Trump rolls back US water pollution controls | Hacker News Reader

Trump rolls back US water pollution controls

bbc.com

64 pointsjgwil230 comments

"Under the new regulations, landowners and property developers will be able to pour pesticides, fertilizers and other pollutants directly into millions of miles of the nation's waterways for the first time in decades."

Are we great again, yet?

Seriously America, how is this guy's approval rating greater than 0.

“This guy” is just acting out the ideology the mainstream right carefully cultivated in the electorate for decades (the mainstream right mainly did it, arguably, to get maneuvering room for more modest substantive policy, but once it's cultivated you can't contain it that way if someone is offering them the whole deal they've been conditioned to see as ideal.)

Good news for farmers that don't want to have to worry if the tiny creek on their property drains into a river system. Not so good news for fisherman who lose catches to algae blooms from farm runoff.

Also bad news for people who drink water.

And not good news for anyone who depends on clean groundwater.

so, not good news unless you're someone who wants to pollute more easily. got it

An analysis based on pure short-term utility with no consideration for long-term effects. Modern business culture in a nutshell.

It's good news for specific types of farmers, mostly midwest commodity farmers and feedlots.

This is just patronage for flyover Senators to cement their support.

Why are we wanting, or even allowing, the Executive to unilaterally set pollution standards?

The right way to do this in the American system is for Congress to enshrine the regulations as laws. Then the President does what Congress says.

If we're trying to end-run around Congress's prerogative and responsibility to write the laws, then we shouldn't be surprised when regulations are changed by the caprice of the Executive, as they did with both Obama and now Trump.

I agree 100%, but that would require we have progress instead of congress.

IIRC the Executive gets to do this because the EPA is part of the executive branch. Can congress setup an agency that is outside of the control of the executive?

The EPA implements the regulations as described by Congress.

Right now, Congress has been very fuzzy about specifics, leaving it to the Executive to fill in the details. Phrased differently, Congress has explicitly given the EPA (under the direction of the President!) a great deal of latitude, and Presidents are using that latitude in both directions.

But if Congress has set it up that way, we shouldn't be surprised that this is what happens. The correct fix is to get Congress to provide clearer specs.

I suspect that the reason they don't, is that when they're less specific, they are less vulnerable to scrutiny by any given demographic. If they just say "we did something", then maybe both the Sierra Club and the farmers will be happy. But the more specific they are, the more it's going to piss off one or more blocks of voters.

So they punt, abdicating their powers. And the result is that things can change as the wind blows. We should not be vesting so much power in the President.

I'm not exactly sure when it started but I've been amazed at how weak Congress is. Presidents are basically conducting war without Congressional approval, signing 'trade deals', vast executive orders, etc. all while Congress twiddle their thumbs. The judiciary and executive have way more power than Congress right now.

They do have Congressional approval. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit... and continuing funding.

AUMF doesnt authorize any of the operations going on in Africa. From the ouster of the Libyan leader which has led to a brutal civil war to operations in the Sahel region fighting various smaller terrorist groups.

This is slightly disingenuous, given McConnell/the Republican party's boycott of any Obama-related laws. Obama executive actions are somewhat different than Trump executive actions, in that Congress was essentially thumbing their collective nose at Obama, while Trump could easily piece together votes for legislation, but is choosing not too. So it's not exactly "both sides" here.

From what I understand, it's possible he did violate the law when they systematically denied and ignored all the science related to it. There are already multiple lawsuits alleging this. My understanding is that the EPA's mandate requires scientific input in the rational decision making.

I think it's _ok_ for congress to grant some power to set rules, so long as there is appropriate checks and balances. However, we have seen in the past few days that the GOP does not want to enforce the checks and balances anymore.

we have seen in the past few days that the GOP does not want to enforce the checks and balances anymore.

There's more than enough blame to completely cover both sides of the aisle, on any number of issues.

Holding Democrats accountable doesn't mean pretending both sides are equally bad.

They're both so bad that I don't see any point in drawing a distinction. For practical purposes, yes, they're equally bad.

Congress doesn't have direct enforcement ability, so they empower independent agencies in the executive to enforce statutes.

The Environmental Protection Agency can only act under statutes, which are the authority of laws passed by Congress. Congress must approve the statute and they also have the power to authorize or prohibit certain actions, which the EPA has to implement and enforce. Appropriations statutes authorize how much money the agency can spend each year to carry out the approved statutes. The Environmental Protection Agency has the power to issue regulations. A regulation is a standard or rule written by the agency to interpret the statute, apply it in situations and enforce it. Congress allows the EPA to write regulations in order to solve a problem, but the agency must include a rationale of why the regulations need to be implemented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Pr...

> ...we shouldn't be surprised when regulations are changed by the caprice of the Executive, as they did with both Obama and now Trump.

You're right about that. But to be fair, Obama issued a bunch of executive orders because he literally got ZERO cooperation from republicans in his second term.

These orders are reversible but it's all he had to work with. I can appreciate that.

In the global long term, I don't think we can rely on nation-states to do right by the environment. The only way we will learn and, if we're lucky, adapt, is when things become drastic and horrifying.

From a NY Times story a few weeks ago on this [1]:

> A top panel of government-appointed scientists, many of them hand-selected by the Trump administration, said on Tuesday that three of President Trump’s most far-reaching and scrutinized proposals to weaken major environmental regulations are at odds with established science.

> Draft letters posted online Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board, which is responsible for evaluating the scientific integrity of the agency’s regulations, took aim at the Trump administration’s rewrite of an Obama-era regulation of waterways, an Obama-era effort to curb planet-warming vehicle tailpipe emissions and a plan to limit scientific data that can be used to draft health regulations.

> In each case, the 41 scientists on a board — many of whom were appointed by Trump administration officials to replace scientists named by the Obama administration — found the regulatory changes flew in the face of science.

> A forthcoming rule on water pollution “neglects established science” by “failing to acknowledge watershed systems,” the scientists said. They found “no scientific justification” for excluding certain bodies of water from protection under the new regulations.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/climate/epa-science-panel...

This got flagged. Im a bit confused as to why it did

Because someone clicked the button to flag the article.

In my time on HN I've seen everything political get flagged almost immediately which takes politics out of the discussion here.

I don't think it's banned in the rules, but it may as well be because nothing ever really sees the light of day too long without an immediate flag.

From the guidelines:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

To be fair, Trump dismantling environmental regulations is not really an "interesting new phenomenon." I disagree that it's off-topic but I can see how some would consider it so.

Edit: resolved ambiguity by expanding OT to off-topic

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