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But environmentalists have assaulted the repeal. "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.
The Obama rule, developed under the Clean Water Act 1972, aimed to limit pollution in about 60% of the country's water bodies and to protect drinking water sources for about one-third of the states. -United. 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 plant certain crops. They would have been forced to obtain E.P.A. allowed to use pesticides and chemical fertilizers that could have run into these waters. These restrictions will now be lifted.
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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 new rule, currently under development, is expected to retain the federal protections afforded to large bodies of water, the rivers that flow into it, and the wetlands directly adjacent to these bodies of water.
But it is very likely that this will remove the protections of so-called ephemeral watercourses, in which water flows only during or after rainfall, and wetlands that are not adjacent to masses. significant water or connected to such masses of water through a surface channel. These changes would represent a victory for farmers and rural landowners who lobbied aggressively on the Trump administration.
Lawyers said the interim period between the legal completion of the repeal of Obama's rule and the implementation of Trump's new rule this year could however be regulatory chaos for farmers and homeowners earthlings.
"Obama's rule on clean water had very clear lines defining which waters were protected by the law on clean water and which waters were not. Repealing the rule means replacing these lines with case-by-case appeals, "said expert Blan Holman. on the regulation of water with the Southern Environmental Law Center.
"It will be very unpredictable," Holman said. "They impose a chaotic program on a case-by-case basis to replace clear and clear rules."
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