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Trump and Republicans Will Soon Unveil Plan to Destroy Clean Water Protections
Scott Pruitt is gone and now so is Ryan Zinke. That just means their headline news of corruption has ended but the destruction of our environment pushes ahead with full force, stronger than ever. Despite a public dialog on climate change and our future more than ever before, Republicans continue to eliminate every environmental regulation possible to benefit corporations who lobby them.
THIS IS THE SWAMP.
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to propose changing the definition of “Waters of the U.S.” to erase federal protections on some waters..... shrinking the number of waterways that are protected from industry pollutants.
.... weaken federal clean water rules designed to protect millions of acres of wetlands and thousands of miles of streams nationwide from pesticide runoff and other pollutants.
The Clean Water Act was first established in the 1970s to give the federal government authority to regulate pollution discharges into waterways. For the past two years, Republicans have sought to weaken the burdens placed on their corporate overlords under the Waters of the U.S. rule, established in 2015. The rule defines which bodies of water are subject to federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act.
In February of this year, the EPA under then-Administrator Scott Pruitt suspended the rule from implementation for two years, promising to rewrite it to “reduce confusion and provide certainty to America's farmers and ranchers.”
But in August that decision was put on a hold by a judge in 26 states.
However, injunctions from district courts in North Dakota and Georgia kept the rule from being re-implemented in 24 states.
This new Republican rule would be a proposed replacement to significantly weaken the Clean Water Act while the Republicans and Trump continue seeking options to repeal it in its entirety.
Environmentalists say the proposal represents a historic assault on wetlands regulation at a moment when Trump has repeatedly voiced a commitment to “crystal-clean water.” The proposed new rule would chip away at safeguards put in place a quarter century ago, during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, who implemented a policy designed to ensure that no wetlands lost federal protection.
In concert with other recent actions, the Republican Party continues to endlessly show their complete ownership by corporate interests who pay them for the right to destroy our world. This is why we vote them out.
The clean water rollback is the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration to weaken or undo major environmental rules, including proposals to weaken regulations on planet-warming emissions from cars, power plants and oil and gas drilling rigs, a series of moves designed to speed new drilling in the vast Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and efforts to weaken protections under the Endangered Species Act
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/climate/trump-clean-water-rollback.html