The Trump administration on Friday proposed a new rule that would significantly decrease how many US streams and wetlands would be protected from pollution and industrial impacts, part of a larger push by officials to roll back environmental regulations for air, water and land.
The changes, environmental experts said, would result in more dramatic reductions in the number of protected water bodies nationwide than an earlier plan from November.
“This is a humongous rollback and it's a bigger rollback than their initial proposal,” said Jon Devine, who leads the Natural Resources Defense Council's federal water policy team.
Last fall, the Environmental Protection Agency and US Army Corps of Engineers proposed a series of new ways to define which bodies of water would qualify for federal protection. Former EPA officials and environmentalists said that initial proposal, if finalized, would greatly shrink the amount of protected US waters compared to current rules set by former President Joe Biden's administration.
This week, in response to 220,000 public comments on the first proposal, the two agencies made a supplemental one that provides some alternatives. For example, per this administration, US waters would be protected if they qualify as relatively permanent. Under the new proposal, this term is defined as a body of water that has standing or continuously flowing water every day of the year during ordinary conditions, with a few exceptions.
"Landowners, farmers, ranchers, energy producers, developers, and small businesses deserve greater regulatory clarity and predictability from EPA, and we are committed to delivering on that while adhering to the Clean Water Act and the Supreme Court's direction," said EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch.
In practice, said Elizabeth Southerland, a former top EPA water official who resigned under the first Trump administration, the new proposal “will disallow all seasonal rivers in the West that only flow three months of the year. The new definition requires flow for 11 months of the year.”
Under the updated plan, wetlands and other bodies of water whose flow has been temporarily interrupted by drought would also only be protected for up to five years. If the drought lasts longer, then the affected bodies of water would lose those protections.
Southerland said that provision would “ensure more wetlands and streams lose jurisdiction as climate change intensifies.”
In their proposal, the agencies stated that the newest changes would result in fewer bodies of water falling under federal jurisdiction and receiving protections than are currently. Although its effects would be felt nationwide, they said “the greatest impact would be in regions where intermittent streams drive much of the hydrology, particularly in the arid West.”
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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