Hey guys, we can pollute the wetlands again!
Dirtier more toxic water please; that’s what we want.
The Trump administration is changing the definition of what qualifies as “waters of the United States,” tossing out an Obama-era regulation that had enhanced protections for wetlands and smaller waterways.
Thursday’s rollback is the first step in a process that will allow the Trump administration to create its own definition of which waters deserve federal protection. A new rule is expected to be finalized this winter.
The repeal ends an “egregious power grab,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler says. He adds that the 2015 rule had provoked 31 states to file complaints and petitions for legal review.
“We’re delivering on the president’s regulatory reform agenda,” Wheeler says.
It’s not “regulatory reform.” It’s throwing out regulations protecting water and wetlands for the sake of profits for the few. Laughably, it’s the Environmental Protection Agency doing it. The Trump EPA.
The EPA chief unveiled the shift in U.S. water policy Thursday during an event at the National Association of Manufacturers headquarters in Washington, D.C. Wheeler spoke alongside Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works R.D. James, who joined him in signing the repeal of the 2015 rule.
Adding that the EPA has already finalized 46 deregulatory actions under President Trump, Wheeler says the agency has “an additional 45 actions in development.”
Down with clean water! Up with pollution! Down with wetlands, up with floods and vanishing birds and fish!
In response to the EPA’s action, Jon Devine, director of federal water policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, issued a statement saying, “This unsubstantiated action is illegal and will certainly be challenged in court.”
Trump first ordered a review of the Waters of the United States rule in February 2017. He said at the time that while it is “in the national interest to ensure that the Nation’s navigable waters are kept free from pollution,” the policy must also promote economic growth and minimize regulatory uncertainty — and not overstep states’ authority.
Yeah. Let’s keep promoting economic growth until the entire Amazon rain forest disappears and all the tundra melts and more of Greenland turns to water. There will be three very rich humans left.
Realistically, if Trump hadn’t done it, the courts would. They have rolled back wetlands protection every time Congress has protected them. They have narrowed the definition of “waters of the United States so much that it is nearly impossible to protect wetlands.
Yeah, this is egregious of Trump, but I’ve been through this so many times I don’t assume there will be protection. We’ve had this battle over and over, and the polluters always win.
Ah, I didn’t realize it was that bad. Damn.
Nova pointed out in that episode about super storms I mentioned the other day that one big reason Houston was so drowned by Harvey was because so much of the wetlands had been turned into asphalt: wetlands absorb rain, asphalt does not.
Yes, and one problem that made Katrina worse was destruction of the wetlands in the Mississippi River Delta. We knew about that in 1968 following Hurricane Camille; Congress actually appropriated money for that – in 1997. I had visited the restoration project in 2003; it wasn’t far enough along to do enough for New Orleans. But, hey, the government rebuilt Trent Lott’s house for him, right?
We’ve only come to appreciate wetlands in the past few decades. Our ancestors destroyed them rapidly, seeing them as nothing other than insect infested wastelands that were “too thick to drink, too thin to plow”. We have been merrily destroying our own home for a long time.