WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's administration is expected today to unveil a plan that would 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.
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.
Trump, who made a pledge of weakening a 2015 rule one of his central campaign pledges, is expected to tout his plan as ending a federal land grab that impinged on the rights of farmers, rural landowners and real estate developers to use their property as they see fit.
Under the President Barack Obama-era rule, farmers using land near streams and wetlands were restricted from doing certain kinds of plowing and planting certain crops, and would have been required to apply for permits from the Environmental Protection Agency to use chemical pesticides and fertilizers that could have run off into those water bodies. Under the new Trump plan, which lifts federal protections from many of those streams and wetlands, those requirements will also be lifted.
The proposed water rule is designed to replace a regulation known as Waters of the United States. The unveiling of the proposal is expected to coincide with its publication in the Federal Register. After that, the administration will take comments on the plan for 60 days.
The Obama rule, developed jointly by the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers under the authority of the 1972 Clean Water Act, was designed to limit pollution in about 60 percent of the nation's bodies of water, protecting sources of drinking water for about a third of the United States.
The new water rule will retain federal protections for larger bodies of water, the rivers that drain into them, and wetlands that are directly adjacent to those bodies of water, according to a detailed eight-page fact sheet prepared by the administration.
But it will strip away protections of "ephemeral" streams, in which water runs only during or after rainfalls, and of wetlands that are not adjacent to major bodies of water, or connected to such bodies of water by a surface channel of water.
Federal courts had already halted the implementation of the 2015 rules in 28 states after opponents sued to block them. However, the rules had taken effect in the other 22 states.
A Section on 12/11/2018