By rolling back Obama’s 2015 “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule, the administration has put an end to the biggest power grab in the 48-year history of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The Trump Administration has an opportunity to reverse overreach by the EPA and other federal agencies -- but Congress and even the Courts have a role to play, according to CFACT policy advisor Larry Bell. Indeed. even the simplest actions by the Pruitt-led EPA or the Trump Administation in general will likely be challenged in federal courts by those with vested interests in the status quo.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting a major Obama-era policy expanding federal authority over bodies of water. “Let’s start hiring those people, fellas,” Trump said before signing the order while surrounded by federal lawmakers and county officials. Trump ordered federal agencies to make sure “waters are kept free from pollution, while at the same time promoting economic growth, minimizing regulatory uncertainty” and respecting the role of states and Congress. Trump also ordered agencies to define “navigable waters” in a “manner consistent with the opinion of Justice Antonin Scalia in Rapanos v. United States” — a more narrow interpretation of [...]
President Donald Trump will order EPA to begin dismantling a regulation central to former President Barack Obama’s plan to fight global warming. Trump will issue a second order instructing the EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to rewrite the “Waters of the U.S.” (WOTUS) rule.
Last Friday’s 56-42 Senate vote confirmation of Scott Pruitt as top EPA administrator brings a very unwelcome political climate change for many of the agency’s 15,000 federal career employees and their executive branch-appointed bosses who fought his approval tooth and claw. Referring to their aggressive and defiant letter-writing and telephone campaign protesting Pruitt’s appointment, Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University Director James Thurber told the New York Times, “It is rare…I can’t think of any other time when people in the bureaucracy have done this.” The vast majority of those protesters are Civil Service employees who can’t be [...]
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the North Dakota-based Hawkes Co., which had planned to mine peat from property in Minnesota, could challenge in court a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) ruling declaring the property counted as “regulated wetlands” without first having to go through the costly process necessary to obtain a permit to disturb wetlands.
In a 21st century replay of the biblical battle between David and Goliath, Wyoming rancher Andy Johnson felled the most powerful regulatory giant in the country, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The Supreme Court sided against the federal government in another wetlands case, which could make the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to extend its control over more bodies of water on private property even harder.
The Interior Department has been quietly writing new rules and regulations under the Endangered Species Act that will hand broad new powers to federal bureaucrats.
EPA has made a lot of power grabs of dubious legality over the last year, from forcing unpopular regulations through over the objections of Congress to illegally using social media to promote Obama’s policies. So without further ado, here are the top 5 EPA attempts to grab power through quasi-legal means.
In a victory for landowners, a Cincinnati federal court blocke implementation of the EPA's controversial Waters of the United States rules. But the lawless federal agency says it intends to enforce the rule anyway despite the court injunction.
Friday was not a good day for the Obama EPA. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals expanded the stay on the Administration's land-grabbing water rule beyond the states that appealed, to the entire nation. The pushback against regulatory overreach is on!
In little more than 30 days, there have been five distinct cases that you may have missed--each, a victory for responsible land use.
Wyoming farmer Andy Johnson is the unlikely target of an EPA vendetta -- facing tens of millions of dollars in fines for daring to build a stock pond -- which the Clean Water Act specifically bars the agency from regulating -- on his property after obtaining all the required state permits. Meanwhile, the agency is facing no penalties at all for its massive spill of metals-laden water into the Animas River in New Mexico.
At the eleventh hour a federal court ordered an injunction blocking EPA's water rule. EPA was defiant. EPA bureaucrats declared that they will only halt the rule in the 13 states that requested the injunction.