Federal judge strikes down Trump rule that allowed water pollution
A federal judge on Monday struck down a Trump-era environmental rule that drastically limited federal restrictions against pollution of millions of streams, wetlands and marshes across the country.
The Biden administration had already begun the lengthy process of undoing the policy, which President Donald J. Trump established in 2020 after farmers, real estate developers and fossil fuel producers complained that Obama-era rules had saddled them with onerous regulatory burdens. Mr. Trump’s policy allowed the discharge of pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides and industrial chemicals into smaller streams and wetlands.
But on Monday, Judge Rosemary Márquez of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona found “fundamental, substantive flaws” with the Trump administration’s policy and said that it was in conflict with the 1972 Clean Water Act. She warned of the “possibility of serious environmental harm” if the Trump rule remained in place.
The Trump policy allowed more than 300 projects across the country to proceed without environmental permitting, the judge noted. Many of those projects were in arid states such as New Mexico and Arizona.
The court ruling is the latest in a series of decisions by federal judges who have struck down Trump environmental policies after noting that the administration had frequently ignored the analysis of career federal scientists. [Continue reading…]