Abstract
Significance Later this year, the Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection (NWP) rule comes into force, the subject of the group's concern. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalised the rule in late January. The rule redefines which US waters are protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA), and replaces the 2015 Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule. Legal challenges meant WOTUS was never implemented, but it still worried agriculture, industry and landowners as it potentially expanded federal anti-pollution oversight to previously unregulated waters and adjacent private land. The NWP is the latest effort in the Trump administration’s environmental deregulation drive affecting climate change, clean air, natural resources extraction, parklands and endangered species. Impacts The greatest beneficiaries of scrapping WOTUS are likely to be mining, construction and chemicals industries. Weak state-level enforcement could reduce wetlands protection by more than a return to pre-2015 levels that the NWP professes. More polluted US rivers could aggravate riparian disputes with Mexico.
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