The name of Tombstone in Arizona brings to mind the western saga of the blazing gunfight between Wyatt Earp and the Clanton Gang. Today the “Town [Now the City of Tombstone] Too Tough to Die’ is involved in a battle that would make the founding fathers stand up and take notice. Against an overbearing National Government.

The Goldwater Institute, representing the City, reports:

The City of Tombstone is squaring off against the U.S. Forest Service over water rights in a fight to rescue “The Town Too Tough to Die.” Citing the Wilderness Act, the Forest Service is refusing to allow the city to repair its waterlines to mountain springs it has owned for nearly seventy years – and which date back to the 1880s. This refusal is threatening residents, private property and public safety with the risk of a total loss of fire protection and safe drinking water.

The Goldwater Institute is an organization fighting for the constitutional concept of limited government espoused by the founding fathers. “The Goldwater Institute is representing the City of Tombstone because the 10th Amendment protects states and their subdivisions from federal regulations that prevent them from using and enjoying their property in order to fulfill the essential functions of protecting public health and safety,” says a statement on their web site.

According to the Benson News-Sun,

Following the 2011 monsoons that caused extensive damage to the city’s pipeline, Gov. Jan Brewer declared a state of emergency to help fund the repairs. Tombstone rented the necessary earth-moving equipment to make the repairs, but was not able to secure the permits needed from the Forest Service for heavy equipment work.

While Tombstone officials contend that the Forest Service has interfered with the city’s ability to take heavy equipment into areas where they want to make repairs, Heidi Schewel, spokesperson for the Coronado National Forest, says there is a process that must be followed when wilderness areas are involved. Schewel also said those areas fall under the protection of the Forest Service, regardless of the documentation that Tombstone holds along with the city’s claims of water and property rights in those areas.

The most recent news in the saga is that the 9th Circuit court put a lump of coal in the stocking of the City on December 24th by denying an appeal for emergency repairs to the water system.

The Tenth Amendment allows States to control their own land within their borders. The Constitution gives the national government claim over lands limited to:

…all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings (Article I, Section 8, Clause 17)

All other lands within the borders of a State are the property of the State in accordance with the Tenth Amendment. An affirmation of the people called Proposition 120 was disapproved by voters in the last election.

The entire conflict represents bureaucratic, United Nation inspired lunacy that animal life takes precedence over human beings. This bureaucratic notion did not, apparently, save the life of Macho B.

SEE ALSO: Our View: Will Tombstone raise the stakes? – Sierra Vista Herald