Obama-era water protection rule voided
Administration says regulation hindered development
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — 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.
Environmental groups criticized the administration’s action, the latest in a series of moves to roll back environmental protections put into place under President Barack Obama.
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 long-standing and familiar regulatory framework,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler told a news conference in Washington, D.C.
Wheeler and R.D. James, assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, signed a document overturning the rule and temporarily restoring an earlier regulatory system that emerged after a 2006 ruling from a sharply divided Supreme Court.
The agencies plan to adopt a new rule by the end of the year that is expected to define protected waterways more narrowly than the Obama policy.
The Clean Water Act requires landowners to obtain federal permits before developing or polluting navigable waterways such as rivers and lakes. But disputes have long persisted over what other waters are subject to regulation — particularly wetlands that don’t have a direct connection to those larger waters, along with small headwater streams and channels that flow only during and after rainfall.
Environmentalists contend that many of those smaller, seemingly isolated waters are tributaries of the larger waterways and can have a significant effect on their quality. Denying them federal protection would leave millions of Americans with less safe drinking water and allow damage of wetlands that prevent flooding, filter pollutants and provide habitat for fish, waterfowl and other wildlife, they said.
“By repealing the Clean Water Rule, this administration is opening our iconic waterways to a flood of pollution,” said Bart Johnsen-Harris of Environment America. “The EPA is abdicating its mission to protect our environment and our health.”
Wheeler said regulators had gone far beyond the intent of Congress under the 1972 clean water law.
The question of which waters are covered under the Clean Water Act has inspired decades of lawsuits and numerous bills in Congress.