EPA seeks to roll back water rules
Trump calls Obama-era regulation a ‘power grab’
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is moving forward with a rollback of an Obama-era clean water regulation that has become a rallying cry for farmers and property-rights activists who accuse the federal government of overreach.
The proposal, unveiled Tuesday by Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, would ease Washington’s oversight of small bodies of water, undoing a regulation President Donald Trump has called “a massive power grab.”
The new rule would replace an Obama administration regulation, known as the “Waters of the United States” rule that expanded federal protections to smaller rivers and streams.
Environmental advocates warn the proposed rule could remove pollution and development protections from most U.S. waterways and pose farreaching effects on the safety of the nation’s tap water for more than 100 million Americans.
“Even a child understands that small streams flow into large streams and lakes – which provide drinking water for so many Americans,” said Craig Cox, senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources for the Environmental Working Group. “By removing safeguards and allowing industry to dump pollutants into these water sources, Trump’s EPA is ensuring more contamination challenges for utilities and dirtier water for their customers.”
But opponents of the Obama-era WOTUS rule say it prevents property owners from being able to fully use their land because the rule’s overly broad definition regulates ditches that temporarily flood as federally protected waterways.
The crux of the rollback is a change in how “navigable waterways” are defined under the Clean Water Act.
The 2015 definition crafted under President Barack Obama would narrow considerably under Trump, a move that Wheeler said would make it “clearer and easier to understand ... that will result in significant cost savings, protect the nation’s navigable waterways and reduce barriers to important economic and environmental projects.”
Wheeler cited the Missouri Farm Bureau, which launched a “Ditch the Rule” campaign opposing the 2015 proposal because it was concerned the Obamaera definition was so broad it could apply to almost every acre in the state.
The Obama administration “claimed it was in the interest of water quality but it was really about power, power in the hands of the federal government over landowners,” Wheeler said.
It’s also confusing because the rule is enforced in only 22 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.
Under Trump’s proposed rule, federal protections would remain for major waterways, rivers, tributaries, wetlands adjacent to federally protected waterways, certain lakes and ponds, reservoirs, and ditches used for navigation or affected by the tide.
States would oversee most ditches, terrain that fills with water during or in response to rainfall, certain wetlands that have been used to grow crops, stormwater control ponds, and water and wastewater treatment systems. Groundwater would not be federally protected, an exclusion Wheeler said that was never supposed to be included.
Wheeler disputed claims by environmental groups that the rule would remove federal oversight from at least 60 percent of the nation’s waterways. But EPA officials also could not say what percentage would lose those protections.