We Need The Clean Water Rule and the EPA’s Clean Water Data
The Clean Water Rule has been in effect in some form since 1972 as a safeguard of the “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS). It protects rivers, streams, wetlands and other bodies of water from various forms of pollution, including medical waste, oil and sewage. According to 2009 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data, about 117 million people in the continental U.S receive all or some of their drinking water from systems relying in part on “intermittent, ephemeral or headwater streams.” The Clean Water Rule, as well as the accompanying data and information which underlie and validate it, are now directly at risk.
Pruitt Proposes to Repeal Drinking Water Protections
In late June, as directed by President Trump’s February Executive Order, EPA Director Scott Pruitt proposed to repeal the Clean Water Rule. The Rule was last amended in 1987 and the 2015 version of the rule, which expanded federal water pollution regulations, is currently on hold in U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In his Order, Trump characterized the rule as a “power grab” that threatened the U.S. economy. Pruitt’s proposal seeks to redefine the protected areas of waters and “re-codify the definition of ‘waters of the United States.’”
“We are taking significant action to return power to the states and provide regulatory certainty to our nation’s farmers and businesses,” Pruitt said of his proposal.
“Once again, the Trump administration has agreed to do the bidding of the worst polluters in our country, and once again it’s putting the health of American families and communities at risk. We will fight this and every other attempt by polluters and the Trump administration to destroy our water resources,” Michael Brune, executive director of Sierra Club, expressed.
Repealing WOTUS would also put other species at risk. “From vernal pools in California to prairie pothole ponds in the Midwest, small wetlands provide essential habitat to hundreds of endangered species, birds and migrating wildlife,” Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, stated.
When Pruitt’s proposal to dismantle the Clean Water Rule is published in the Federal Register, a 30-day public comment period will start, which the Natural Resources Defense Council explains could be any day now — “as early as Friday [July 7].” Once this period opens, interested citizens can submit comments at http://www.regulations.gov. In the meantime, there are also a variety of ways to contact the EPA and Pruitt.
EPA Removes, Reduces Access to Website Data on Clean Water Rule
The EPA has also launched a new website pertaining to the Clean Water Rule, while archiving and effectively hiding much of the important information the original site held. As the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI)’s Website Monitoring Team points out in a blog post, the new site, “Waters of the United States (WOTUS) Rulemaking,” avoids the term “clean water” in its name and offers little information on the concept or importance of clean water. The EDGI “is an international network of academics and nonprofits addressing potential threats to federal environmental and energy policy, and to the scientific research infrastructure built to investigate, inform and enforce.”
The old Clean Water Rule website (www.epa.gov/cleanwaterrule) now redirects to the new site (www.epa.gov/wotus-rule). While EDGI characterized an EPA press release alerting the public to the website overhaul and creation of an archive as “good practice,” its Website Monitoring Team also points out there was less than 24 hours’ notice given of the change.
EDGI compared the old and new website and found that:
While many of the resources on the Clean Water Rule website are archived, previous Clean Water Rule pages that were taken offline do not redirect to these EPA archives and the new WOTUS website does not facilitate access to the EPA archives either, rendering these resources nearly inaccessible to EPA website visitors.
Fact sheets and maps explaining the importance of clean water to humans and their environment have been replaced with a history of the definition of WOTUS and the current Administration’s related actions. Screenshots of the archived and new sites are below.
For example, the EPA drinking water data mentioned above and an EPA interactive map revealing “populations that get drinking water from streams” are not included or linked to via the new WOTUS page. If a member of the public stumbles upon the drinking water map page, a banner warns that the content is “not maintained and may no longer apply,” instructing visitors to epa.gov.
“A better information governance approach would be to include the previously existing resources from the Clean Water Rule website along with the new website’s content, maintaining public access to information and resources,” the EDGI concludes.
In closing, here is a helpful infographic from the archived Clean Water Rule site:
