President Biden has demonstrated a commitment to deliver clean drinking water to all, combat the climate crisis, protect our country’s waterways, and fight for racial equity and justice. This vision cannot happen while the Trump administration’s Dirty Water Rule remains in place. The Dirty Water Rule is already harming our waters and communities, and threatens the drinking water of tens of millions of people while giving corporate polluters a free pass to contaminate our wetlands and streams. The Biden administration should act now to repeal the Dirty Water Rule for the sake of our communities, health, and outdoors.
Today (June 9, 2021), the EPA announced that they will begin the process of repealing the Trump administration’s Dirty Water Rule. Although we agree the unlawful rule should be repealed, today’s announcement leaves our nation’s waters in jeopardy. Every day the Dirty Water Rule is allowed to stay in effect threatens the health of our waterways and the communities that rely on them.
EPA needs to quickly undergo a rulemaking to repeal the Dirty Water Rule as expeditiously as possible in order to stop the continued harm to our waters. The Dirty Water Rule threatens millions of miles of streams, tens of millions of acres of wetlands, and other water bodies that perform critical ecological functions and provide numerous economic benefits for communities and the environment.
We know more than enough to justify eliminating the Dirty Water Rule as soon as possible. The Dirty Water Rule is causing real-world damage right now -- more than 90% of the streams, wetlands, and other water bodies evaluated by the Corps of Engineers under the rule are not being protected by the Clean Water Act. Without prompt action, this destruction will accelerate following this announcement.
We urge EPA to repeal the Dirty Water Rule as quickly as possible and ensure that their next rulemaking includes a durable definition of ‘Waters of the United States’. Further federal agency action is needed for a robust stakeholder engagement process that prioritizes stakeholders whose health, economic livelihood, and quality of life are linked to clean water; is grounded in the scientific evidence of waters’ functions, the consequences of different regulatory approaches on public health and natural resources, and Congress’s intent in adopting the Clean Water Act.