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TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – The Trump administration on Thursday revoked an Obama-era regulation that protected many US wetlands and waterways from pollution, but proponents and farmers opposed the move, which was hurting economic and social development. property rights.
Environmental groups have criticized the action of the administration, the latest in a series of measures to cancel the environmental protections put in place under President Barack Obama.
The 2015 US Water Rule defined federally regulated waterways. Discarding it "puts an end to a blatant coup, eliminates a patchwork of drinking water regulations and restores an old and familiar regulatory framework," said the head of the Protection Agency's the environment, Andrew Wheeler, at a press conference in Washington, DC.
Wheeler and RD James, Assistant Secretary of the Civil Engineering Works, signed a document that overturned the rule and temporarily restored the regulatory system put in place after the 2006 decision of a highly divided Supreme Court. .
The agencies plan to adopt a new rule by the end of the year that should define the waterways protected more closely than the Obama policy.
The Clean Water Act requires landowners to obtain a federal permit before developing or polluting waterways such as rivers and lakes. However, disputes have long persisted over other regulated waters, particularly wetlands that are not directly related to these larger waters, as well as small upstream watercourses and reservoirs. canals that flow only during and after rainfall.
Ecologists say that many of these smaller, seemingly isolated waters are tributaries of major 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 cause damage to wetlands, avoid flooding, filter pollutants and provide habitat for a multitude of fish, waterfowl and other wildlife. wild species, they said.
"By repealing the water quality rule, this administration is opening up our iconic water courses to a flood of pollution," said Bart Johnsen-Harris, of Environment America. "The EPA is giving up its mission to protect our environment and our health."
Wheeler said the regulators had far exceeded Congress's intent under the 1972 Water Quality Act.
"The 2015 rule meant that more businesses and landowners across the United States should get a federal license to exercise control over their own properties, process that can cost tens of thousands of dollars and take months or even years, "he said. . "It has also allowed unelected bureaucrats to make more decisions about land use at the local level, and many Americans have been hesitant about this idea, and rightly so."
President Donald Trump had ordered the EPA and the Army Corps to develop a replacement policy with a more restrictive definition of wetlands and protected watercourses.
The Natural Resources Defense Board has said that the action of the administration would be challenged in court.
"The water quality rule is a solid science and a smart public policy," the group said in a statement. "Where it has been applied, it has protected important waterways and wetlands, bringing certainty to all stakeholders."
Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said the 2015 rule had generated a greater sense of urgency among its members than any other issue.
"When you take the private property rights of a man who has worked all his life … to grow food and fiber we can all sit down and enjoy it three times a day, c & # 39; is something that he just can not stand, "said Duvall. I said.
But Laura DeYoung, who runs a small sheep farm near Peninsula, Ohio, has said she favors federal oversight to protect Lake Erie, where phosphorus runoff from agricultural sources is imputed to large blooms of algae.
"Nothing in the Obama regulations that have been published has prevented me from cultivating as I did before," she said.
The question of which waters are covered by the law on water sanitation has inspired decades of lawsuits and many bills in Congress.
In 2006, the Supreme Court issued three opposing opinions, which led the Obama administration to define its regime. It provided federal oversight of tributaries and upstream sources, including wetlands, ponds, lakes and streams that could affect the quality of navigable waters.
The settlement has attracted rapid court challenges from 31 states and court rulings have blocked its implementation in some. He has been effective in 22 states, Washington, DC and the United States, before Thursday's action.
Betsy Southerland, who was director of science and technology at the EPA's Office of Water under the Obama administration, said the revocation of his policy would create further confusion in regulation .
"This repeal is a victory for property developers, oil and gas drillers and miners who will exploit this ambiguity to flirt and fill small streams and wetlands that have been protected from destruction by the 2015 rule because their critical impact on the quality of national water, "Southerland said.
Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican and chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, applauded the Trump government's decision, saying the Obama rule "would have put ponds, puddles, and nests Prairie hen under the control of Washington ".
The Democratic Republic of Michigan's Dan Kildee, where two disputes over federal wetland permits led to the 2006 Supreme Court case, said Trump "has decided to weaken the protection of our water and to reward polluting companies ".
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