Court Opinion

ID: 9651250
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:11:22.382872+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:31.317865
License: Public Domain

KELLEY, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I believe that the petitioners constitutional rights have been violated and that the record clearly does not support the findings by the Environmental Hearing Board (Board).
I believe that the record supports that a manifest and flagrant abuse of discretion and/or an arbitrary execution of these duties and functions was. imposed upon the petitioner.
The opinion of the Board would indicate that the petitioner was a flagrant insensitive violator of the statutes and regulations of this Commonwealth, as well as the Township of Concord, Delaware County. The record indicates, however, that the petitioner was a landowner, duly exercising his substantive rights in an attempt to cooperate with the township and the Department of Environmental Resources (DER), in order to rectify alleged violations.
The petitioner was battered about between the jurisdiction and conflicting orders of the County Conservation Office and DER. No less than three bureaus of the DER, at various times and without any coordination, were simultaneously inspecting, implementing or effecting conflicting corrective orders upon the petitioner for this property.
Finally, there was consolidation by DER with its various bureaus. The record shows substantial evidence of cooperation by the petitioner. The department imposed time limits that whenever they issued the citations, which were at issue before us, the book was then “thrown to the petitioners”, notwithstanding his admitted cooperation in attempting to resolve the differences.
I find that the record reflects an intolerable conduct by DER toward this petitioner.
The statutes and regulations of the environmental nature, with the involvement of the federal and state and local governments, must be all considered in pari materia with the cooper*518ative oversight objective judgment of practicalities of what is humanly possible and reasonable whenever there is, as in this case, a multitude of uncoordinated overlapping jurisdictions in conflict with one another. I believe that it is incumbent upon governments to maintain an orderly and cooperative coordinated effort in the implementation of such broad multi-jurisdictional laws and regulations.
Accordingly, I would reverse the order of the Board.