Trump Administration Rolls Back Waters of the United States Rule
The new version could have disastrous effects on American clean water—but plays to Trump’s political base.
The Waters of the United States rule, usually called WOTUS, is another name for the Clean Water Rule, passed by the Obama administration in 2015.
It was designed to provide guidance over water in the United States, which is more complicated than you might think; it includes intertidal zones, underground rivers, and seasonal bodies of water. But it became a lightning rod for political conservatives, and Donald Trump pledged to eliminate it during his campaign. He finally has, with a new finalized rule called the Navigable Waters Protection Rule.
WOTUS became a very effective campaigning tool for the Trump administration; they relied on messaging that the bill “over-reaches,” or somehow takes away the rights of landowners over their private land. Combined with a very ineffectual defense from the EPA and progressives, this view of WOTUS became entrenched in the minds of some voters—including farmers, who own a great deal of land. We rated it as one of the biggest issues that caused farmers to vote for Trump, and leaning on WOTUS was one of Trump’s canniest political moves.
There’s a long history that led to WOTUS, which we summarized nicely here, but the central idea is that WOTUS is designed to protect entire watersheds. That means every little tributary, every spring, needs to be protected, because it all feeds into the larger rivers and lakes. WOTUS is not actually the act that theoretically tells farmers they can’t apply pesticides and fertilizers—in other words, farm—near streams on their property; it’s actually simply a scientific analysis of which streams feed into which rivers. But that messaging fell apart, with incompetent Democratic messaging, which failed to sway voters who believed WOTUS would force them to essentially give up their land to the government.
The new rule rolls back a significant number of protections in the 2015 WOTUS rule, but goes even further than that, eliminating protections that existed prior to 2015. It will remove protections for all seasonal bodies of water, and eliminate the need for landowners to receive permits for their use. It would, essentially, allow landowners to operate in ways that will result in dramatic increases in water pollution. It’ll also remove protections on drinking water for 200 million Americans.
The new rule has already been the subject of one lawsuit, produced by 14 different states, and environmental activists say it could be one of the most destructive, devastating environmental policies in recent decades. Even a panel of Trump-appointed scientists say there’s no scientific basis for the rollbacks in the rule. The American Farm Bureau, a conservative-leaning lobbyist group that typically sides with agribusiness, applauded it.
Follow us
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
January 24, 2020
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
SubmitNecessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and are used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies.
PROTECTION OF WATER AND PROTECTION OF LAND ARE THE BIG ISSUES WE MUST GRAPPLE WITH NOW Who is approaching President Trump to discuss the consequences of good v bad administrative decisions? It is very likely that President Trump is as completely detached from the reality of some of his administration’s decisions as the average citizen is detached from the realities of his/her own actions. Who is havng the Regenerative Farming talk with President Trump? We would be derelict of duty to just assume President Trump knows what the typical farmer does not even know. Even I do not know all… Read more »