Trump Prepares to Unveil a Vast Reworking of Clean Water Protections

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/climate/trump-clean-water-rollback.html

91 32 8 years ago

masonic7• 8 years ago

  “They’re definitely rolling things back to the pre-George H.W. Bush era,”

This is a flat lie, given that the Obama rule wasn't even put in place until the last 18% of his administration (barely 14 months before Trump's election).

windexh8er• 8 years ago

Honestly curious: why does the timing make it untrue?

masonic7• 8 years ago

Because what they are rolling it back to is just the pre-August 2015 rule. In other words, the Obama administration was fine with the existing rule until most of the way through his second term, apparently doing it for just political chits for the 2016 election cycle.

mc322• 8 years ago

I believe they use the Bush claim because Bush put in a provision in his act that no wetlands (acreage) would be lost. [I.e. Obama added to the protected wetlands but Trump is proposing to take some of those added by Obama back] Bush's provision would disallow clawing back. But that is definitely not the same as taking regulation (or protected wetland or clean water) to the state before Bush I was in office.

So, the article begins with that Bush claim but then references Obama implementations thereafter, so it does seem a bit disingenuous by them, but then, if they told it like it is, it would get people less agitated about it given it keeps some of the major provisions and isn't undoing regulation and setting it back to the way it was prior to Bush 1.

cazum• 8 years ago

The Bush rule is that "wetlands will keep their federal protection"

The Obama rule is "farms near those wetlands cannot do bad thing to the wetlands"

By repealing the Obama rule, they are inherently repealing the Bush one.

trothamel• 8 years ago

Isn't the flaw with this that the two rules use a different definition for wetlands?

mc322• 8 years ago

Sure, but that is not the same as the tacit claim "They’re definitely rolling things back to the pre-George H.W. Bush era".

masonic7• 8 years ago

No, you can't know that. The Trump rule, when it comes, doesn't have to correspond to any prior content.

Note that the Times never criticized the existing rule until after Obama changed it late in his tenure, giving him political cover.

mindslight• 8 years ago

It is truly amazing how well these shitheads prey on our understandable frustration with the government to gather support, and redirect that energy into just creating more corruption to pad someone else's pocket.

Even if downsizing pressure is applied evenly across the board, soft targets like the EPA take the damage while any reform that would actually cut into someone's bottom line remains unaffected.

And the worst part is there will be countless cheerleaders who rationalize this action because the "other team" is upset.

dmix• 8 years ago

Yup I'm deep into the reducing government waste camp but of ALL the things to focus on that hurt business they focus on the one thing that's a compromise for something better, not just straight up wasteful interference in markets. There are a hundred better things to spend time on.

There is an endless legacy of old agency mandates and legislation that started with good intentions to 'help the little guy' or whatnot that are a completely net negative for everyone (except a few politically connected companies).

The EPA is not even a 'soft target', there are plenty of low hanging fruit. It's just a very public and obvious economic intervention, so it gets plenty of attention. Meanwhile the million other things the government has their hands in goes unnoticed.

Politics is cancerous.

masonic7• 8 years ago

Text of the Obama administration rule:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/06/29/2015-13...

dsfyu404ed2• 8 years ago

This is what we get for putting so much power to interpret and enforce law in bureaucratic agencies.

FlyMoreRockets• 8 years ago

So, we should empower corporations to do the right thing without oversight?

time-domain0• 8 years ago

They have a name for that: public-private partnerships (PPP).

dsfyu404ed2• 8 years ago

We should make the legislative branch exercise more direct control over the alphabet soup of administrative agencies.

I thought that was obvious but I guess not.

blurbleblurble2• 8 years ago

I think their point was just that the legislation could be more explicit and leave less leeway in the hands of the executive branch...

Which of course is made difficult in a paralyzed, polarized legislative environment.

This is actually one of the reasons I'm such a big fan of cardinal voting systems such as approval voting. I believe that they'd elect a more diverse body of legislators, so that coalition building would become both necessary for political survival, and possible in the first place. Right now there's no true coalition building, just hyperpartisan compromise.

gdubs• 8 years ago

Vernal pools are an extremely important part of the ecosystem and also play a role in carbon sequestration.

The background of all of this begins with a farmer named Duarte who plowed a wetland on his property and ended up with a huge fine. It became a divisive issue; some cried government overreach, others said he should have listened to the army corps of engineers.

But there’s a reason we have an Environmental Protection Agency — people by-and-large aren’t going to go out of their way to protect these natural resources. There are exceptions, and I know conservation minded farmers — but if you look at the aggregate of farming in America, well, it’s pretty terrible for the environment.

__Joker• 8 years ago

Yes. There is a reason governments should be involved in this. Climate control, environment protection are classic game theory problem. Individual can profit from destroying a little bit of the environment but as a group we lose. Essentially governments do the group bargaining. Unless there is a group which represents all people government has to play that part.

cimmanom• 8 years ago

And by “reworking” they mean “undermining”?

Trump Prepares to Unveil a Vast Reworking of Clean Water Protections

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