New York City Joins Coalition in Suing Over Trump’s Repeal of Clean Water Rule
December 20, 2019
Repeal Of “Clean Water Rule” Ignores Science and the Law, And Strips Our Nation’s Waters Of Basic Protections
Today, New York City joined a coalition of 16 states and the District of Columbia in suing the Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) for rolling back regulations fundamental to improving and maintaining the health of the nation’s waters. The Trump Administration’s “Recodification Rule” repeals the Clean Water Rule, a science-based Obama-era federal regulation that ensured the nation’s lakes, rivers, streams, and wetlands received proper protection under the Clean Water Act.
The Recodification Rule was finalized in October 2019, and replaced the Clean Water Rule’s definition of the waters protected by the Act with a more narrow, outdated 30 year-old definition. This definition ignores the best and most current science on the connectivity of smaller or infrequently-flowing bodies of water, such as headwater streams, tributaries, and wetlands to downstream “navigable” waters.
Corporation Counsel James E. Johnson said, “The Trump Administration has arbitrarily repealed a federal rule that helped ensure protection of water bodies, including vital wetlands and intermittent streams. Wetlands remove sediment and other pollutants from New York City drinking water. The new rule will allow destruction of sixty percent of the wetlands that are central to keeping our water clean. These wetlands literally protect the water that makes its way to our faucets. New York City will take every step necessary to support reinstatement of the science-based Clean Water Rule, including working with the coalition to stop this dangerous, destructive, and unlawful effort by the federal government.”
The 2015 Clean Water Rule was supported by 1,200 peer-reviewed scientific studies concluding that many of the nation’s larger waters are connected to upstream headwaters, intermittent streams, wetlands, and tributaries. Because of this interconnectivity, when wetlands and relatively small or infrequently-flowing upland streams are polluted, this can harm downstream waters such as rivers, lakes, estuaries, and oceans.
The coalition argues that Trump Administration’s reversion to the 1986 scope of the Clean Water Act is arbitrary and capricious, and illegal. The Administration did not consider the Clean Water Act’s sole objective of protecting the integrity of the Nation’s waters nor did it comply with subsequent Supreme Court precedent. Further, the Rule, as adopted, fails to consider scientific and factual findings – established in the 2015 Clean Water Rule rulemaking – on the interconnectivity of waters.
All of the lower 48 states have waters that are downstream of other states. As such, several states are recipients of water pollution generated not only within their borders, but also from upstream sources outside their borders over which they lack jurisdiction.
In addition to New York City, today’s action, which was led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, includes the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.
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