Rancher in Washington state to pay Environmental Protection Agency $50,000 for unlawful dam

A rancher in Washington state will fork over $50,000 to the Environmental Protection Agency and repair the harm from an unlawful dam he constructed, the federal company stated.

Rancher Brock Maslonka’s earthen dam, which has but to be eliminated, was put in in September 2015, spanning 200 ft in size and 100 ft in width. The dam, on the Perkins Slough tributary of the Pend Oreille River, was constructed with out a Clean Water Act allow from the Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA stated.

The EPA first obtained complaints concerning the dam in 2017, though issues started sooner than that. A civil criticism later filed by the Justice Department said that the dam had prompted the flooding of Washington State Route 20 in early 2016, based on the Spokesman-Review newspaper.

Mr. Maslonka, of Spokane, contended in a responding courtroom submitting that the dam was for irrigation of his property and to forestall the Pend Oreille River from inundating it, based on the Spokesman-Review.

The dam, the EPA stated in its announcement of the settlement Thursday, lowered water high quality, made the tributary murkier and disrupted the life cycles of the Perkins Slough ecosystem by inhibiting motion.

After the EPA failed to achieve an settlement with Mr. Maslonka, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in 2020. The two sides reached an settlement in July.