weed control, bills to include mud
puddles, playa lakes and vernal pools as navigable water controlled by the federal
government – and more. What you may not know is that these attacks by radical
environmental groups are being funded with your tax dollars, working against tax
payers, land users, hunters, fishermen and property owners. We are truly funding our
own demise—$37 million in just 19 states and the District of Columbia and counting.
The amount of radical environmental litigation in the United States is staggering.
From 2000 to 2009, the Friends of the Earth filed 193 cases against the federal
government and the Environmental Defense Fund filed 173 in that same time period.
Even greater is The Wilderness Society with 214 cases, the National Wildlife Federation
with 427 cases and topping the list Sierra Club. Between 2000 and 2009, the Sierra
Club has filed 1812 cases against the federal government. All totaled, these five groups
have filed 2819 cases, all against the federal government in nine years. If you add the
“western environmental organizations” of Oregon Natural Desert Association, Western
Watersheds Project, Center for Biological Diversity and Forest (or now WildEarth)
Guardians, that number rises to 3313 cases filed against the federal government for
“enforcement” of environmental statutes in nine years.
And those are only a few of the hundreds of radical environmental groups – as
opposed to true conservation groups – who use the federal courts and administrative
processes to take land rights and land uses away from private landowners, recreationists
and federal land users. None of the money paid to these groups goes to ANY on-theground
habitat improvement projects; only to the funding of more litigation to stop land
use.
The cases and appeals filed by these radical special interest groups include
petitions to ensure that wolves, bears and other predators are never de-listed, petitions
to ban the use of lead bullets, litigation to eliminate roads and other access on public
lands, livestock grazing fee increases, and a thousand other issues that harm wildlife
populations, stop access to public lands and regulate private property. And the
federal government – through your tax dollars – is paying for this madness.
The system works like this: A radical environmental group like Defenders of
Wildlife files federal court litigation against the a federal agency complaining that the
Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) failed to timely act on a petition to list a threatened or
endangered species. The environmental group cannot get the court to tell the FWS how
it should make its decision; the court can only require a “timely” decision be made. The
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FWS loses the case because it almost never makes a decision in the amount of time
required by Congress. The federal government pays the Defenders’ attorneys fees for
filing the litigation. So, not only does the FWS have to go back and remake its decision,
your tax dollars paid an environmental group to sue the FWS.
The source of the money in this type of case is called the “Judgment Fund.” The
Judgment Fund is a Congressional line-item appropriation and is used for Endangered
Species Act cases, Clean Water Act cases, and for other statutes that directly allow a
plaintiff to recover attorney fees. The Judgment Fund is supposed to only be used when
the federal agency “changes its position” because of the litigation. However, in 21% of
the cases in which attorney fees are awarded, the federal government simply agrees to
pay the radical groups fee requests—there was no determination of whether the federal
government was wrong in its legal position. Importantly there is no central data
base for tracking the payment of these fees, thus neither the taxpayers,
members of Congress nor the federal government itself knows the total
amount of taxpayer dollars spent from the Judgment Fund to fund radical
environmental groups.
Another source of funds through payment of attorneys fees system is through the
Equal Access to Justice Act (“EAJA”). An example of the litigation under that Act goes
like this: Radical environmental group Western Watersheds Project (WWP”) sues the
Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) or Forest Service to eliminate road access to a
certain area of public land because of failure to consider enough alternatives under the
National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”). The agency either loses or settles the case
and agrees that it will take another look at the radical group’s request; not that the BLM
will change its mind, just consider another alternative. The federal government agrees
to pay the WWP’s attorneys fees. Rather than the money coming from the general
Treasury as do Judgment Act funds, these tax payer dollars come from the “losing”
federal agencies’ budget; thus, in this example, the BLM office’s budget. That is money
that could be used for range monitoring, NEPA compliance, road projects, timber
projects, access issues and other agency programs.
Although attorneys fees under EAJA are, by statute, supposed to be capped at
$125/hour, the latest attorney fee award for a case against the Forest Service alleging
that it failed to properly complete its rulemaking to make forest planning easier was
$650/per hour for a single attorney for a total award for one case of almost $500,000.
Additionally, under EAJA, although a “for-profit business” cannot even apply for
attorney fees if its net worth is over $7 million, but that net worth does not apply to
“non-profit, public interest” groups. Thus, the Sierra Club, with its net worth of $56
million can receive attorney fees under EAJA, but a private business cannot. Again
there is no central data system or tracking of these payments from the
agency’s budgets.
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And as ridiculous as the system sounds, the payout numbers are even more
outrageous. Working with the Western Legacy Alliance (“WLA”), the statistics we were
able to compile are shocking:
! Between 2003 to 2005, Region 1 of the Forest Service (Montana, North Dakota,
northern Idaho) paid $383,094 in EAJA fees.
! Between 2003 to 2005, Region 2 of the Forest Service (most of Wyoming, South
Dakota, Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma) paid $97,750 in EAJA fees.
! Between 2003 to 2005, Region 3 of the Forest Service (Arizona, New Mexico)
paid $261,289.85 in EAJA fees.
! Between 2003 to 2005, Region 4 of the Forest Service (Southern Idaho, Utah,
Nevada) paid $297,705 in EAJA fees.
! Between 2003 to 2005, Region 5 (California) of the Forest Service paid $357, 023
in EAJA fees.
! Between 2003 to 2005, Region 6 (Washington State, Oregon) of the Forest
Service paid $282,302 in EAJA fees.
! Out of the 44 total cases in which the Forest Service paid EAJA fees between
2003 and 2005, nine plaintiffs were NOT environmental groups and 35 payments
went to environmental group plaintiffs.
Even worse are the Judgment Fund statistics:
! In fiscal year 2003, the federal government made 10,595 individual payments
from the Judgment Fund to federal court plaintiffs for a price tag of
$1,081,328,420.00.
! In 2004, the federal government made 8,161 payments from the Judgment Fund
for $800,450,029.00.
! In 2005, 7,794 payments were made from the Judgment Fund for a total of
$1,074,131,007.00.
! In 2006, the federal government made 8,736 payments from the Judgment Fund
for $697,968,132.00.
! In only the first half of 2007, the federal government made 6,595 payments from
the Judgment Fund for $1,062,387,142.00.
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! In total, $4,716,264,730.00 (that is billion with a “b”) in total payments were paid
in taxpayer dollars from the Judgment Fund from 2003 through July 2007.
Certainly these were not all attorney fees payments to radical environmental
groups for environmental litigation, but this is a huge amount of tax dollars for
which there is no accounting.
After a thorough review of PACER docket sheets and court documents, just 13
radical environmental groups in 19 states and the District of Columbia have collected at
least $37 million from the federal government in approximately nine years. This only
includes attorney fees payments that were reported in court data bases; there were a
significant number of cases in which it was reported that the federal government paid
attorney fees, but the amount of tax payer money was not disclosed to the tax payers.
And the descriptions of the individual cases and amounts paid are aggravating.
As examples:
In the years of litigation over whether the National Park Service properly
attempted to restrict snowmobile use in Yellowstone National Park, the plaintiff
environmental groups were paid at least $321,996.69 and even though the State of
Wyoming and the business plaintiffs also won some of their cases, they did not receive
ANY attorneys fees for their equally winning efforts. The court records do not indicate
why Wyoming and Montana small businesses and organizations did not recover fees,
although as a technical matter, it appears that they would also have been eligible for fee
recovery.
California red and yellow-legged frogs have cost the taxpayers $445,924 just in
litigation attorneys fees. Part of the reason that California farmers in the Central Valley
have no water for their crops is because of Natural Resources Defense Council (“NRDC”)
litigation over the delta smelt, a 2 to 3 inch long minnow; the federal government has
agreed to negotiate the payment of attorney fees to the NRDC, the group responsible for
the litigation regarding the delta smelt.
Wolf litigation has, so far, cost American taxpayers $436,762 just in attorney fees,
all paid to environmental groups who sued the federal government. Litigation over the
desert tortoise, (a total of 11 cases) – a species that only spends 5% of its life above
ground – has cost the American taxpayers $702,519 just in payment of attorneys fees.
In fact, in the last 10 years, the federal government has spent more than $93 million in
taxpayer money on the desert tortoise.
The Center for Biological Diversity (“CBD”) has filed only 12 federal cases in the
State of Washington Federal District Courts. These cases include challenges under the
ESA for failure to timely respond to petitions to list the giant Palouse earthworm, the
killer whale, a butterfly species and others; a challenge EPA’s ESA section 7 consultation
with regard to certain pesticide and fungicide use on crops (although interestingly home
lawn use for the exact same chemicals was exempted from the injunction); a challenge
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to a soft wood trade agreement between U.S. and Canada; a challenge against the federal
government to protect ocean waters from threat of acidification, and others. Of the 12
cases filed, four are still pending, and of the completed eight cases, no attorneys fees
were paid in two cases. However, the total amount of attorneys fees paid for just six
cases to the CBD is $941,332.00.
In the federal court in Montana, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the
Defenders of Wildlife have received $570,864 in taxpayer money from the federal
government for attorney fees. In one case, the “winning attorney” boasted in one of the
court documents that he should be granted hourly fees over the amount of his normally
charged fee so that he could “donate” money to the environmental group he represented
– The Ecology Center.
The time has come to force the federal government to account for the amount of
tax payer dollars paid to radical environmental groups to stop land use and eliminate
access. Once an accounting takes place and the taxpayers see on what “causes” their
money is being spent, we can effect real change in the statutes that are eliminating true
conservation practices, public land uses and private property rights.