The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
White House revokes water protection rule
Developers, farmers opposed regulation that shielded wetlands from pollution.
The Trump administration on Thursday revoked an Obama-era regulation that shielded many U.S. wetlands and streams from pollution but was opposed by developers and farmers who said it hurt economic development and infringed on property rights.
What it means
President Donald Trump ordered the EPA and the Army Corp of Engineers to develop a replacement policy that has a more restrictive definition of protected wetlands and streams, leaving fewer subject to federal protection.
The 2015 Waters of the United States rule defined the waterways subject to federal regulation. Scrapping it “puts an end to an egregious power grab, eliminates an ongoing patchwork of clean water regulations and restores a longstanding and familiar regulatory framework,” Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler said at a news conference.
Since enactment of the Clean Water Act in 1972, the federal government has gone beyond protection of navigable waterways and their major tributaries to assert jurisdiction over “isolated ponds and channels that only flow after it rains,” Wheeler said.
But the question of which waters are covered under the act has inspired decades of lawsuits and congressional debate.
Reaction and debate
Environmental groups immediately criticized the action, the latest in a series of moves that roll back environmental protections put into place under President Barack Obama.
They say the move will leave millions of Americans with less safe drinking water and allow damage of wetlands that prevent flooding, filter pollutants and provide habitat for fish and other wildlife.
“This repeal is a victory for land developers, oil and gas drillers and miners who will exploit that ambiguity to dredge and fill small streams and wetlands that were protected from destruction by the 2015 rule,” said Betsy Southerland, who was director of science and technology in EPA’s Office of Water during the Obama administration.
But Don Parrish, congressional relations director for the American Farm Bureau Federation, said the 2015 regulation that extended federal protection to many U.S. wetlands and waterways created uncertainty about where farmers could cultivate land.
“It would be great if farmers didn’t have to hire an army of consultants and lawyers just to be able to farm,” he said.
Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said the Obama rule was “an unconstitutional power grab that did nothing to advance good water management.”
What’s next
The Natural Resources Defense Council said the administration’s action would be challenged in court.