Bucking Trump Agenda, Court Reinstates Clean Water Rule in 26 States

Here’s why this environmental and public health win is so important.

Credit: Richard Ellis/ZUMA Wire via, Newscom

Victory! A federal judge in South Carolina recently reinstated water protections in 26 states, following a lawsuit filed by environmental groups against the Trump administration for illegally suspending the Clean Water Rule early this year. The law clarifies which bodies of water are covered by the Clean Water Act’s pollution-control programs. Although implementation is still on hold in 24 states, the ruling is a decisive win for the environment—and for the millions of Americans whose water supplies are now better protected from pollution.

Here’s why this win is such a big deal.

The water supply of one in three Americans is at stake.

The Clean Water Rule improves protections for numerous water bodies, including streams feeding the water supplies of about one-third of all Americans. These safeguards limit pollution like wastewater discharge from power plants, which contains toxic metals such as mercury and arsenic. Though the Trump administration plans to repeal the Clean Water Rule outright (something that will spark yet another legal showdown), the suspension of the rule in the meantime threatened ecosystems and our drinking water. The longer the Clean Water Rule was on hold, the longer Trump threatened our communities’ health.

It’s not about “puddles.”

The Trump administration, alongside industry forces, has tried to misrepresent the Clean Water Rule as an attempt to regulate “nearly every puddle” and trample on property rights. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. The Clean Water Rule explicitly exclude puddles, and what’s more, it protects only those waters with a “demonstrated and significant impact on the physical, chemical, and biological condition of downstream water bodies,” says Jon Devine, NRDC’s director of federal water policy.

As most fifth-graders know, large bodies of water—lakes, rivers, oceans—are interconnected with smaller ones, such as wetlands and streams that run seasonally. To keep pollution out of critical ecosystems and our water supplies, we have to keep all these pathways clean. This is not politics; it’s science.

Trump Lied about the Clean Water Rule

President Trump says the Clean Water Rule targets small farmers and businesses. That’s nonsense. Farmers receive a special exemption, and the Clean Water Rule treats small businesses the same as other federal rules. Take action: https://on.nrdc.org/2qt9LKo

Posted by NRDC on Sunday, May 20, 2018

Environmentalists are on a roll!

Albeit partial, this win is the latest in a recent string of legal triumphs against the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks. In fact, this is the seventh victory over the course of just one week (but who’s counting?). To name a few, workers at chemical plants had their rights to basic safety measures affirmed. The endangered vaquita porpoise won out against deadly gillnets. And opponents of the dirty Keystone XL pipeline are celebrating a court order demanding a more thorough environmental review. Alongside the Clean Water Rule decision, the courts’ messages to the Trump administration are loud and clear: You can’t break the rules—or our environmental laws.


This NRDC.org story is available for online republication by news media outlets or nonprofits under these conditions: The writer(s) must be credited with a byline; you must note prominently that the story was originally published by NRDC.org and link to the original; the story cannot be edited (beyond simple things such as grammar); you can’t resell the story in any form or grant republishing rights to other outlets; you can’t republish our material wholesale or automatically—you need to select stories individually; you can’t republish the photos or graphics on our site without specific permission; you should drop us a note to let us know when you’ve used one of our stories.

Related Stories