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EPA Rolls Back Obama-Era Regulations On Clean Water (wsj.com) 206

Posted by BeauHD from the Ctrl-+-Z dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: President Trump's administration has rescinded an Obama-era policy that expanded federal oversight and the threat of steep fines for polluting the country's smaller waterways (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), furthering his deregulatory efforts in the 14 months that remain before the next election. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Thursday signed a final rule that limits the scope of federal clean-water regulations in an effort to clear up confusion for landowners whose property sits near water sources that feed into the country's network of major rivers. The Obama administration in 2015 had expanded federal oversight upstream, it said, to better protect wildlife and the country's drinking-water supply from industrial runoff and pollution.

Mr. Wheeler called that expansion an overreach, saying it grew to cover dry land in some cases. Farmers, property developers, chemical manufacturers and oil-and-gas producers -- some of whom are key voter groups for the 2020 election -- have voiced opposition to it, with many saying it overreached by intruding on property owners' rights. Court battles following the Obama-era rule have led to fractured rules across the country. Amid the legal challenges, the regulation is in place only in 22 states, though the Trump administration's decision could spark its own series of court fights. Thursday's rule "restores regulatory text that existed before the 2015," the report notes. "Property that is no longer covered by the 1972 Clean Water Act remains protected by state rules. Major waterways, such as most rivers and lakes, were already under protection of the Clean Water Act and still will be after the rollback."
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EPA Rolls Back Obama-Era Regulations On Clean Water More

EPA Rolls Back Obama-Era Regulations On Clean Water

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  • Love that Dirty Water... (Score:3)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Friday September 13, 2019 @09:05AM (#59190106)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • smart (Score:3, Funny)

    by TimothyHollins ( 4720957 ) on Friday September 13, 2019 @09:11AM (#59190130)

    Brilliant move. Forcing people to walk 7 miles for clean water every day will take care of the obesity epidemic. Perhaps we should all take more inspiration from Sudan.

    • I know you meant that sarcastically, but if everyone walked 7 miles a day it would do an untold amount of good.
      • I'd say the jury is out on that. There are always unintended consequences. If everyone walked 7 miles a day, those who haven't been doing so would have more than 1-1/2 hours less time to work, clean house, take care of children, talk with their family, etc. Physical health and some forms of mental health would probably improve. But, for most of us, much of that 1-1/2 hours would almost certainly be taken from our sleep because we simply have no other time left to give.

      • The average brisk walking speed is 3 miles per hour for people who walk a lot.

        That's ~ 2 hours and 20 minutes a day.

        For those who are not walkers, 2 miles per hour is doable.

        That's about 3 and a half hours.

        For those who want to stroll, it's about 1 mile per hour.

        That's 7 hours.

        --

        So, if we do that every day, we have no time for swimming, biking, weights, or yoga.

        Dedicated walking just a few days each week lets you do longer time-frame workouts. Leave the short, high-intensity workouts for your busy days when time is limited. Walking an average of 10,000 steps per day is just shy of 5 miles, and it functions as a benchmark for the minimum number of steps a normal individual should cover daily.

        ~ Livestrong

  • Let's roll back Paywalled Links from Obama's era! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by turp182 ( 1020263 ) on Friday September 13, 2019 @09:20AM (#59190160) Journal

    Why include the paywalled link to the WSJ. I no longer subscribe. It just wastes time.

    Can the alternate source just be the only link if the original is pay walled?

    We all know WSJ, NYT, WP, and a few others are all paywalled (allowing 0 to a few views per month). Don't link to them.

  • Damn it, really? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by omfglearntoplay ( 1163771 ) on Friday September 13, 2019 @09:22AM (#59190164)

    I really hope this news gets to the whole US population... who the hell thinks it's a grand idea to increase pollution in drinking water? Seriously, this sort of shit blows my mind. Fuck... screwing over the people in rural areas like crazy. Want to catch a fish and eat it... go right ahead if you want cancer or babies with no toes. Want to drink water out of a well? Better hope you are 100 miles from the nearest creek or river.

    • By "Fuck" I think you meant to say the the battlestar galactica "frac". And if you had you'd also have the explanation of who paid for this and why.

      • In New Mexico and parts of texas Aquifers like the Olagala sit over the top of oil fields. The oil companies are drilling through the precious aquifers to get to the oil below. These have gotten shut down by, quite logically, imposing barriers to the construction via regulations. But if you can now do industrial activity in proximity to water sources this goes away.

    • Nobody thinks polluting drinking water is a good idea.
      Some people think that growing crops on crop land is a good idea.
      Other people think that following the law is a good idea.

      The law (Clean Water Act) applies certain restrictions to navigable waterways. Navigable meaning a passenger boat can use it for transportation. So for example you aren't allowed to put fertilizer in a river. Duh. The Obama administration claimed that farm land is a "navigable waterway", and therefore you can't put fertilizer on you

    • Yeah... really (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Friday September 13, 2019 @09:54AM (#59190276)

      I really hope this news gets to the whole US population... who the hell thinks it's a grand idea to increase pollution in drinking water?

      A shocking number of Americans do or at least they vote that way and they tend to correlate strongly with Trump voters. They are concerned with hating government (and democrats) even when doing so makes no logical sense. The republicans have found a winning message with a lot of people in the (ridiculous) claim that all taxes and regulations are bad. (even though that makes no logical or factual sense) There is a lot of hating anything that the democrats favor. And for a lot of them anything that they perceive as reducing company profits must be evil. Ironic since this didn't used to be a partisan issue. Now somehow insisting on clean water and that companies don't dump toxic shit is somehow political.

      Seriously, this sort of shit blows my mind. Fuck... screwing over the people in rural areas like crazy. Want to catch a fish and eat it... go right ahead if you want cancer or babies with no toes.

      The river right by my house has PFAS contamination [freep.com] and I don't live in a rural area. Can't eat the fish from there despite it being a popular fishing spot. This sort of regulatory rollback screws everyone, not just rural and economically disadvantaged folks.

      Want to drink water out of a well? Better hope you are 100 miles from the nearest creek or river.

      Generally not that bad. Despite the river near me being contaminated my well at my house isn't. (Yes I've had it tested) Our aquifer doesn't draw from the river and the people that do have city water have their water treated at a local plant and tested regularly at schools and similar places. I also use a reverse osmosis system which cleans out a lot of problems. That said I wouldn't go to my local river and take a big drink or eat the fish which is unfortunate.

      • A shocking number of Americans do or at least they vote that way and they tend to correlate strongly with Trump voters. They are concerned with hating government (and democrats) even when doing so makes no logical sense.

        All of the Trump voters I have ever talked to have very logical reasoning for why they do so.

        They simple believe different things than you do as a foundation.

        As it turns out, the things they believe are closer to fact than the things you believe. At least in this instance, where Trump voter

    • I really hope this news gets to the whole US population... who the hell thinks it's a grand idea to increase pollution in drinking water? Seriously, this sort of shit blows my mind. Fuck... screwing over the people in rural areas like crazy. Want to catch a fish and eat it... go right ahead if you want cancer or babies with no toes. Want to drink water out of a well? Better hope you are 100 miles from the nearest creek or river.

      It's really not going to impact his base though. If all the stuff he's already done hasn't impacted his base, this won't. They've spent so much time defending all his atrocities and digging themselves further and fuhrer into a hole trying to defend the indefensible they lack the mental flexibility to do the right thing and reverse tack now. No doubt they will dig themselves even further with this and find themselves completely trapped and without self-will.

    • Most of the flat plain USA has shitty tap water. That's no news at all. If you want clean water for drinking or cooking, it costs about a quarter per gallon of filtered water at Walmart. It's very unfair because not many people have the choice to drive to walmart or to install a water filter system at home, but that's how it works.

      • [Citation Needed] Most municipal water sources filter their water just as well if not better than the Walmart filter and bottle station. Maybe if you are drinking raw well water you might have issues, but if it's tap water it is already heavily regulated and tested.

    • I really hope this news gets to the whole US population...

      Don't worry, it'll eventually be distributed via the public water supply network.

    • I really hope this news gets to the whole US population... who the hell thinks it's a grand idea to increase pollution in drinking water?

      Republicans, small government types, corporations, farmers, and people who don't give a fuck. Unfortunately together they cover a majority of people.

    • I worked in water treatment plants. When the Clean Water Act was passed my employer, the City of San Diego, hired many chemists and biologists to do the analysis required to assure the water met the standards. The number of employees became too many for the small water lab used to monitor the treatment process and a new building was built that became the Industrial Waste Lab. The sampled sewers downstream from businesses that were suspected of dumping toxic chemicals. They used auto samplers that collected
    • So what you're saying is that this is somewhat of a self-limiting thing. That the voting block responsible for pro-deregulation politicians are in effect controlling their own population size. Man, I tell you that's a load off my mind... They really should amend their pro-life slogans to pro-after-life though, it'd clear up a lot of confusion on this any a great many other of their positions.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 )

      Here's the real issue [hklaw.com]. It's not about pollution, it's about the Obama Administration increasing the scope of navigable waterways to a point where that mud puddle in your back yard from melting snow is now considered a Federally protected wetland. It did not have to be permanent, or even regular, if it was standing water at any time of the year, and was connected in any way (even drainage ditches, or ground water, in any volume - even a milliliter), then it was Federally regulated.

      Should the fact you ha

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        And yet, somehow, when I needed to repair my roof in 2017, I didn't need to do ANY of those things.

  • Not mentioned... (Score:3, Informative)

    by cirby ( 2599 ) on Friday September 13, 2019 @09:27AM (#59190184)

    ...was the actual thing the Obama administration tried to do.

    They tried to expand the definition of "navigable waters" to a bizarre degree. It used to mean, basically, "a lake or river that you could use for business or transportation."

    The Obama people decided that "navigable" meant "any ditch you could drop a canoe in and have a chance of getting the bottom wet, even i it didn't connect to any other body of water."

    They also decided that a "wetland" was "any stretch of ground that ever flooded, even though it was dry the other 99% of the time."

    It was a bizarre regulatory overreach that did nothing at all for clean water - it just let them exert power that didn't exist in the statute.

    • Re:Not mentioned... (Score:5, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday September 13, 2019 @09:35AM (#59190208) Homepage Journal

      "The Obama people decided that "navigable" meant "any ditch you could drop a canoe in and have a chance of getting the bottom wet, even i it didn't connect to any other body of water.""

      That's a predictable side effect of how laws work. We have a bunch of laws which refer only to navigable waterways as if they were relevant to the legislation in question, because it saved them the effort of defining what a waterway meant in the context of that law, and the navigable waterways covered most or all of what they were trying to address.

      "They also decided that a "wetland" was "any stretch of ground that ever flooded, even though it was dry the other 99% of the time.""

      WP says "The primary factor that distinguishes wetlands from other land forms or water bodies is the characteristic vegetation of aquatic plants, adapted to the unique hydric soil."

      If the subsoil remains damp, and the ground floods periodically, it may well fit the definition.

      • If the subsoil remains damp, and the ground floods periodically, it may well fit the definition.

        Quite right too. If the grounds flood periodically, they connect to other wet lands. Also water tends to seep into grounds and connect at the water table. Lots of people (especially people who live rurally in the US) depend on clean ground water for their water supplies.

        This is a big FU to anyone on well water.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )

        "The Obama people decided that "navigable" meant "any ditch you could drop a canoe in and have a chance of getting the bottom wet, even i it didn't connect to any other body of water."

        If it doesn't connect to any other body of water, then how is it navigable? I mean, doesn't the term navigable suggest that one can, you know, navigate on it?

        If there's nowhere to go, then there's nowhere to navigate your way to, so there's no logic in calling isolated puddles "navigable".

        • You make good, logical sense, but the Obama regulations donâ(TM)t allow for such exceptions, and doesnâ(TM)t allow for appeals - the land owner may only petition the federal government for a waiver, good luck with that!

      • Executives are often constrained in how they can do something as they cannot pass laws. As a result we often see contortions to squeeze desired ends through existing channels. So there are two separable discussions one can have here, one is are you happy with the desired goal? and are you happy with the method used to achieve this? But criticizing one is not a criticism of the other.

        SOme examples of things like this. How can the federal government legislate things that occur entirely within the bounds o

      • That's not accurate. The 2015 rule was just a technical fix. It did not change the definition of "waters of the U.S." significantly from the GW Bush administration.

        If the Obama rule were the radical change that you cite, then repealing it would solve it and restore the status quo ante. But instead the Trump administration has prepared a new rule, still in draft, that would deregulate most of the wetlands in the U.S.

        Why do that if you've already repealed the problem?

        • Bullshit. Have you even read the non-paywalled CBS story above? Ask anyone impacted by the regulations, it was not a trivial tweak on the regulations that existed before Obama took office.

          You have no idea what the regulations were before, what changes Obama admin made, or what Trump admin changed - if you did you couldnâ(TM)t in good conscience claim what you said.

          Have you ever owned land? Have you ever had itâ(TM)s value diminished because someone in Washington decided that the stream that runs a

        • You don't repeal rules - you simply replace them. The Obama 2015 rules even considered ephemeral streams (e.g.: runoff from your roof during a rainstorm) as navigable and thus regulated. The pre-215 rules were in place for a LONG time (since 1996 - the Clinton Administration) and were the final implementation of the Clean Water Act. The 2015 rules were a power grab, pure and simple, as effectively ANY land, anywhere, that ever had water fall on it, would be subject to Federal regulation.

      • When I was a kid in Texas, "navigable water" meant "If you can put a boat in it, Texas owns 14 feet of the bank."

        That's how we got to duck hunt on caretaker-administered private lands that the bayou ran through. I remember an old man calling the game warden who told that caretaker that Texas owned 14 feet all along the bayou.

        The land owner, Mobil Oil, was pissed but there was nothing they could do.

      • WP says "The primary factor that distinguishes wetlands from other land forms or water bodies is the characteristic vegetation of aquatic plants, adapted to the unique hydric soil."

        If the subsoil remains damp, and the ground floods periodically, it may well fit the definition.

        I've been through this.

        You pay surveyors $150/hour to walk around your property and take core samples ~2 feet deep. If the core samples show any signs of calcified deposits, then that indicates anaerobic growth and therefore dampness. Thus wetlands, even if it's dry as a bone. And you're screwed.

      • There are waterways that are navigable at different times of year, mostly due to the massive droughts that have been going on. The folks trying to pollute water want to use that distinction to get away with it. Obama said no.

        • Obama said the puddle in your front yard is a protected waterway, Trump said thatâ(TM)s stupid.

          The CBS link above in the summary details what was dropped from regulation as a waterway under the revised regulation.

    • Mr. Wheeler called that expansion an overreach, saying it grew to cover dry land in some cases.

      Ummm, if your land is "dry" then why do care what water regulations apply to it?

      • The 2015 rules expanded the definition so that even ephemeral streams (runoff from your roof or patio from a rain shower) would be subject to regulation - 100 feet on either side. That little trickle from your roof during a rainstorm? That's now a navigible waterway, and everything within 100 feet of is is subject to Federal regulations. Dry land or not. Likewise any standing - or flowing - water during irrigation, no matter how far it flowed, or how much water ran. Irrigate your land? You're now a Fe

    • It was also a blatant power grab since the western states have had water-rights rules since statehood, which those EPA rules stepped all over. Just ignore the nine and tenth Amendments and let a bunch of city dwellers from The Land of Always Wet tell you how to run your semi-arid landscape.

    • That's the thing. There so many of these newlines: "Obama era law X repealed by Trump administration". So... apparently no administration before the Obama one saw fit to regulate this, but now that it is being repealed, it must be because Trump is an environment hating dimwit, not because there's something bad about that law.

      With that said, I've no idea how good or bad this law really was. Especially since I don't even live in the USA. I was just triggered by the suggestive headline.

      • Excellent point - Anything done by Obama is necessary, anything repealed by Trump is a crisis.

        Https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clean-water-act-repeal-epa-announces-repeal-of-obama-era-clean-water-regulation-today/

        Go to the CBS non-paywall link above, the regulations were rolled back to remove ditches that sometimes collect water after heavy rains as âoeprotected waterwaysâ

    • ...was the actual thing the Obama administration tried to do.

      They tried to expand the definition of "navigable waters" to a bizarre degree. It used to mean, basically, "a lake or river that you could use for business or transportation."

      The Obama people decided that "navigable" meant "any ditch you could drop a canoe in and have a chance of getting the bottom wet, even i it didn't connect to any other body of water."

      They also decided that a "wetland" was "any stretch of ground that ever flooded, even though it was dry the other 99% of the time."

      It was a bizarre regulatory overreach that did nothing at all for clean water - it just let them exert power that didn't exist in the statute.

      "Waters of the United States".

      I'm trying to build a residential driveway. It has to cross a ditch about 1 foot deep and 2 feet across.

      It took me two years and $50,000 of environmental consultant fees to get a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers.

      At one point, they had to survey the ditch for historical shipwrecks. Why? Because if you give a government agency the right to go to a mountaintop and look for shipwrecks in a ditch, that's exactly what they'll do. As slowly as possible.

      As part of

  • Anyone still think he isn't evil or acting out of self interest. A property developer passes a law that screws the rights of all Americans just so that he can develop property easier and not have to worry about trashing the place for the rest of us.

    • No, I think you just proved yourself an idiot.

      Trump didn't "pass a law" - his Administration is reverting the rules (not the law) about what is a navigible waterway back to the final rules as issued in 1996 - under President Clinton. So you fail on "pass a law" and on trying to make this political (evil President) for simply stating the 20 year history of the rules - as established by President Clinton - were plenty good.

      You come out looking like an idiot, and a partisan hack.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday September 13, 2019 @10:01AM (#59190304)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I know what it looks like, but I actually support what Trump's doing in this case. People are forgetting that there's more than one way to ensure everyone has access to clean water, and by acting this way Trump is ensuring that other sources of clean, pure, water are supported, such as Nestle branded bottled water. As a Nestle shareholder, this directly benefits my bottom line.

      How can anyone disagree with that?

      You sound like somebody who would like to invest in my new line of exclusive watery drinks, It's called 'Fukushima Crystal' ... It comes in several different metallic flavors and If you drink enough of it you will start to glow in the dark and shit uranium bricks.

  • "An immediate effect of the clean water repeal is that polluters will no longer need a permit to discharge potentially harmful substances into many streams and wetlands. But the measure, which is expected to take effect in a matter of weeks, has implications far beyond the pollution that will now be allowed to flow freely into waterways.The Obama administration implemented the rule in response to a Supreme Court decision that opened the door to a more expansive legal definition of “waters of the Unite
    • Right and wrong and misleading all at the same time, great journalism there.
      This removes the federal restriction on this and places the legal restriction on the states. States already have laws restricting the discharge of harmful substances. So all of a sudden you will not get people dumping harmful substances into streams with no legal recourse.

  • The federal government sued John Duarte for $2.8 million for plowing his field without a permit because he resided on seasonal wetlands. [usatoday.com]

    In a 2016 case, 77 year old Navy veteran Joe Robertson was criminally prosecuted and served 18 months in prison [dailysignal.com] because he dug ponds around his Montana home in the hopes of keeping wildfires at bay. The ponds were connected to a foot-wide “river,” so the EPA determined that Robertson had been digging too close to “navigable water” without a permit.

    • Re:Old regs went too far (Score:5, Informative)

      by ath1901 ( 1570281 ) on Friday September 13, 2019 @02:45PM (#59191658)

      In a 2016 case, 77 year old Navy veteran Joe Robertson was criminally prosecuted and served 18 months in prison [dailysignal.com] because he dug ponds around his Montana home in the hopes of keeping wildfires at bay. The ponds were connected to a foot-wide “river,” so the EPA determined that Robertson had been digging too close to “navigable water” without a permit.

      That just sounded too stupid to be true, and it wasn't. He didn't just "dig too close"

      https://www.justice.gov/usao-m... [justice.gov]

      The ponds resulted in the discharge of dredged and fill material into a tributary stream and adjacent wetlands and caused widespread damage to both properties.

      The site was now approximately 1.2 acres in size, and extended beyond the National Forest property to a private property that he did not own.

      So, he dug ponds on properties he didn't own and caused damage to other peoples properties. That is much more criminal than the version you tried to tell. The real story was re-framed and re-told to fit a certain political narrative. The right wing used to think 1984 was a precautionary tale. Now it is a source of inspiration.
       

  • ... one question: Is it legal? If it is, I'm OK with it and Congress can always do something about it.

    For me, that holds true for other executive orders and presidential pardons and the like.

    That goes for state governor actions, as well.

    As long as it's legal.

    • ... one question: Is it legal? If it is, I'm OK with it and Congress can always do something about it.

      For me, that holds true for other executive orders and presidential pardons and the like.

      That goes for state governor actions, as well.

      As long as it's legal.

      I'm not a big fan of Executive Orders... and not just the Trump kinds; whether it be Obama, Trump, or Bush, or anyone really. The Executive branch of the government was not set up with the intention of creating or interpreting laws, that was the realm of the legislative branch. Executive Orders have been used by far too many presidents as a loophole for Presidents to in essence pass legislation. The office was never intended to be that powerful, nor is it a good thing that one branch holds so much power.

  • My house sits next to a small swale that is dry 363 days a year. When we get a hurricane or other major rain event, it turns into a stormwater stream and heads out to another very small (but usually wet) creek. That creek eventually flows into another creek that is always wet, but note so wet that you could canoe year round (maybe 1/3 of the year it's full enough to canoe, and never big enough for a boat. Eventually, about 40 miles from my house that creek eventually gets to a river which is still not large

  • So polluting minor waterways is less restricted/regulated than polluting major waterways?

    How does water in "major waterways" get there? Does it come from "minor waterways? Or does it just magically appear in major waterways?

    • The 2015 rules defined even a ephemeral runoff (like out of your downspout during a rain storm) as a navigible waterway, and thus 100 feet on either side would be subject to Federal regulation. It was a massive over-reach and expansion of what could be considered a waterway or wetland.
  • Victor Davis Hanson's discussion of the current regulations.

    He mentions an incident which occurred where after a particularly heavy rain, a large "puddle" forms on a farmer's land.

    This puddle was essentially declared a waterway (or something, I'm paraphrasing) and then the farmer was fined for not maintaining it (something along those lines anyway).

    The fact is that too much of the current regulation is simply government over-reach, and deserves to be eliminated.

    I'm not saying environmental regulation isn't
    • the vast majority of regulations were passed for a good reason. I can't find your puddle example, but I'm guessing it's got to do with wetlands. Those "puddles" are often pretty essential to the local eco system, creating little islands of temporary life. The food chain is just that, a chain. Then there's the issue of run off from farming activities, dry under growth creating fires, etc, etc.

      Hansen's also a writer for the National Review, a right wing, pro-corporate, so I question his motives.

      That s
    • It is a hard balancing act, the puddle on the farmer's land will very easily contaminate the public waters depending on the circumstances. If you don't want to make it too inconvenient on him, you could set a tax and make a fund for mitigations but you'll be demonized by other parts of the electorate for it.
  • there really aren't very many laws on the books about using squirrels for the purposes of gambling. The vast majority of regulations were put there for a good reason, specifically something bad was happening already.

    What frustrates me is that we literally have people saying we don't need these regulations because the thing the regulations were passed to stop isn't happening. I can't... I can't even... I mean... cause and effect...

  • is socialism. Sick people are profit.

  • because I no longer trust my government to keep it lead free. What a world we live in. What a country.

  • T: What's next on the agenda?

    A: Clean water, Mr President.

    T: Well, that sounds good, everybody likes clean water...

    A: But Obama was for it, sir.

    T: CANCEL THE PROGRAM IMMEDIATELY AND HAVE BARR PROSECUTE THE EPA.

  • The EPA rule also lays out what are not "waters of the United States," including the following:

    • Features that only contain water during or in response to rainfall;
    • Groundwater;
    • "Many" ditches, including most roadside or farm ditches;
    • Prior converted cropland;
    • Stormwater control features; and
    • And waste treatment systems.

    Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/c... [cbsnews.com]
    (The non-paywalled link above.)

    Now, please defend the need to regulate the above âoewaterwaysâ

  • Relax. This change doesn’t mean that Giant Corporations (tm) can all go ahead and inject lead into your water supply. What has been rolled back in this case is the recent EPA declaration that the pesky seasonal rain puddle on your property counts as “waters of the United States” and thereby regulatable as though it were the Mississippi.

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