President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday requiring the EPA to review a federal rule known as the Waters of the United States rule. The rule came as a result of lawsuits filed in early 2000s, that left the Supreme Court to figure out the extent of what's covered by the Clean Water Act. In addition to major waterways like rivers, the rule said the act applied to smaller streams and wetlands.
"If you dump something upstream, eventually it's going to make its way down to larger bodies of water," said Ben Hellerstein, state director of Environment Massachusetts. "And so, what it meant is that rivers like the Charles River, the Connecticut River, some of our most beloved waterways here in Massachusetts, may have been at risk of pollution."
In fact, Hellerstein points out the Charles and Boston Harbor were terribly polluted before the clean water act went into effect.
Critics of the rule have said it is an example of overreach by the federal government.
The executive order directs the EPA to review the rule to make sure to make sure it's not harming the economy. The rule isn't actually in effect right now. It was stayed by the federal 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. For the last couple of years, the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers have defaulted to what the previous rule was. Environmentalists were hoping the 6th Circuit decision would be overturned and law would go into effect.
Although the order doesn't actually end the rule, the new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, filed lawsuits trying to end the rule when he was Attorney General in Oklahoma. So, its days are probably numbered.
The rule also instructs the EPA to withdraw a brief it had submitted in support of the rule.
"We think that is absolutely outrageous," Hellerstein said. "Essentially it's turning the historic function of the EPA on its head. So rather than protecting our air our water and our natural resources, Trump is trying to use the EPA as a tool to further the interests of polluters."
Eliminating the rule might not actually impact Massachusetts all that much, since the state has stricter water regulations in place than the federal government does. But Ben Hellerstein says many of Massachusetts' policies and programs were designed with the presumption that the EPA was also protecting those waterways
"So, if for whatever reason, the EPA's not on job, that could cause pretty significant gaps," he said. "We also know that in recent years funding for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and other critical state agencies that protect our environment has been cut back. So there are less staff on the job, less staff to enforce even the protections that we do have in place."
Other executive orders are expected, including changes to the federal Clean Power Plan and a lifting of the moratorium on federal coal leasing. But, like the Waters of the U.S. rule, Massachusetts has more restrictive laws than the federal government when it comes to those kinds of things.
"The big issue, which are true not only for wetlands, is that pollution and the environment doesn't respect state lines," said Eugene Benson, the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissions. "If there are coal-fired power plants in other parts of the country that are able to emit more pollution into the air, some of that pollution ends up in Massachusetts, whether we like it or not."
And of course, the impact from climate change from greenhouse gases affects Massachusetts in terms of severe weather events, sea level rise, and a lot of other problems.
