Dismantling the water rule you (and your favorite fisheries) always wanted
This week the Trump administration continued its undo-a-thon against all things labeled “Obama”, firing its latest rollback at the former president’s controversial 2015 Clean Water Rule.
The rule, otherwise knows as Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS), was engineered to give the Clean Water Act of 1972 a broader sense of purpose, empowering the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to protect navigable rivers as well as non-navigable tributaries from pollution, including 60 percent of stream miles in the U.S. that flow seasonally.
Those same clean, pristine headwaters house important wildlife habitat and are essential to species such as wild steelhead, salmon, and resdent trout. A third of Americans, whose drinking water comes from similar places, also appreciate them. So why squash their protections?
Job-suffocating federal overreach is the main complaint. And WOTUS, since its inception, has had a long list…
