WASHINGTON The Trump administration is poised to roll back Clean Water Act protections on millions of acres of streams and wetlands, following through on a promise to agriculture interests and real estate developers to rewrite an Obama-era rule limiting pollution.
The administrations plan for a vastly scaled-down Clean Water Rule is expected to be released as soon as Tuesday. Officials said almost a year ago that they had begun the process of reversing the rule President Barack Obama put in place, and internal talking points laying out its case were disclosed late last week by the environmental media outlet E&E News.
The talking points signal that the Environmental Protection Agency intends to strip federal protections from all of the nations wetlands and many streams that do not flow year-round. The administration has not challenged the accuracy of the talking points.
The previous administrations 2015 rule wasnt about water quality, the draft talking points said. It was about power power in the hands of the federal government over farmers, developers and landowners.
At stake are billions of dollars in potential development rights, the quality of drinking water for tens of millions of Americans and rules that affect farming in much of the country, as well as wildlife habitat for most of the nations migratory birds and many other species.
Under the administrations plan, the Clean Water Acts protections would no longer apply to most ponds, wetlands and streams that form major parts of drinking-water systems and fisheries throughout the nation, particularly in the arid West. As many as one in three Americans drink water derived in part from seasonal streams that would no longer get protections, according to scientific studies the Obama-era EPA relied on in writing the original rule.
In California, where many significant stretches of fresh water dry up in the summer, as much as 80 percent of the states fresh water could lose federal protection. The waters would continue to have protection under state law, but few states are in position to replace the regulatory systems currently run by federal officials.
The fight over how broadly the Clean Water Acts protections reach has been going on for decades. The EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers share authority over development that affects lakes and rivers used in interstate commerce. But because pollution flows downstream, the government also has taken jurisdiction over non-navigable waters that connect to those.
The issue that has generated battles through four consecutive administrations involves how far upstream the governments reach can extend.
Environmentalists have pushed to extend protections to seasonal waters, seeing them as key resources for healthy ecosystems. Agricultural and real estate interests have pushed back hard, complaining of intrusions by heavy-handed bureaucrats.
Farmers have argued the Obama-era rules could force them to get costly and cumbersome permits just to dig a drainage ditch. Developers warned the new restrictions could needlessly complicate home building.
Under Obama, the EPA ultimately found many of those fears exaggerated. The agency concluded that the protections it put in place would actually create a net economic benefit for the nation of as much as $550 million a year.
You cant protect the larger bodies of water unless you protect the smaller ones that flow into them, said Ken Kopocis, who was the chief EPA water official under Obama. You end up with a situation where you can pollute or destroy smaller streams and bodies, and it will eventually impact the larger ones.
All of the historic federal water cleanups have involved repairing damage that was done to intermittent streams flowing into a major navigable river or lake, he said.
Because of conflicting court rulings, the Obama rules have been in effect in only part of the country. Federal courts covering 22 states, including the West Coast, New England, the mid-Atlantic and parts of the upper Midwest, have allowed the rules to go into effect. In those states, mostly controlled by Democrats, state governments have generally supported the Obama-era rules.
