EPA has lost its way

Agency can’t be trusted to protect our water.

Let’s take a moment to remember why the federal Clean Water Act was passed in 1972. Because people were getting sick after swimming in, fishing from, or drinking polluted water. Because nearly two-thirds of the nation’s lakes, rivers and coastal waters were unsafe for humans. Because untreated sewage and other pollution was being dumped routinely, unchecked, into our waterways.

Some land use restrictions were needed to prevent that. That should be clearly understood, especially in Texas, where 143,000 miles of streams will be impacted by the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent decision to weaken the clean water rules.

Indeed, there was nothing subtle about EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s announcement Thursday of rule changes that will make America’s waterways and streams more vulnerable to pollution. He broke the news at the National Association of Manufacturers headquarters with Jay Timmons, NAM president, by his side.

It was unsettling to see the head of the agency charged with protecting America’s environment and its people cozying up to one of the EPA’s most vehement critics. There’s a difference between working with the other side and giving in to it. The new rules announced by Wheeler amount to a surrender.

The changes will roll back the Waters of the United States rules issued in 2015 by the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers to clarify which waterways are covered by the act. That law was written to limit pollution in large bodies of water and smaller streams that drain into them, but its interpretation was successfully challenged in court.

Critics said the Obama administration rules threatened jobs in the manufacturing, mining, home building, and energy industries by placing unreasonable restrictions on how they may operate near waterways.

Farmers complained the rules were too strict when it came to plowing, planting certain crops, or using pesticides near streams and wetlands.

It’s understandable that farmers and manufacturers would resist rules that limit how they run their businesses, but the EPA’s job is to protect the environment, not farmers and manufacturers.

Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas, told the editorial board that the EPA’s new rules mean countless isolated streams that only flow intermittently after it rains in Texas will no longer be covered by the Clean Water Act. “These streams connect to waterways that feed into our drinking system and threaten the water quality of millions of Texans,” he said.

“A third of our waterways are already considered unsafe for fishing or swimming. This will make it much harder to achieve clean water goals and puts more waterways in danger of pollution,” said Metzger.

Because the new rules aren’t as specific, he said, some bodies of water in Texas will no longer be covered, including the thousands of shallow ponds on the Gulf coast known as “prairie potholes,” which feed water into Galveston Bay, and “playa lakes,” the shallow wetlands that form in the panhandle after rainfall.

Half the wetlands in Texas will also no longer be protected under the new EPA rules because they aren’t directly connected to a navigable body of water. That’s a considerable blow to a state that has already lost thousands of wetlands to development, particularly in the Houston area. Wetlands help prevent flooding and provide habitat for threatened animal species.

You would think that would matter to the head of the EPA.

You would think clean water and flood prevention would matter to Texas elected officials.

But U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton were among the first to praise the rule changes.

“Only in Washington can a puddle or dry ditch be considered navigable water,” joked Cruz.

Has it been so long since Hurricane Harvey that Cruz doesn’t remember how easily a polluted ditch can become a raging stream that flows into a town’s water supply? Of course, the rights of landowners and businesses should be respected; but when people’s lives are at stake, rules to protect them must be the higher priority.