Major rollback of water rules proposed
Federal protections for some waterways stand to be removed
WASHINGTON — Cabinet chiefs and GOP lawmakers celebrated alongside farm and business leaders Tuesday as the Trump administration made good on one of its biggest promised environmental rollbacks, proposing to remove federal protections for thousands of waterways nationwide.
Environmental groups called the proposed overhaul of federal water protections one of the gravest assaults on the aims of the 1972 Clean Water Act, the foundational U.S. water protection law. Administration supporters praised President Donald Trump for knocking back what they said was federal overreach.
The Obama-era water protections targeted for replacement by Tuesday’s regulatory overhaul “was never about clean water,” said Rep. Sam Graves, a Republican and farmer from Missouri, and one of about a dozen GOP congressional members at Tuesday’s launch at the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency. “It was always about the federal government getting more control over our water and our lives.”
“I want to thank him for keeping that promise,” Graves said of Trump.
“Thank you, Mr. President, for giving us the Christmas present of a lifetime,” the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, Zippy Duvall of Georgia, said.
Environmental groups said the Trump administration proposal would have a sweeping impact on how the country safeguards the nation’s waterways, scaling back not just a 2015 Obama administration interpretation of federal jurisdiction, but how federal agencies enforce the 1972 Clean Water Act.
“The Trump administration has just given a big Christmas gift to polluters,” said Bob Irvin, president of the American Rivers environmental nonprofit. “Americans all over the country are concerned about the safety of their drinking water — this is not the time to be rolling back protections.”
The Trump administration would remove federal protections for wetlands nationally unless they are connected to another federally protected waterway, and for streams, creeks, washes, ditches and ponds that exist only during rains.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, also attending the ceremony for the regulatory changes, told the farmers and others attending the proposal “doesn’t remove any protection.”
“It puts the decision back where it should be, the people that work the land, that hunt, that own the land,” Zinke said.
Industry groups praised the latest Trump administration environmental regulatory rollback.
“When you have uncertainty and overreach it makes it incredibly difficult to build American homes,” Gerald Howard, the CEO of the National Association of Home Builders, said of the Obama administration’s interpretation of the water rules.
Environmental groups say the kind of isolated wetlands, rain-fed streams and often dry washes that would lose federal protections also help buffer communities from the worsening impact of drought, floods and hurricanes under climate change, and are vital for wildlife.
Jan Goldman-Carter of the National Wildlife Federation said the move would leave waterways more vulnerable to destruction by developers and farmers or to oil spills, fertilizer runoff and other pollutants. Andrew Wheeler, acting administrator of the EPA, said there was no firm data on what percentage of waterways would lose protections.
The Trump administration looked chiefly at court rulings rather than environmental impacts in redoing the regulations, said David Ross, assistant EPA administrator for water.
Ross specified the administration did not dwell on any role the waterways play in mitigating the effects of climate change.
“We didn’t do climate modeling,” he said of the proposed rollbacks. “It’s a legal policy construct informed by science.”
The rules go up for public comment, ahead of any final adoption by the Trump administration. Environmental groups are promising legal challenges.