Lobbyists Have Convinced Trump To Allow Industry To Poison Our Water-- Just Like In The Bad Old Days
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• Barbara Lee (D-CA)Pocan and Jayapal are the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and there are hopes that the proposal-- which includes just about every progressive priority anyone is talking about-- will lead to even greater support in that caucus. But, while progressives were celebrating their progress on the GreenNewDeal, Republicans and K Street lobbyists were popping champaign corks all over DC. Trump kept another promise: to poison our water. Annie Snider had the story at Politico, "Trump Proposes To Roll Back Decades Of Water Protections." The massive rollback of Clean Water Act protections would "remove federal pollution safeguards for tens of thousands of miles of streams and millions of acres of wetlands."
• Judy Chu (D-CA)
• Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC)
• Mike Quigley (D-IL)
• Jim McGovern (D-MA)
• Joe Kennedy III (D-MA)
• Chris Pappas (D-NH)
• Ann Kuster (D-NH)
• David Cicilline (D-RI)
• Steve Cohen (D-TN)
• Peter Welch (D-VT)
• Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)
• Mark Pocan (D-WI)
The EPA’s proposed rule would overwrite a stricter Obama-era regulation, in yet another attack on the legacy of President Donald Trump’s predecessor. But the rollback would go much further than just erasing Barack Obama's work.
The Trump proposal represents the latest front in a decades-long battle over the scope of the landmark environmental law, whose requirements can impose major costs on energy companies, farmers, ranchers and real estate developers. Reversing Obama’s water regulation was one of Trump’s top environmental priorities-- he signed an executive order directing the new rule barely a month after taking office, even as he repeatedly said he wanted "crystal clear water."
Geoff Gisler, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, called the proposal a “sledgehammer to the Clean Water Act.”
“Out of all the anti-environmental attacks we have seen from this administration, this may be the most far-reaching and destructive,” he said in a statement.
The new proposal embraces a view that industry groups have pushed for years: that the law should cover only major rivers, their primary tributaries and wetlands along their banks. Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said this will save regulatory costs for industries such as mining and homebuilding, while arguing it will have little impact on the health of the country’s waters.
At a ceremony unveiling the proposal, Wheeler criticized the Obama administration for contending that its version of the rule was about water quality. “It was really about power-- power in the hands of the federal government over farmers, developers and landowners," he said.
...A cavalcade of Republican lawmakers also attended the ceremony at EPA headquarters to praise the rule. Among them were Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)-- who noted that her state's wetlands are larger than all of Texas-- as well as Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS), House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) and House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT).
The scale of the proposal‘s changes could be felt acutely across the country.
In the arid West, where the majority of streams flow only after rainfall or for part of the year, entire watersheds would be left unprotected from pollution. In Arizona, for instance, as much as 94 percent of its waters could lose federal protection under the new definition, depending on the how the agencies interpret key terms. Meanwhile, Arizona state law also prevents it from regulating waterways more stringently than the federal government requires.
...But environmentalists say a narrower federal regulation will create a race to the bottom and leave downstream states to bear the brunt of the harm.
Thirty-six states have laws on the books like Arizona’s, which prevent them from implementing stricter regulations than the federal government’s, according to a 2013 report by the Environmental Law Institute, meaning any waterways denied federal protection under the Trump administration proposal would be exempt from state regulation as well, unless state legislatures amend their laws.
State lawmakers have been trending in the opposite direction, though. In Wisconsin, one of a handful of states with more stringent wetland protections than the federal government’s, Gov. Scott Walker signed a law this spring dramatically reining in the additional protections.
Today, most of the country’s waterways are overburdened by pollution from farm fields, city streets and industrial facilities. More than two-thirds of the country’s lakes and ponds and more than half of the country’s rivers and streams are impaired, according to EPA’s latest figures. That includes roughly 1 in 4 of the rivers that serve as drinking water sources.
The new proposal to retract protections faces months of public comment and interagency review before it can be finalized, at which point it would likely face numerous lawsuits.
Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) is about to take over as chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. I can't imagine he's going to allow the Trumpist Regime and its corporate allies to get away with this outrage without doing everything in his power to stop it. This morning he told me that "Clean water is a basic necessity for us all. It’s not just a treat you get to enjoy if you know the right people. Unfortunately the Trump administration thinks everything is for sale, including public health and environmental quality. And the only way to prevent the selloff is to get active and stop them. The alternative might be drinking oil-tainted water."
Labels: deregulation, EPA, Green New Deal, Raul Grijalva, water resources
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 9:00 PM
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2 Comments:
Allow me to illuminate the scam here.
In my town, there are 14 water wells. 8 of them are polluted by things like rocket fuel. Of the remaining 6 wells, this rocket fuel (leaking from an EPA Superfund site) is already showing signs contaminating 3 of the remaining wells.
So who comes to town? Niagara. Who is given access to one of the uncontaminated remaining wells, including the only well which isn't going to be contaminated due to geographic conditions? Niagara. Who got to cover much of the cost of the connection to the well AND the factory where the bottling is going to take place? The local water customers.
I'll give you a hint. My water bill went from just over a dollar an acre-foot to over $3.40, indexed to inflation. There is no sunset to this subsidy for Niagara, and I can find no data regarding whether Niagara is actually paying for the water they take from us to sell back to us at a huge profit.
This is going on all over the nation, and the demand for clean water to drink and for other purposes will only increase as more natural sources of water become polluted.
So don't think Trump is an idiot that knows nothing about this. It's all part of how he helps corporations rape the nation and get away with it.
You know he gets a piece of the action.
this is what you get when a Nazi noms corporate whores, lobbyists and science-deniers to important postings, and your hero democraps vote to confirm.
This is what happens when voters get bent over and stovepiped for 40 years by their hero democraps... and continue to affirm them every cycle anyway.
the Nazi voters are only about a third of the electorate. But the democraps are so fucking horrible that they can only muster another third of the electorate to vote against the nazis.
if the democraps were still good, maybe they'd be able to muster enough to defeat the Nazi third every cycle. But of course, they are not good. They stink.
Or maybe if a truly left party, like the democraps of the '30s through the '60s, were to coalesce, THEY would muster more than the Nazi third. But that cannot happen since the non-Nazi third are dumber than shit.
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