Hours before his first speech to Congress, President Trump started the government machinery running to carry out his campaign promise to eliminate the EPA’s Waters of the United States rule, a process that could take months or even years. All the same, farm groups applauded the presidential slap on the hand of what they call federal over-reach.
“The flawed WOTUS rule has proven to be nothing more than a federal land grab,” said American Farm Bureau Federation president Zippy Duvall, who watched Trump sign an executive order against the rule, which has been tied up in court since it was issued in June 2015. The AFBF spearheaded rural opposition to WOTUS, which defines the upstream reach of clean water laws. They said EPA would regulate dry ditches in farm fields under WOTUS and found loopholes in any EPA description of its limits.
Environmental groups said Trump was siding with polluters on WOTUS as part of an assault of environmental and public health. The League of Conservation Voters said WOTUS “protects the drinking water of 1 in 3 people living in this country.” Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group tweeted, “@realDonaldTrump signs order making February 28 National Polluter Holiday.”
“With today’s executive action, I am directing the EPA to take action, paving the way for the elimination of this disruptive and horrible rule,” said Trump before signing the document in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. “It’s a horrible, horrible rule. Has sort of a nice name but everything else is bad.” Trump cited WOTUS in his appeal for rural votes. The second paragraph of the White House’s “America First energy plan” calls for elimination of the Obama-era Climate Action Plan and WOTUS in order to help workers and reduce energy costs.
The executive order tells EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to review WOTUS to see if it promotes economic growth, minimizes economic uncertainty and protects navigable waters from pollution and to repeal or rewrite WOTUS so it conforms to that standard. The order also suggests the government follow a narrower view, written by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, of its constitutional power to regulate navigable waters.
The National Pork Producers Council said the rule “no doubt would have been used by trial lawyers and environmental activists to attack farmers.”
The EPA was expected to be hit hard by Trump’s plan to cut domestic spending to offset more money for the military. The agency budget could be cut by one-fourth. Last weekend, the new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, “told a conservative audience that calls for the agency to be eliminated are ‘justified,'” said the Christian Science Monitor.