|
One of the Trump administration’s signature environmental rollbacks, which reduces protections for wetlands and waterways, goes into effect in every state but Colorado today. On Friday, a federal judge in California rejected a request for a nationwide injunction blocking the EPA rule, which replaced the Obama-era Clean Water Rule. Hours later, however, a second judge temporarily blocked the rule in Colorado in response to a lawsuit from state Attorney General Phil Weiser.
The rule that goes into effect today significantly limits the definition of what the federal government considers water that is subject to federal pollution rules. In rejecting the request for a temporary nationwide injunction, Judge Richard Seeborg wrote that while states had not met the bar to delay the rule from going into effect, “were the court tasked with the question of whether the new rule represents wise environmental policy... the result might be different.”
Interior consulted anti-science troll on “transparency” rule
Documents obtained by HuffPost reveal that a prominent climate science denier, Steve Milloy, attended an invitation-only policy roundtable with Interior Secretary David Bernhardt before mingling with top department officials at a government holiday party in Washington.
Milloy later sent emails that said he and Bernhardt discussed Interior's "transparency" plan to significantly limit peer-reviewed academic studies from being used in government rulemaking and give more weight to industry-backed research. Two months after Milloy's appearance at the Interior Department party, the agency forwarded its science-limitation rule to the Office of Management and Budget for review.
|
Drilling for oil has long been a boom and bust industry. The Trump administration should not intervene to prop up corporations that made bad business decisions, nor force taxpayers to 
