Clean Water Act

You have no right to clean water whatsoever.

And now Trump has destroyed the Clean Water Act, destroyed the Clean Air Act, sided with industry, increased the use of cancer-causing pesticides like glyphosate and many others, importing toxic Argentine beef that was pumped full of chemicals that can lead to serious illness and death.

And now he's allowing industry to dump toxic chemicals into wastewater as well.

Awesome.

The water a facility can physically reach may not be the water it can legally use.

Withdrawals can be subject to state permitting systems, groundwater management requirements, drought restrictions, and environmental protections, while surface water projects may encounter Clean Water Act requirements, and wastewater generated after that water is used introduces another layer of discharge and treatment constraints.

Even the federal boundary of Clean Water Act jurisdiction remains under active development.

On September 4th, EPA and the U.S. Army announced a supplemental proposal on the definition of Waters of the United States, seeking public input on additional regulatory alternatives as the agencies work toward a final definition following the Supreme Court's Sackett v. EPA decision.

For site selection teams, the broader lesson is that environmental conditions around water can change while an industrial asset remains in place, which makes regulatory exposure part of water availability rather than a separate compliance exercise.

Knock on wood.

One of the things that we're winning on is that more people are paying attention to the decisions by this administration to try to get rid of some of the protections that we have under the Clean Air Act, under the Clean Water Act, the ability for people to make their voices heard.

There were so many people who filed comments.

for the EPA's most recent proposed rules to get rid of some of that from minor sources of pollution.

Jessica Dommel has the details.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers are now accepting public comments on a proposal to change some of the regulatory language that is used to define what constitutes a water of the U.S. A water of the U.S., or a WOTUS, is a water body that falls under federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act.

EPA and the Corps have issued a Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to consider alongside the 2025 proposed WOTUS rule.

EPA says the supplemental proposed rule will help the agencies evaluate a wider range of options as they work toward a final WOTUS rule that will provide greater predictability for landowners, farmers, ranchers, and others while protecting water quality.

doesn't get that specific, I think that's what they were alluding to, that there could be some reparations at that level, in addition to electing better officials who will pay better attention to you, won't lie to you, etc.

I'll note that if the issue is fixing the problem, you do have federal laws like the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, But those are to fix the problem and maybe penalize the actors that doesn't give you money for the damages that you may have suffered.

What's your take on whether or not the Constitution guarantees this right to safe water?

I find it a little hard to square some of the cases where we have said, okay, that is a bodily integrity situation, but this one is not.

The Trump administration has quietly proposed giving a small piece of Yellowstone National Park to a private developer to build his own park entrance, alarming conservationists and former federal officials who say that the crown jewel of the nation's park system must remain off limits to development.

And finally, the Trump EPA is taking another sledgehammer to the Clean Water Act for the benefit of industrial polluters and developers, moving to strip federal pollution protections from more than 90% of U.S. streams and wetlands that feed into the nation's drinking water.

What were we thinking? For much more on all of these stories and the ones we couldn't get to today, check out our website at greennews.bradblog.com.

Find, follow, and share us planet-wide on the social medias, especially Blue Sky at Green News Report.

And so much of that is because we don't have standardized, robust ways of valuing in a way that a banker can use.

In some cases, I'll give you an example from water quality, because that's the most directly related to And that is, for example, whenever US EPA passes a water quality regulation, historically under the Clean Water Act, they are required to do a benefit cost analysis to evaluate the benefits and costs.

The methods that US EPA has used over the past few decades to understand the benefits Economic value of water quality improvements to households.

Those are grounded in methods that I and some partners developed back in the very early 2000s.

The new order gives those expectations considerably more weight by tying them to permitting decisions.

MassSTEP must develop protocols requiring covered projects to protect water quality and quantity, Projects must demonstrate compliance with applicable state water, wastewater, and stormwater requirements, an obligation that echoes the thermal discharge and aquatic impact standards data centers already face under federal Clean Water Act permits.

For EHS and facilities teams, environmental planning can no longer be treated as a set of individual permits handled late in development.

Electricity demand gets its own compliance track.