Source: http://openjurist.org/961/f2d/462
Timestamp: 2013-12-10 18:42:00
Document Index: 536829129

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1251', '§ 1311', '§ 1251', '§ 1251', '§ 1311', '§ 1362', '§ 230', '§ 328', '§ 230', '§ 328', '§ 404', '§ 1344', '§ 404']

961 F2d 462 United States v. B Ellen | OpenJurist
961 F. 2d 462 - United States v. B Ellen	Home961 f2d 462 united states v. b ellen
961 F2d 462 United States v. B Ellen 961 F.2d 462
35 ERC 1165, 22 Envtl. L. Rep. 21,282
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant,v.William B. ELLEN, Defendant-Appellee.UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,v.William B. ELLEN, Defendant-Appellant.
Nos. 91-5032, 91-5033.
Argued Dec. 6, 1991.Decided April 2, 1992.As Amended April 27, 1992.
Jane F. Barrett, Asst. U.S. Atty., Baltimore, Md., argued (Richard D. Bennett, U.S. Atty. and Ethan L. Bauman, Asst. U.S. Atty., on brief), for plaintiff-appellant.
Benjamin S. Sharp, Perkins, Coie, Washington, D.C., argued (Steven C. Tabackman, Donald C. Baur and Ira Dassa, on brief), for defendant-appellee.
This case presents several issues pertaining to defendant's conviction for illegally discharging pollutants into wetlands in violation of the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. § 1251 et seq. Defendant appeals his conviction, and both defendant and the United States appeal the district court's application of the Sentencing Guidelines. We affirm both the conviction and the sentence.
Defendant William B. Ellen received a degree of Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Old Dominion University in 1972. For the following four years, he was a staff environmental engineer with the Virginia Marine Resources Commission and was responsible for reviewing the regulation of certain wetlands projects. In 1976, Ellen formed William B. Ellen, Inc., which specialized in the design of, and acquisition of permits for, construction projects in tidal wetlands and subaqueous areas.
In August 1987, Ellen was hired by Paul T. Jones II to assist in the development of property on the Eastern Shore of Maryland into a personal and corporate retreat that would serve as a hunting preserve and wildlife sanctuary. Ellen advised Jones as to the acquisition of the property--named Tudor Farms--and, after the purchase, became the project manager responsible for land clearing, road construction, and pond excavation. Tudor Farms is low, wet land. It is surrounded on three sides by tidal waters and marshes, and the property itself contains large areas of wooded wetlands and tidal marshes and some upland fields and roads. Prior to the construction on the property, Tudor Farms served as habitat for an endangered species, the Delmarva fox squirrel, as well as an American bald eagle, various migratory birds, and wood ducks.
Ellen supervised extensive excavation and construction at the Tudor Farms site. Ellen admits that he was responsible for acquiring environmental permits and complying with the various state and federal environmental regulations. Indeed, throughout construction at Tudor Farms, Ellen made clear--to officials of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, to the Dorchester County Highway Department, and to Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) enforcement officials, among others--that he assumed the responsibility for acquiring all needed environmental permits.
In February 1988, a Corps enforcement official visited the site, indicated to Ellen what could and could not be done without a Corps permit, and issued a cease and desist letter that ordered Tudor Farms to stop filling wetlands. When Corps officials returned to the site in January 1989, they found several wetlands sites where work had progressed without the necessary permits. They instructed the site manager that all work in wetlands cease, but construction continued nonetheless. The Corps issued a second cease and desist letter on February 15. Upon visiting the site on March 3, Corps officials noticed additional violations. When Ellen refused to comply with their order to stop work, the Corps officials contacted the subcontractors directly, and only then did work cease. Upon learning that Ellen had not obtained all necessary environmental permits, Jones fired Ellen.1
Ellen was tried on six counts of knowingly filling in wetlands without a permit in violation of the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. §§ 1311(a) and 1319(c)(2)(A). He did not controvert the United States' allegations as to the construction activity that occurred at Tudor Farms. Instead, Ellen disputed two elements of the offenses alleged: that the areas where work occurred were wetlands and, if they were wetlands, that Ellen knew they were wetlands and that permits were required. The jury convicted Ellen on five of the six counts. The district court imposed a sentence of six months' imprisonment and one year of supervised release, with the latter conditioned upon four months' home detention and sixty hours of community service.
Both Ellen and the United States have appealed.
We pause briefly at the outset to describe the relevant statutory provisions. Congress enacted the Clean Water Act (CWA), 33 U.S.C. § 1251 et seq., "to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters." Id. § 1251(a). To this end, the CWA prohibits the discharge "of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source" without a permit. 33 U.S.C. §§ 1311(a), 1362(12)(A). The CWA defines navigable waters as "the waters of the United States," id. § 1362(7), though it does not define the latter phrase. Both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), see 40 C.F.R. § 230.3(s)(2), (7) (1991), and the Army Corps of Engineers, see 33 C.F.R. § 328.3(a)(2), (7) (1991), define "waters of the United States" to include wetlands, and both define wetlands as follows:
[T]hose areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions. Wetlands generally include swamps, marshes, bogs and similar areas.
40 C.F.R. § 230.3(t) (1991); 33 C.F.R. § 328.3(b) (1991). This regulatory definition has remained unchanged since 1977. See Proposed Revisions to 1989 Wetlands Manual, 56 Fed.Reg. 40,446, 40,446 (1991) [hereinafter Proposed Revisions].
Four federal agencies--EPA, the Corps, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Soil Conservation Service--are principally involved in the identification and delineation of wetlands. See Federal Interagency Committee for Wetland Delineation, Federal Manual for Identifying and Delineating Jurisdictional Wetlands 1 (1989) [hereinafter 1989 Manual ]. The Corps is authorized by CWA § 404 to issue permits for the discharge of dredged and fill materials into wetlands, see 33 U.S.C. § 1344(a), though both EPA and the Corps are responsible for making wetlands determinations under § 404. See 1989 Manual, supra, at 1. Prior to 1989, EPA and the Corps each developed its own procedures for identifying and delineating wetlands, which were set forth in technical manuals. See Environmental Protection Agency, Wetland Identification and Delineation Manual (1988); Environmental Laboratory, Dep't of the Army, Corps of Engineers Wetlands Delineation Manual (1987).
The absence of a uniform federal methodology resulted in inconsistent wetlands determinations for similar areas. See Proposed Revisions, supra, at 40,449. As a result of these inconsistencies, in 1989 the four federal agencies merged their methods and issued a single wetlands delineation manual, which provides a uniform national procedure for wetland determinations. See 1989 Manual, supra. Application of the 1989 Manual resulted in a significant increase in lands identified as wetlands as compared with the EPA and Corps manuals. See Proposed Revisions, supra, at 40,450; S.Rep