PROPERTY-RIGHTS ISSUES CONTINUE TO BE IMPORTANT

Five years ago, Alan and Bonny Riggs bought five acres on a hillside overlooking Puget Sound in Washington. It was the perfect site for their dream home. Then the trouble began.

To get a house-building permit, the Riggses had to sign a 32-page document calling for nearly all of their newly cleared parcel to revert to forest. They also were forced to plant a screen of evergreen trees 15 feet in front of their house. Well, you might say, they should have known about the strict zoning in the community before buying the lot.

But the regulations were prompted not by a city zoning code, but by wildlife officials concerned about a bald eagle that decided to nest near the Riggses' property. The restrictions cost the couple the use of 90 percent of their property, for which they were compensated nothing. They also spent $30,000 battling the state over the eagles next door. But the Riggses' story isn't unique.

Across the country, millions of acres of private land lie unused because federal, state or local agencies have ruled that developing or farming those acres would threaten wildlife or wetlands. Many times, owners try to accommodate environmental regulators by altering their property to limit any adverse effects on wildlife or water only to have bureaucrats balk at the changes. It is in this way that the government is able to, in effect, confiscate property without compensation, as required by the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Last year a Florida father and son went to prison for dumping sand in a ditch designated a wetland, as did a Pennsylvania man when he cleaned old tires out of a vacant lot. In 1992, a conservationist spent six months in a federal penitentiary for disturbing wetlands while he created a wildlife sanctuary.

Many thought a breakthrough in the burgeoning property rights movement came with the Supreme Court's decision last year in Dolan v. City of Tigard. A 5-4 majority set new limits on the ability of government to require developers to set aside part of their land for environmental or other public uses. The court ruled that governments have the burden of demonstrating a "rough proportionality" between the required set-aside of property and whatever harm may be caused by the development, such as flooding or increased traffic.

As good a ruling as that was, it has failed to herald an end to government's imposing its burdens on property owners. It was simply one ruling, with many more on the issue likely to come.

It is troublesome when property rights aren't esteemed equally with the freedom to worship, speak, assemble and petition our government. This nation was founded by men who repeatedly championed the importance of property rights to a free and prosperous society.

As revealed in the modern property rights movement, Americans increasingly are reasserting that safeguard against excessive government power.