Trust us, we are as tired of posting shit like this as you right-wingnuts are of reading it. But if the Whore in the white house wasn’t selling out our environment to every big business and polluters he can think of, we wouldn’t be doing this. But because he is, and because we care about our environment, we will continue to post articles like this as long as that son of a bitch is illegally occupying the presidency.
The Trump administration is poised to roll back Clean Water Act protections on millions of acres of waterways and wetlands, including up to two-thirds of California’s inland streams, following through on a promise to agriculture interests and real estate developers to rewrite an Obama-era rule limiting pollution.
The administration’s plan for a vastly scaled-down Clean Water Rule is expected to be released as soon as Tuesday. Officials said nearly two years ago that they had begun the process of reversing the rule President Obama put in place, and internal talking points laying out its case were disclosed late last week by the environmental media outlet E&E News.
At stake are billions of dollars in potential development rights, the quality of drinking water for tens of millions of Americans and rules that affect farming in much of the country, as well as wildlife habitat for most of the nation’s migratory birds and many other species.
Under the administration’s plan, the Clean Water Act’s protections would no longer apply to most seasonal ponds, wetlands and streams, including those that form major parts of drinking-water systems and fisheries throughout the nation, particularly in the arid West. As many as 1 in 3 Americans drink water derived in part from seasonal streams that may no longer get protections, according to scientific studies the Obama-era EPA relied on in writing the original rule.
In California, where many significant stretches of fresh water dry up in the summer, as much as 66% of the state’s freshwater streams could lose federal protection. The waters would continue to have protection under state law, but few states are in position to replace the regulatory systems currently run by federal officials.
