Despite appearing disconnected, these isolated wetlands and sometimes-dry streams nevertheless play an important role in the integrity of watersheds, scientists say, as well as providing important bird habitat. The same goes for wetlands and ponds that don’t directly abut or have a regular surface connection to a larger, protected water body. However, the changes mean a permit is no longer needed to drain or discharge pollution into ephemeral streams-those that flow only after precipitation. Lakes, steady-flowing streams, and other major water bodies remain protected under the new rule.
Under the Trump rule, landowners need not even seek a permit for those activities. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers decided on a case-by-case basis whether to issue permits for activities affecting ephemeral streams and isolated wetlands. Today’s replacement, called the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, further loosens regulations. Prior to the Obama rule, the U.S. Last September, the Trump administration threw the new rule out and reverted to an earlier interpretation of the act. Real estate developers, farmers, and others complained that the Obama rule, which encompassed about 60 percent of the nation’s waters, was too strict, requiring them to seek costly permits for routine operations. The Obama administration sought to clarify matters in 2015 with its Clean Water Rule, sometimes called WOTUS for Waters of the United States. The 1972 Clean Water Act made it illegal to drain, fill in, or pollute the “waters of the United States” without a permit, but exactly which waterways that broad definition included has been the source of legal disagreements ever since. The Trump administration today stripped protections from most wetlands and millions of miles of streams, ignoring warnings from its own scientists that these modest waterways are essential sources of clean water and wildlife habitat.