We’ve provided extensive coverage of water issues related to PFOA and PFAS. Up to the recent ruling to impose ridiculously restrictive water standards. A massive fiscal burden crammed down on local municipalities and residents by the state.
Related: PFOA v. Solar Panels: Proof Democrats Are Not Serious About “Clean” Drinking Water
The cost of compliance is estimated in the hundreds of millions statewide, which local taxpayers and water customers will pay. Which begged me to ask the question, “Can or will someone challenge this ruling because it modifies a program that “necessitate additional local expenditures” not funded by the state?”
We have an answer, and it is yes.
Lawyers representing the plaintiffs said the state rushed the rule-making process when new standards were put in place because of concerns over per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in drinking water. …
The new standards will affect 1,700 public water systems in the state.
“We have asked a judge to declare that the imposition of costs on municipalities, such as the Plymouth Village Water and Sewer District, is a mandate from the state that the state is obligated to pay for,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Rouvalis.
The state, even by a vote of the full legislature and with the signature of the governor cannot create fiscal burdens on local towns without paying for it.
In this case, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (NHDES) brought a suggested water “contamination” rule change to a Legislative Committee and asked for approval. The Majority Democrat committee said yes!
Boom!
Millions in crammed down costs by order of the State.
New Hampshire, in its defense, is claiming there is no evidence of harm. It’s not a bad plan. If you can’t show harm you don’t have standing. If you have no standing, you cannot sue. But how then, does the Constitution prevent the State from forcing costs on towns if they have to incur unsupported costs before they can sue?
Even advocates acknowledge that testing alone will add costs with no state support. Remediation to the ridiculously low standard could then cost millions more. Is the court going to insist the state reimburse towns after the fact on an unconstitutional mandate?
We might as well give the judicial branch another opportunity to impose a broad-based tax where one never existed. They did it for education, what’s to stop them from doing it for water?
Water that, may I remind you, is being tested to a ridiculously low standard with no scientific basis in fact. A metric well below even the EPA’s ridiculously low standard with no basis in scientific fact. All spun up as the scourge of the decade with words like forever poison.
An arbitrary standard set, by the way, without any evidence of harm. So, state government can impose a burden without proof of “standing” but challenging the unconstitutional nature of the cost of that burden cannot?
If you’d like a real definition for forever ‘poison’ it is scaring people into allowing the government to unnecessarily regulate and tax them into penury from which there is no escape. Not even in the courts.
