Judge Tosses Trump Rollback Of Clean Water Safeguards

The Trump-era rule ended federal protections for hundreds of thousands of waterways and left them vulnerable to pollution from nearby development.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has thrown out a Trump-era rule that ended federal protections for hundreds of thousands of small streams, wetlands and other waterways and left them vulnerable to pollution from nearby development. The Biden administration had already said it plans to repeal the Trump-era rule and issue new regulations defining which waterways are federally protected under the Clean Water Act. But the Trump rule remained in place in the meantime, and environmental groups, Native American tribes and others said it could lead to the loss of wetlands, damage wildlife habitat and allow businesses and farmers to pollute waterways. U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Marquez in Arizona, an Obama appointee, sided with those groups on Monday, determining that the Trump administration’s rule last year improperly limited the scope of clean water protections. Marquez said the Environmental Protection Agency had ignored its own findings that small waterways can affect the well-being of the larger waterways they flow into.