EPA unveils water-rule rollback plan

WASHINGTON — Cabinet members and Republican lawmakers celebrated alongside farm and business leaders Tuesday as President Donald Trump’s administration moved forward 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 ever on the aims of the 1972 Clean Water Act, the foundational U.S. water protection law. Administration supporters praised Trump for knocking back what they said was federal overreach.

The President Barack Obama-era water protections targeted for replacement by Tuesday’s regulatory overhaul were “never about clean water,” said Rep. Sam Graves, a Republican and farmer from Missouri, and one of about a dozen Republican congressional members at Tuesday’s unveiling 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.

Arkansas’ representatives in Congress have opposed the Obama-era rule, as have the Arkansas Farm Bureau and the Association of Arkansas Counties.

Randy Veach, president of the Arkansas Farm Bureau and longtime critic of the Obama regulation, said the new rule would free farmers from highhanded and unnecessary regulations.

“It’s refreshing,” Veach said of the EPA’s decision and its work with farmers on the issue. Veach attended the EPA announcement Tuesday morning along with other presidents of Farm Bureau state groups.

“It’s an EPA that’s a whole lot friendlier to Arkansas farmers and ranchers who now are going to be able to do their jobs on land they own, sometimes going back generations. It was said today by [acting EPA Administrator Andrew] Wheeler and others that they [farmers] are some of the best caretakers of the land, water, air and environment because they know that land.”

The Obama-era water rule never took effect in Arkansas because Attorney General Leslie Rutledge signed on to a lawsuit brought by other states against the measure.

Veach said it wasn’t rhetoric or exaggeration to say that the Obama rule would affect mud puddles, as U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton,R-Ark., wrote in a guest editorial in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Nov. 7, 2015. “They could even regulate mud puddles on family farms,” Cotton wrote.

“Absolutely,” Veach said. “He was exactly right, they could regulate it.”

Veach backed off slightly when asked how regulation of a mud puddle likely to evaporate within a few days could be enforced. “Definitely it’s a possibility, it was that overreaching,” he said.

A farmer who dug farrows in low-lying fields to help with drainage would have had to consult with the EPA, Veach said. “They’d have to spend thousands to comply with these vague and unnecessary rules.”

The Arkansas chapter of the Sierra Club and the Arkansas Wildlife Federation supported the Obama rule.

“Arkansas is fortunate to have some of the cleanest water in the entire nation, but that doesn’t happen without active efforts to protect it,” Glen Hooks, director of the Arkansas Sierra Club, said in a statement. “This latest attack on our water is a new low for Trump and Wheeler as they again unabashedly side with corporate polluters instead of our families. Not only will this rollback endanger the drinking water sources for millions of people, but it also jeopardizes wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation, and economies that rely on safe, clean water.”

Hooks cited the Buffalo, White and Kings rivers as “iconic waterways” that support local areas through tourism. “These communities depend on clean water for their very livelihood,” he said.

Environmental groups said the Trump administration proposal would have a sweeping effect 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.”

In Michigan, where a dispute over a commercial development produced a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that failed to resolve the debate over federal jurisdiction, outdoor sportsman Dave Smethurst said he feared the proposed revisions would harm his beloved trout streams and wetlands that host ducks and other waterfowl.

“Some of us were alive when the fish were dying in Lake Erie and the rivers were catching fire,” said Smethurst, 71, of Gaylord, Mich. “What effect will this have on the river I fish and the rivers where my son fishes in Montana? It’s going to put the fish and the wildlife at risk again. We’re going backward.”

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 that 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.