The Trump administration had rolled back the Obama administration’s expanded federal protections as part of its unwinding of hundreds of environmental and public health regulations.
The Trump-era rule, finalized in 2020, was long sought by builders, oil and gas developers, farmers and others who complained about federal overreach that they said stretched into gullies, creeks and ravines on farmland and other private property.
Friday’s finalized regulation protects hundreds of thousands of small streams, wetlands and other waterways, repealing the Trump-era rule that federal courts had thrown out and that environmental groups said left waterways vulnerable to pollution.
Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W. VA.) called the new rule “regulatory overreach” that will “unfairly burden America’s farmers, ranchers, miners, infrastructure builders, and landowners.” The US Supreme Court is considering arguments from an Idaho couple in their business-backed push to curtail the Clean Water Act.
U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Marquez in Arizona, an Obama appointee, said the Trump-era EPA had ignored its own findings that small waterways can affect the well-being of the larger waterways they flow into. The Biden rule applies federal protections to wetlands, tributaries and other waters that have a significant connection to navigable waters or if wetlands are “relatively permanent.”
Kelly Moser, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Clean Water Defense Initiative, said in a statement, “Today, the Biden administration restored needed clean water protections so that our nation’s waters are guarded against pollution for fishing, swimming, and as sources of drinking water.”
A 2021 review by the Biden administration found that the Trump rule significantly curtailed clean water protections in states such as New Mexico and Arizona.
