Trump’s EPA Seeks to Remove Much of Nation’s Headwaters and Wetlands From Protection
By Hank Black
President Trump moved yesterday to weaken the federal Clean Water Act by redefining the Obama administration’s Waters of the US rule, known as WOTUS, to eliminate protections for much of the nation’s waterways – a majority, in some estimates.
The action principally would remove oversight for small tributary headwaters that do not flow year-round and for wetlands not clearly connected to flowing streams.
The proposed new rule by the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to be challenged and eventually work its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a conservative majority now sits.
The proposal is seen as a boon to the president’s rural base. In Alabama, business development and agricultural interests such as the Business Council of Alabama and Alabama Farmers Federation have supported the move, largely on the basis of property owners’ right to use their land as they see fit without subjecting farming and forestry practices to permits and large fines.
U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, the only Democrat in Alabama’s congressional delegation, said she believed changes were needed to Obama’s rule but that she viewed the move by Trump as “misguided.”
“This Administration’s attempt to remove protections for thousands of miles of US waterways and wetlands puts our environment and our natural resources at risk,” Sewell said in an email. “While I believe that Obama’s Waters of the United States rule was not perfect, and that changes were needed to protect the work of our farmers, the Trump Administration’s elimination of environmental safeguards is misguided. In Congress, I will continue to be a voice for defending the environment while also protecting the work of Alabama farmers.”
Environmentalists in the state have long opposed changing the Obama version, saying it would endanger much of Alabama’s 132,000 miles of waterways, large and small, that provide drinking water, recreation, wildlife protection and crop irrigation.
The Alabama Rivers Alliance, an organization of water-protection groups, slammed the proposal. Policy director Curt Chaffin called the proposal the “dirty water rule” and said it “will make it easier to pollute those important headwaters.”
Birmingham Water Works Board official Darryl R. Jones has gone on record as saying the Obama rule keeps “pollution out of smaller streams that go into larger ones that we get water from for treatment. The less contamination in the source water, the less (treatment) we need to do to get clean, healthy drinking water… We’re at the mercy of what somebody does upstream.”
Jones is assistant general manager of operations and technical services for the Birmingham Water Works Board.
The Southern Environmental Law Center and others have won cases in recent months to delay the proposed rule, and the SELC vowed to continue to oppose it in court. In a statement, the SELC said the rule would be a “giveaway to polluters.”
SELC attorney Blan Holman said the proposal would give a “free pass to dump” and would be “a full-frontal assault on one of our country’s most important and longstanding environmental safeguards.”
He estimated that more than 60 percent of stream miles would cease to be protected from agricultural fertilizer that finds its way into small streams and wetlands well as sedimentation from road and big-development construction.
Without protection, Holman said, industrial operations, sewage treatment facilities and others “may be able to directly dump into these waterways without any public notice, threatening drinking water supplies and harming families and communities.”
Environmental groups urged people to object to the new rule before it becomes final. “If citizens care about clean drinking water or recreation here in Alabama, they must tell the EPA to reject the proposal,” Chaffin, of the Alabama Rivers Alliance, said.
Supreme Court rules in favor of Black voters in Alabama redistricting case
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with the court's liberals in affirming a lower-court ruling that found a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in Alabama's congressional map.
Voting rights marcher recalls being clubbed, hearing fatal gunshot during pivotal day of protests
Della Simpson Maynor was just 14 when she marched for voting rights in her hometown of Marion, Alabama. But while events in Alabama helped give birth to the Voting Rights Act, court cases originating in the state have led to its steady erosion over the years.
Alabama lawmakers close out 2023 legislative session
A proposal to exempt overtime pay from state income tax made it out on the last day. A bill that would have put more teeth in the state’s public records law did not.
As the US invests more in climate-smart ag, these Louisiana farmers could serve as a model
Climate-smart agriculture is getting a “once-in-a-generation” investment of $20 billion. Louisiana farmers show what a successful rollout could look like.
Supreme Court opened the door to states’ voting restrictions. Now a new ruling could widen them
The justices are expected to rule in the coming weeks in a new case out of Alabama that could make it much more difficult for minority groups to sue over gerrymandered political maps that dilute their representation.
Apply for the Gulf States Newsroom’s Sports & Culture Fellowship
The Gulf States Newsroom — a collaboration among public radio stations in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, plus NPR — is seeking an early-career journalist to look beyond the scoreboard and report on how the region’s sports culture filters through everything from public policy to race relations to food. This position is a paid, one-year fellowship based […]
