Category: EPA

A Decision of a Stable Genius…

America’s stable genius at work. The man who knows better than the generals and scientists is hard at work taking America back to greatness.

Returning to the past is not necessarily a good thing. But that is something America’s stable genius hasn’t time to consider. He’s busy Making America Great Again.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is expected to roll back an Obama-era regulation that was to limit emissions of dangerous heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury from coal-fired power plants, according to two people familiar with the plans.

In a rule expected as early as Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency will move to weaken the 2015 regulation by relaxing some of the requirements on power generators and also exempting a significant number of power plants from even those requirements.

The effort was designed to extend the life of old, coal-fired power plants that have been shutting down in the face of competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy generators. Environmental groups warned that the move could lead to health problems caused by contaminated drinking water, including birth defects, cancer and stunted brain development in young children.

There Is Just No Explaining Willful Stupidity…

Another advancement of Trump’s burning desire to rollback every sensible, effective, and right decision of the Obama administration. If there is any justice the blundering Trump will get his just deserts when the American people kick his ample out of shape arse out of  out of the White House in 2020.

Trump cares not a wit about the American people or their health and safety. He has amply demonstrated this on more than just this occasion.

The Trump administration will on Thursday repeal one of the Obama era’s most sweeping environmental rules — a set of pollution protections for small streams and wetlands that had riled up opposition from coal miners, home developers, farmers and oil and gas drillers.

The action creates instant doubts about the legal status of myriad seasonal or isolated wetlands and thousands of miles of waterways, including vast swaths of the arid West. And it clears the way for the Environmental Protection Agency to finish a follow-up regulation in the coming months that could leave most of the nation’s wetlands without any federal safeguards.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is poised to sign off on the repeal at the D.C. headquarters of the National Association of Manufacturers, one of the industry groups that had opposed the Obama administration’s Waters of the U.S. rule. That 2015 regulation, also known as the Clean Water Rule, had cemented federal protections for headwater streams, Western rivers and nearby wetlands, in an effort to resolve questions raised by two muddled Supreme Court decisions.

Environmental groups vowed to challenge the rollback, arguing that it jeopardizes drinking water supplies for 117 million Americans.

Jon Devine, director of federal water policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, defended the Obama administration rule in a statement, saying it “represented solid science and smart public policy.”

“The Trump administration’s wild-eyed attempts to reward polluters, however, knows no bounds, so it is repealing these important protections without regard for the law or sound science,” he said. “This unsubstantiated action is illegal and will certainly be challenged in court.”

Let us hope the courts spank Trump real good and run his short sighted special interest decision right back up his where the sun don’t shine.

More from POLITICO .