Feds roll back rules to protect AZ water

Critics: Streams, wetlands won’t have any safeguards

The Trump administration is rolling back protections for streams and wetlands, adopting a new rule that will drop federal clean-water safeguards for many creeks and washes across Arizona and the Southwest.

The nationwide change scraps a regulation that was adopted during the Obama administration and replaces it with a weaker rule that could help fast-track development and mining projects and could leave some streams and washes vulnerable to being filled in or polluted.

Environmental groups said the revised rule, released Thursday, would gut protections under the Clean Water Act and vowed to challenge the new rule in court.

The change will especially affect regulation of ephemeral streams and washes, which flow intermittently when it rains but otherwise sit dry much of the year.

In Arizona, that may mean that the vast majority of “waters” that were previously regulated by the federal

government — from arroyos to wetlands to desert washes — no longer fall under Clean Water Act protections.

“It basically means that if you have a wetland or a wash or a stream in Arizona, you can do what you want to it,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. “Every water body is now very vulnerable and could be either polluted or filled or destroyed without having to worry about Clean Water Act compliance.”

The Obama administration expanded the federal government’s authority to regulate wetlands and washes in 2015 when it adopted the regulation, called the Waters of the United States rule, or WOTUS.

That measure was criticized by Republicans and business groups including builders, farmers and golf course managers, who called it an overreach by the federal government.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it has finalized the new rule for protection of “navigable waters.”

EPA Regional Administrator Mike Stoker pointed out that there have been various different interpretations of the definition of “waters of the United States” since the Clean Water Act was adopted in 1972, and that those disagreements have spurred litigation.

The Obama-era rule had greatly expanded Washington’s reach into private lands, he said, and the new rule “is putting an end to this overreach.”

“We are bringing clarity once and for all to American farmers, landowners and businesses,” Stoker said at a news conference in Phoenix, accompanied by Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona.

“What I think we’ve tried to do with this rule is basically enact a rule that’s what Congress intended — nothing more and nothing less,” Stoker said.

He cited the role of states’ rights in the Constitution, and said “if a state has lost any anything in this final rule when it’s adopted, they have the right to backfill it.”

Gosar said the Obama administration’s measure had a “detrimental impact” for businesses in Arizona.

He said protecting private property rights is an important aspect of the new rule and it will “provide a much more workable definition of navigable waterways.”

Under the Trump administration’s measure, federally regulated “waters of the United States” include constantly flowing rivers and “intermittent tributaries,” as well as adjacent wetlands.

No longer federally regulated are “features that only contain water in direct response to rainfall,” as well as groundwater, ditches and cropland, among other things.

In arid Western states, that means many seasonal streams will no longer make the list for federal regulation. These washes and creeks often roil after rains but soon dry up. The water retreats and flows on underground.

In Arizona, Hartl said that means nearly all of the state’s wetlands and tributaries — with the exception of wetlands along the Colorado River — won’t qualify and will no longer get protection under the Clean Water Act.

“Everything now becomes vulnerable to being destroyed, to being polluted, without any backstop or safeguard,” Hartl said.

“It’s basically a free-for-all for building. The same is true for mining,” he added. “For them, obviously, it makes it cheaper. But for everybody else, we’re going to bear that cost.”

The Center for Biological Diversity will be among the groups challenging the Trump administration’s rule in court, Hartl said.

Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, called the change “a ridiculous, very narrowsighted rule.”

“It’s extremely shortsighted. We should be looking at the Clean Water Act as providing the floor of protection and then build upon that to do more,” Bahr said. “People who think it’s a good thing for Arizona really don’t understand how important those waters are, those waters that don’t flow year-round and have dependent wildlife and a lot of our critical riparian vegetation.”