GAITHERSBURG, Md., Jan. 23, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The Trump
Administration announced today that it has finalized new policy
that fundamentally weakens Clean Water Act protections for drinking
water, streams, and wetlands nationwide. Small streams and wetlands
across America are now directly in the crosshairs of polluters.
"Striping away Clean Water Act protections for streams and
wetlands runs counter to science, the law, and common sense," says
Jared Mott, Conservation Director
for the Izaak Walton League. "With its focus on one arbitrary
criteria – continuous flow of water – rather than protecting water
quality, the administration is jeopardizing public health and the
$887 billion outdoor recreation
economy."
The Clean Water Act was passed to improve and protect water
quality by limiting pollution discharges into the nation's streams,
rivers, and other waterbodies and to stem the dramatic loss of
wetlands by regulating when they could be drained or filled.
Beginning in the 1970s, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
regulations relied on science-based standards to identify the
specific types of waterbodies protected by the law. The
overwhelming body of science proves that water quality in rivers
and lakes, for example, is directly affected by waters that
directly and indirectly flow into them. Because the purpose of the
Clean Water Act is to improve and restore water quality nationwide,
EPA regulations protected streams that flow periodically because
pollution dumped into these streams adversely affects the health of
larger waters.
The policy finalized by the administration today stands the
Clean Water Act on its head. It repeals the science-based
definition of "waters of the United
States" and replaces it with an arbitrary definition based
on how frequently a stream has water flowing in it during the year.
Under this policy, a stream that flows for a few months due to
melting snow would be included in the definition, but a stream that
flows only after it rains or following a snowstorm would be
excluded. Both flow periodically and both can carry pollution to
other waters and affect water quality downstream, which
demonstrates how blatantly arbitrary the new policy is. According
the EPA's own analysis, about 117 million Americans – more than
one-third of the total U.S. population – get some or all of their
drinking water from public drinking water systems that are
supplied, at least in part, by the very streams that are now at
risk of pollution.
Protection for 20 million acres of wetlands will also be removed
based on the administration's arbitrary approach, which requires a
wetland to have a continuous surface water connection to a lake or
river to be protected by the Clean Water Act. Because wetlands are
so vital for water quality – filtering pollution as water moves
across the landscape – and provide crucial habitat for fish and
wildlife, most wetlands were historically protected by the Clean
Water Act and EPA regulations. In a potentially devastating blow to
sportsmen and birders, the new policy would guarantee that prairie
potholes and other isolated wetlands essential for waterfowl and
other water birds would not be protected by the Clean Water Act.
Even under the more protective definition that was repealed today,
over 74,000 acres of prairie potholes were lost between 1997 and
2009, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Under the
new, arbitrary definition, the pace of wetland drainage is certain
to increase.
The Trump Administration suggests that this new regulation will
not lead to increased pollution because state laws provide
duplicative protection for all of the waters once protected by the
Clean Water Act. This is blatantly false. Americans cannot depend
on state laws to protect the waters left vulnerable by this action
because most state laws do not offer the same level of protection.
According to EPA's own analysis used to justify the new definition,
protections for streams, wetlands, and other waters will be
weakened in 32 states because state protections are not as strong
as federal protections had been.
Moreover, 7 states prohibit their state laws from being more
stringent than the federal Clean Water Act. Therefore, because
certain types of streams are now explicitly excluded from
protection under federal law, they are likewise excluded from
protection under these state laws. To replace the lost federal
protections, these states would have to enact new laws to
specifically apply water pollution or wetland drainage provisions
to the waters no longer covered by the Clean Water Act.
"Nearly 50 years after passage of the Clean Water Act, we see
the signs of water pollution all around us, from algal blooms in
the Great Lakes to red tides in the Gulf
of Mexico," says Scott
Kovarovics, Executive Director of the Izaak Walton League.
"We know that pollution doesn't just start in the biggest rivers –
it starts in the smallest streams, too. Today, the administration
retreated from the nation's fight for clean water, jeopardizing our
drinking water, fish and wildlife, and outdoor recreation
economy."
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Founded in 1922, the Izaak Walton League of America protects
America's outdoors through education, community-based conservation,
promoting outdoor recreation.
Contact: Jared Mott, Conservation
Director
Izaak Walton League of America
703-655-4784 / jmott@iwla.org
SOURCE Izaak Walton League of America