TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – The Trump administration on Thursday revoked an Obama-era regulation that shielded many U.S. wetlands and streams from pollution but was opposed by developers and farmers who said it hurt economic development and infringed on property rights.
Environmental groups criticized the administration’s action, the latest in a series of moves to roll back environmental protections put into place under President Barack Obama.
The 2015 Waters of the United States rule defined the waterways subject to federal regulation. Scrapping it “puts an end to an egregious power grab, eliminates an ongoing patchwork of clean water regulations and restores a longstanding and familiar regulatory framework,” Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler said at a news conference.
Wheeler and R.D. James, assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, signed the repeal document.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler speaks at a news conference to announce plans to revoke the Waters of the United States rule, an Obama-era regulation that provided federal protection to many U.S. wetlands and streams, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)Since enactment of the Clean Water Act in 1972, the federal government has gone beyond protection of navigable waterways and their major tributaries to assert jurisdiction over “isolated ponds and channels that only flow after it rains,” Wheeler said.