My spidey senses went off when I saw this tweet yesterday.
In addition to the deadly mishandling of COVID-19, the traitor’s administration has issued a new rule regarding the Clean Water Act. It’s important because it re-defines what constitutes a protected body of water. In doing so it very much relaxes the rules that protect and create clean, drinkable water.
I saw this tweet, and knew that my ex-husband, (a current EPA employee in the Water division), would be able to provide some insight for us on what’s scheduled to happen on June 22, 2020 when the new rule takes effect.
Here’s what he had to say about it to me:
As you know, deciding what waters are "jurisdictional" and subject to federal regulation/protection as a "water of the U.S." has always been both political, and technically very complicated. Wetlands in particular had been the epitome of the "grey zone" for a long time, precipitating endless arguments and court battles. That part doesn't change at all in this new rule! But now in addition to that already complicated situation, throw in "intermittent" and (ever worse) "ephemeral" waters "in a typical year". How all these things are defined effects who can do what where, on "their" land or others' land. Unfortunately, the definitions of intermittent and ephemeral in the new rule are going to be open to just as much technical interpretation and argument as the wetlands definition has proven to be. Even if implementation of the rule itself is not held up for too long in the courts (especially considering the present makeup of SCOTUS), there will CERTAINLY be YEARS of litigation over individual projects/permits (or the lack of them) that are based on different interpretations of the definitions in the rule. (Based on experience, there is no doubt that Corps of Engineers offices in different part of the country will treat the definitions differently in real life. "There will be litigation!") And it will be especially a problem here in the southwest, where there is less "water" to begin with, and where what constitutes a "typical" year is already hard to pin down.
As you may be able to discern in this snippet, the Corps of Engineers is not always interested in protecting the environment.
One of the interesting things things in that regard is that the agencies are not yet getting any real training in the new rule. Especially agencies other than the Corps of Engineers (including people in EPA who are ON the national interagency workgroup for this!). That is leaving the Corps clearly in the driver's seat in terms of developing their own interpretations. So other agencies will be fighting an uphill battle on this from the outset.
Here CWA stands for Clean Water Act, and notice the difficulty expected in enforcing rules. Helps the bad folks especially when courts are willing to protect them.
In practical terms the new definitions will make it much more difficult to do enforcement under the CWA for discharges in many places that drain directly to other water bodies. For example someone dumping their oil in a ditch or a dry (at the moment) wash that they argue is "ephemeral" (as opposed to "intermittent") would be harder to penalize (under CWA), even though as soon as it rains a bit that oil would go directly to the jurisdictional water downstream and pollute it. (Storm drains on streets appear to be excluded too.)
Too technical didn’t read/understand? Here’s the impact.
An overarching thing that pisses me off about this rule, is that it almost entirely ignores the basic point of the Clean Water Act, to protect and enhance the nation's waters and to make them all "fish-able and swim-able" again. I say this because, rather than take a precautionary approach to keeping bad stuff out of the water where ever it is possible to do so, it seems to have the opposite philosophy of saying you can do whatever you want EXCEPT in these very narrow circumstances when we can't avoid having to regulate you poor citizens. It is exclusive in it's approach, in order to "impact" the fewest developers, rather than inclusive in its approach to protect our common resource as much as possible for everyone. And of course, that they published this in Earth Day week, with no public announcement, just feels oily. (But hey, now we can discharge our oil on more places!) 😒
Oh yes, and morale sucks in the wetlands program at EPA over this.
emphasis mine
Here are his thoughts on why he thinks they’re doing this now, knowing the courts will tie it up for years.
I think it reflects one part of the existing right-wing narrative that private property rights should be king, that the “nanny state” over-regulates virtually everything (including vehicle efficiency standards, the coal industry, and even public health-based isolation orders!), and that it all needs to be rolled back...
He’s a dedicated public servant who works hard to uphold environmental laws, both in the letter and in the spirit. Tough times at EPA right now for those like him and I know he’s not the only one trying to stick it out to protect the environment as best they can under this administration.