The Trump Administration will complete the restoration of clean water protections

Want climate news in your inbox? Register here for Climate Fwd:, our e-newsletter.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is expected to finalize Thursday the legal repeal of a major clean water purification regulation at the time of Obama, which limited the products pollutant chemicals that can be used near water courses, wetlands and water courses.

The removal of the 2015 measure, known as the "US Water Rule," was widely expected since the Trump administration's inception, when President Trump had signed a decree asking federal agencies to begin to repeal and replace it.

Weakening the water rule of the Obama era had been a central commitment of Mr. Trump's election campaign, which described it as a federal land grabbing encroaching on farmers' rights, rural landowners and property developers to use their property as they please.

Environmentalists say Trump's efforts to ease rules on regulating clean water are an attack on the protection of the country's waterways and wetlands at a time when Trump has repeatedly stated his commitment to "crystal clear water".

The repeal of the water rule, which should be announced at the headquarters of the National Association of Manufacturers, will come into effect in a few weeks.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, who collaborated on the writing of Obama's original rule, are expected to adopt a new, more flexible replacement rule by the end of the year.

The rollback of clean water is the latest in a series of actions undertaken by the Trump administration to weaken or nullify key environmental rules, including proposals to weaken regulations on global warming emissions from cars, power plants and rigs for oil and gas, a series of moves designed to push new drilling into the vast Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and efforts to weaken the protections provided by the Endangered Species Act.

Ecologists have assaulted the movement.

"As many of our cities and towns live with unsafe drinking water, the time has not come to reduce the enforcement of water safety laws," said Laura Rubin, Director of the Coalition Healing Our Waters. – Big lakes. "We need more, not less, protection for clean water."

But farmer groups, a key political group for Trump, praised the repeal of a regulation that they said severely restricted farmers' use of their land.

"The rule that was developed in 2015 was a significant overrun," said Don Parrish, director of regulatory relations with the Farm Bureau's US Federation, which lobbied for the repeal and replacement of the rule. "It went beyond the limits of clean water protection and tried to regulate land use. This has created responsibilities that can end up putting farmers in jail. He mentioned actions such as the use of pesticides, he said.

the The Obama authority, developed under the Clean Water Act of 1972, aimed to limit pollution in about 60 percent of the country's water bodies and protect drinking water sources for about one-third of the country's water. the United States. It has extended existing federal authority to limit pollution in large water bodies, such as Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound, to the smaller bodies that spill there, such as as tributaries, streams and wetlands.

Under the rule, farmers who use land near watercourses and wetlands are not allowed to do certain types of plowing and planting of certain crops. E.P.A. permits for the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers likely to be discharged into these water bodies.

For more information on the climate and the environment, follow @NYTClimate on Twitter.