EPA rolls back clean water regulations

President Trump’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continued to dirty the waters today as it rolled back another Obama-era safeguard for the nation's waterways. What Trump has called “one of the worst examples of federal regulation,” the Clean Water Rule protected smaller bodies of water, like streams and wetlands, from discharges of all kinds of pollutants. But not anymore: The EPA has delayed implementation for two years as the agency “clarifies” (read: eliminates) the rule. The decision is a clear gift to the industrial polluters who loudly protested the regulation in 2015 and to GOP lawmakers who have falsely claimed the rule regulates “puddles on private property.” In fact, it protects important waters, including streams that feed the drinking water supply of one in three Americans.