Environmental progress! (Back to where we were before Trump, but that's something.)

Federal judge throws out Trump administration rule allowing the draining and filling of streams, marshes and wetlands

Many farm and business groups backed the rule, but a U.S. district judge ruled it could lead to ‘serious environmental harm’

A federal judge Monday threw out a major Trump administration rule that scaled back federal protections for streams, marshes and wetlands across the United States, reversing one of the previous administration’s most significant environmental rollbacks.

U.S. District Judge Rosemary Márquez wrote that Trump officials committed serious errors while writing the regulation, finalized last year, and that leaving it in place could lead to “serious environmental harm.”

A number of business and farm groups had supported the push to replace Obama-era standards with the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, on the grounds that states were better positioned to regulate many waterways and that the previous protections were too restrictive.

The ruling in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, which applies nationwide, will afford new protections for drinking-water supplies for millions of Americans, as well as for thousands of wildlife species that depend on America’s wetland acreage.

... The decision underscores the extent to which legal fights are shaping environmental policy across the country. Just this month, the Interior Department said it would resume auctioning off new oil and gas leases to comply with an order by a Louisiana federal judge, while another federal judge blocked a controversial oil project planned for Alaska’s North Slope.

[Of course, money will fight back]

Home builders, oil drillers and farmers — who have long argued that earlier restrictions on developing land made it too difficult to do their work — are likely to appeal.

“The fallout for private property owners, especially farmers, is that they’re going to be cast back into a situation where they have a lot more uncertainty,” said Mandy Gunasekara, who served as EPA’s chief of staff during Trump’s last year in office.

In June, the Biden administration announced that it would write regulations to strengthen wetland protections but would keep the Trump-era rule on the books while it did so. But tribal and environmental groups pressed the court in Arizona to vacate the previous administration’s rule sooner, since some wetlands may be irreparably harmed during the time it would take to replace it.

“We came in and said, ‘No, no, no, no, you can’t leave this in place,’" said Janette Brimmer, a senior attorney for Earthjustice, which represented the Native American and green groups in court. She added, “This is hugely good.” [emphasis mine]

... With Monday’s court ruling, agencies will go back to applying water protection standards from the 1980s, which are more expansive than the Trump-era rule but not as sweeping as Obama’s.

#Environment #USAPolitics #Earthjustice

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/08/30/water-rule-trump/