
Trump rolls back US water pollution controls - jgwil2
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51225604
======
uptown
"Under the new regulations, landowners and property developers will be able to
pour pesticides, fertilizers and other pollutants directly into millions of
miles of the nation's waterways for the first time in decades."

Are we great again, yet?

~~~
pupppet
Seriously America, how is this guy's approval rating greater than 0.

~~~
dragonwriter
“This guy” is just acting out the ideology the mainstream right carefully
cultivated in the electorate for decades (the mainstream right mainly did it,
arguably, to get maneuvering room for more modest substantive policy, but once
it's cultivated you can't contain it that way if someone is offering them the
whole deal they've been conditioned to see as ideal.)

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jandrese
Good news for farmers that don't want to have to worry if the tiny creek on
their property drains into a river system. Not so good news for fisherman who
lose catches to algae blooms from farm runoff.

~~~
TehCorwiz
And not good news for anyone who depends on clean groundwater.

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CWuestefeld
Why are we wanting, or even allowing, the Executive to unilaterally set
pollution standards?

The right way to do this in the American system is for Congress to enshrine
the regulations as laws. Then the President does what Congress says.

If we're trying to end-run around Congress's prerogative and responsibility to
write the laws, then we shouldn't be surprised when regulations are changed by
the caprice of the Executive, as they did with both Obama and now Trump.

~~~
chewbacha
From what I understand, it's possible he did violate the law when they
systematically denied and ignored all the science related to it. There are
already multiple lawsuits alleging this. My understanding is that the EPA's
mandate requires scientific input in the rational decision making.

I think it's _ok_ for congress to grant some power to set rules, so long as
there is appropriate checks and balances. However, we have seen in the past
few days that the GOP does not want to enforce the checks and balances
anymore.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_we have seen in the past few days that the GOP does not want to enforce the
checks and balances anymore._

There's more than enough blame to completely cover both sides of the aisle, on
any number of issues.

~~~
sp332
Holding Democrats accountable doesn't mean pretending both sides are equally
bad.

~~~
CWuestefeld
They're both so bad that I don't see any point in drawing a distinction. For
practical purposes, yes, they're equally bad.

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tzs
From a NY Times story a few weeks ago on this [1]:

> A top panel of government-appointed scientists, many of them hand-selected
> by the Trump administration, said on Tuesday that three of President Trump’s
> most far-reaching and scrutinized proposals to weaken major environmental
> regulations are at odds with established science.

> Draft letters posted online Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s
> Scientific Advisory Board, which is responsible for evaluating the
> scientific integrity of the agency’s regulations, took aim at the Trump
> administration’s rewrite of an Obama-era regulation of waterways, an Obama-
> era effort to curb planet-warming vehicle tailpipe emissions and a plan to
> limit scientific data that can be used to draft health regulations.

> In each case, the 41 scientists on a board — many of whom were appointed by
> Trump administration officials to replace scientists named by the Obama
> administration — found the regulatory changes flew in the face of science.

> A forthcoming rule on water pollution “neglects established science” by
> “failing to acknowledge watershed systems,” the scientists said. They found
> “no scientific justification” for excluding certain bodies of water from
> protection under the new regulations.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/climate/epa-science-
panel...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/climate/epa-science-panel-
trump.html)

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tartoran
This got flagged. Im a bit confused as to why it did

~~~
folkhack
In my time on HN I've seen everything political get flagged almost immediately
which takes politics out of the discussion here.

I don't think it's banned in the rules, but it may as well be because nothing
ever really sees the light of day too long without an immediate flag.

