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Summary
President Trump-for another time, will take advantage of the 53-year law of the nation protecting the waterways. Seasonal streams, pools and lakes are bet. This move was welcomed by farmers and builders.
Legislators and conservationists are considering how to protect the wetlands of California after the Trump administration has announced its plans to take advantage of the nation-defense law protecting the waterway.
The bet is seasonal streams, ponds and pools, which are only flooded part of the time and are located throughout the southwest. In California, approximately 80% of all linear miles of streams and rivers are ephemeral or periodic.
The Trump Administration’s plan to change the definition of the Clean Water Act to exclude such waterways can make huge areas of California, in essence, unprotected by developers and producers.
The plan proposed by the US Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin on Wednesday It’s no surprise. Trump ordered the same move during his first stay in the White House. In 2017, Trump called many wetlands “puddles and ditches” And he said that the rules are “one of the biggest examples of federal regulation and really managed Amok.” The Biden Administration in 2022 adopted new rules that cancel your decisionS
During the first term of Trump, California’s officers said they would take action to protect the wetlands of the state from the president’s order. The 2019 Water Resources Control Council. New rules In order to strengthen the protection of the waters and to establish “a one -off adopted definition of wetlands at the state level”.
Now a new bill introduced last month, Senate Bill 601It would build more protection, amending the Porter-Cologne water quality control law to copy existing federal defenses. This, among other provisions, will require new rules for permits for pollutants from business operations or construction.
The author of the bill, State Senator Ben Allen, Democrat from Santa Monica, said in a statement that he would strengthen the protection of the waterway in a changing political climate. “It is clear that federal priorities are shifting to leave many of our water ecosystems more vulnerable to dangerous pollutants and disposal,” he said.
Among the most vulnerable waterways in California are Venomous pools – small reservoirs that are filled in spring and winter and maintain a variety of wild animals, including rare salamanders and frogs and More than 200 species of plantsS State biologists estimate that 90% or more of the California pool’s habitat were lost.
The new Trump administration decision aims to align with a 2023 Supreme Court’s remarkable decisionS The Court ruled that the humid area, in order to acquire federal protection under the Clean Water Act as the “water of the United States”, must carry a “continuous surface connection” to the multi -year navigation waters.
Zeldin said EPA will collect reviews from manufacturers and others and work with the Army Corps of Engineering, “to fulfill Trump’s promise of the president to review the definition.”
“Given the decision of the US Supreme Court … It is time for EPA to finally deal with this issue once and for all in the way it provides US farmers, landowners, business and countries with a clear and simplified direction,” the EPA statement said.
“We are not looking for this to be ping-pong anymore,” Zeldin said. “What we are looking for is just to follow the Supreme Court leadership.”
California’s President in California, Shannon Douglas, said in a statement that “we hope that this opportunity to provide feedback to agencies will lead to lasting guidance on the execution and security for farmers and ranch in California.”
She said that “it is crucial to family farmers and the ranch to understand the boundaries of this regulation, including clear definitions.”
In order to make the changes, the EPA must propose rules for reviewing the existing language, and then invite public feedback before accepting them.
Sean Botwell, CEO of California Coastkeeper Alliance, said the changes would ignore California’s climatic conditions.
“This simply does not correspond to the reality in California, especially in southern California,” Botwell said. “This is the work of the Supreme Court resolved on the east coast, where rivers and hydrology are much more than here in California. I really have the feeling that the decision did not take into account our Mediterranean climate. “
California Hydrology – especially its moist winters and dry summer – makes the legal definition of the wet area particularly appropriate and difficult to interpret. Of 415 764 miles of linear flows in California, 79% – or 330,312 miles – They are interrupted or ephemeral, according to the federal calculation and would be prone to weakened defenses, said over -history to the defenders of the wild.
In the dry landscape of southern California, washing and aroose, which are filled immediately after storms and flow periodically, will become vulnerable to development and construction activities, as well as for agricultural and industrial pollution disposal.
Sean Botwell, CEO of the California Alliance on the coast, said the changes proposed by EPA ignore the climatic conditions of California.
“This simply does not correspond to the reality in California, especially in southern California,” Botwell said. “This is the work of the Supreme Court resolved on the east coast, where rivers and hydrology are much more than here in California. I really have the feeling that the decision did not take into account our Mediterranean climate. “
California Hydrology – especially its moist winters and dry summer – makes the legal definition of the wet area particularly appropriate and difficult to interpret. Of 415 764 miles of linear flows in California, 79% – or 330,312 miles – They are interrupted or ephemeral, according to the federal calculation and would be prone to weakened defenses, said over -history to the defenders of the wild.
In the dry landscape of southern California, washing and aroose, which are filled immediately after storms and flow periodically, will become vulnerable to development and construction activities, as well as for agricultural and industrial pollution disposal.
Ashley Overhouse, a water policy adviser at Defenders of Wildlife, said the work of the US Army Engineering Corps to help identify and outline the wetlands in the proposed development sites has recently been terminated.
“This puts additional voltage on board for the control of water resources in California as the only regulatory entity that is now responsible for where these freshwater resources are, as well as the implementation of government water protection,” Overhouse said.
