CLIMATE CONTROL/EPA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s administration is moving ahead with plans to dismantle another piece of the Obama administration’s environmental legacy, the rule that sought to protect clean drinking water by expanding Washington’s power to regulate major rivers and lakes as well as smaller streams and wetlands.
The Environmental Protection Agency, Department of the Army and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are proposing a new rule that would rescind the Obama administration’s Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule and ‘re-codify the regulatory text’ that existed before its adoption in 2015, according to a press release obtained by The Wall Street Journal that will be sent out Tuesday afternoon.
That action, the agencies contend, ‘would provide certainty in the interim’ while a new rule-making process is undertaken.
Coming almost a month after Mr. Trump announced plans to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, Tuesday’s move is another sign the new administration and the EPA under administrator Scott Pruitt intend to prioritize the economic concerns of industry and agricultural interests over environmental concerns and, more broadly, to erase significant pieces of Mr. Obama’s legacy.”
-Eli Stokols, “Trump, EPA Move to Rescind Obama Administration’s Clean Water Rule,” The Wall Street Journal online, June 27, 2017 02:00pm