Trump Admin's WOTUS Takedown Advances

The Trump administration is a step closer to taking down a controversial Obama-era water regulation after it issued its economic justification for quashing the rule.

The Waters of the U.S. rule (WOTUS), passed under President Obama, was an update to Clean Water Act regulations. It would have clarified which waterways the federal government can regulate. The Obama administration said it was necessary because Supreme Court decisions obscure jurisdictional questions under the law.

Opponents of the rule, including congressional Republicans and the agriculture industry, argue that it constitutes government overreach and massively expands the number of waterways under federal oversight. One U.S. senator has argued that the rule poses a particular threat to water utilities.

As the Trump administration works to get the original rule off the books, economists and analysts are critiquing how administration officials wrote their rationale for overhauling the rule. Some analysts said the work from the administration is “sloppy.”

“Chief among their complaints was that the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used recession-era economic data and failed to account for some of the benefits of leaving the 2015 Clean Water Rule in place. Their economic analysis even drew criticism from David Sunding, a University of California-Berkeley agricultural economist who was hired by industry groups to counter the analysis the Obama administration used to back its regulation,” Bloomberg BNA reported.

“I am not normally this dismissive, but this is the worst regulatory analysis I have ever seen,” Sunding told Bloomberg BNA in telephone interview.

The economic analysis issued by the Trump administration argued that amending the Obama-era rule will bolster employment.

“Workers in the construction industry could find expanded opportunities associated with new construction, new plants, or development projects if they are located in areas that would have been negatively affected by the 2015 CWR,” the analysis said.

U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is still holding meetings with government officials to discuss WOTUS. He stopped in Iowa to discuss the rule this month, according to KMA Land.

"The 2015 WOTUS rule released during the Obama administration was a massive federal land grab, creating confusion and uncertainty for regulators, farmers, ranchers, and others who depend on their ability to work the land," Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said during the visit. "The rule also imposed enormous regulatory roadblocks and cost for acts as simple as moving dirt in low places on the landscape."