CARVER, Mass. (AP) – Through a mess of briars and swarms of tiny flies, cranberry farmer Charles Johnson fights his way toward a stream on his 450-acre property that’s caused him a lot of trouble.

“That,” he announces with sarcasm as he steps toward it, “is the thundering Beaver Dam Brook.”

The stream is serene here, about 7 feet wide and 18 inches deep. It’s also “navigable,” which according to the Environmental Protection Agency means it eventually connects to commercially traveled waterways and is therefore under federal jurisdiction.

The EPA says Johnson violated the Clean Water Act when he built bogs by filling 50 acres of wetlands next to the brook without a permit. It’s fined him $75,000 and early this year ordered him to spend $1.1 million to restore 25 acres of the wetlands.

“It’s a huge violation. Huge,” said Ann Williams, a regional EPA attorney.

But Johnson, 74, says the EPA is claiming authority where it has none and has refused to cooperate after a decade and more than $700,000 in legal fees. Now, Johnson is headed to federal court in a case that tests how the EPA has defined “navigable.”

Johnson’s attorney, Greg Broderick, said the EPA’s “Alice in Wonderland” definition of navigable wrongly gives it authority over just about any body of water in the country.

In fact, the EPA has authority under federal law only over waters that are used for shipping or commerce, or waters directly adjacent, Broderick said. Johnson’s property is miles from any water like that, he said.

“The long and short of it is the statute says navigable waters’ and there’s nothing navigable about a cranberry bog,” said Broderick, of the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit that defends individual property rights.

Williams said the EPA has authority over property such as Johnson’s wetlands because changes there can cause problems downstream, such as flooding, and pollution will also move to other properties.

“These waterways are interconnected and provide support for each other,” she said.

Briefs are due in the case at the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston at the end of the month. A win for Johnson would be precedent-setting and diminish EPA’s authority over waterways around New England, Broderick said.

Broderick has also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify what navigable means, citing conflicting court interpretations of a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that hit on the topic.

Williams said most courts have backed the EPA’s definition of navigable, and the Supreme Court would, as well, though it has so far refused to rule on the issue when it’s had the chance, she said.

“I don’t think this is a close call, at all,” Williams said.

The Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, defined “navigable waters” only as “the waters of the United States.” Courts and the EPA have filled in the specifics over the years to include wetlands with any “hydrological connection” to commercially traveled waterways.

Johnson said the EPA learned about the work on his property in Carver, a cranberry farming center about 50 miles south of Boston, from a neighbor who complained in the early 1990s. The Beaver Brook Dam on Johnson’s property is navigable according to the EPA because it connects to the Weweantic River, which empties into busy Buzzards Bay.

Johnson, who’s been farming cranberries since he bought his first bog in 1959, scoffs at the government’s definition of navigable. “You throw a leaf in it,” he said. “If it moves, it’s navigable.”

Johnson is a short, solid man whose skin is tanned even in early spring. He drives the narrow roads between his 140 acres of bogs in a red Ford pickup with the bumper sticker, “I love my country, but fear my government.” He considers the EPA “nothing people,” bullying bureaucrats with no real knowledge of his land or farming.

He says if cranberry farmers like him are forced out of business by the EPA, the net result will be a loss of wetlands and open space because private developers would buy the property and build housing.

The Pacific Legal Foundation is representing Johnson for free, though Johnson has been forced to drop his longtime argument that the wetlands the EPA says he filled weren’t wetlands at all.

Johnson said he won’t ever pay a fine or do what the EPA has asked, though he could eventually be held in contempt of court.

“I will end up destitute before I sacrifice a principle,” Johnson said. Asked what principle was at stake in his case, he said, “Keep the (heck) out of my life if you don’t have a right to be there.”

The EPA’s Williams said the agency has tried to work with Johnson, and its plan for wetland restoration won’t put him out of business, but Johnson has chosen to knowingly defy the law. The EPA can’t walk away from his case without being unfair to those who’ve followed permitting regulations at significant expense, she said.

“What he’s really saying is he doesn’t like what the law says and he doesn’t feel like complying with the law,” she said.

AP-ES-05-07-05 1548EDT