Let them drink Roundup
Meanwhile Trump wants us to have dirtier water – dirtier in the sense of more toxic, not muddier – and he’s putting his want into action. Thanks, Don!
The Trump administration is expected on Tuesday to unveil a plan that would weaken federal clean water rules designed to protect millions of acres of wetlands and thousands of miles of streams nationwide from pesticide runoff and other pollutants.
Because why shouldn’t we have to drink pesticide?! We can always buy Perrier by the case. If we can’t do that it’s our own damn fault for being so lazy and shiftless and not corrupt, so we deserve the pesticide in our water.
Environmentalists say the proposal represents a historic assault on wetlands regulation at a moment when Mr. Trump has repeatedly voiced a commitment to “crystal-clean water.” The proposed new rule would chip away at safeguards put in place a quarter century ago, during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, who implemented a policy designed to ensure that no wetlands lost federal protection.
“They’re definitely rolling things back to the pre-George H.W. Bush era,” said Blan Holman, who works on water regulations with the Southern Environmental Law Center. Wetlands play key roles in filtering surface water and protecting against floods, while also providing wildlife habitat.
Blah blah blah, no they don’t, they just make socialists happy; pave them all!
The proposed water rule, scheduled to be announced Tuesday morning at the Environmental Protection Agency, is designed to replace an Obama-era regulation known as Waters of the United States. Tuesday’s unveiling of the proposal is expected to coincide with its publication in the federal register. After that, the administration will take comment on the plan for 60 days, and it could then revise the plan before finalizing it next year.
The Obama rule, developed jointly by the E.P.A. and the Army Corps of Engineers under the authority of the 1972 Clean Water Act, was designed to limit pollution in about 60 percent of the nation’s bodies of water, protecting sources of drinking water for about a third of the United States. It extended existing federal authority to limit pollution in large bodies of water, like the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound, to smaller bodies that drain into them, such as tributaries, streams and wetlands.
Which, of course, means more rules about what farmers whose land drains into those small bodies have to do to prevent pollutants from draining into the streams.
Mr. Trump won cheers from rural audiences on the presidential campaign trail when he vowed to roll back the Obama rule. Real estate developers and golf course owners (industries in which Mr. Trump worked for decades) were also among the chief opponents of the earlier rule. One of Mr. Trump’s first actions in office was to sign an executive order directing his E.P.A. chief to repeal and replace the rule.
Trump is the savior of farmers and golf course owners! Everybody else, however, can go to the wall.
In my local area, the farmers will welcome this. The waste water treatment plant is fond of pointing out that our limiting what we put in our water isn’t going to make much difference, because what we put in isn’t enough to create the dead zone or any of the other problems. Which is true, of course, if taken by itself. But every community could say that…even Chicago doesn’t create the problems on its own. It’s the combined impact of all the large corporate farms, industrial developments, residential areas complete with lawns and gardens, and streets etc of the country. Everything here in the middle of the country will ultimately flow to the Mississippi River, and our contribution is not, of itself, enough to do all the damage (though they are wrong about how insignificant our contribution is, with all the enormous farms and feedlots in this area). You can’t give our city a break on the regulations and make everyone else follow them, because everyone else can say the same thing. We are all part of the problem, and we all need to be part of the solution.
I think it is instructive to point to my country on this.
South Africa has a massive corruption and incompetence problem in our municipalities, who are the ones responsible for things like sewage works.
What ends up happening a lot is that work doesn’t get done unless the bribes are in place, so the vast majority of our sewage works don’t actually work that well.
Law enforcement is also a problem, so you’ve got farms that are a wee bit lax with their treatment of fertilizer.
Long story short, Hartbeespoort Dam has for years suffered from toxic algae outbreaks that make the golf course near it stink. Also not great for the rich sods who bought property right by the dam back when it didn’t look like a giant lawn.
We have similar problems around the Vaal dam and several other areas.
I suspect that the problem you have in America isn’t so much Donald Trump in and of himself, but a vast population of dipshits who have never seen what actually happens when you pour your shit into the river, and have no concept of their being consequences to this stuff.
In a few years time these same golf course owners who were all for this change in regulation will be crying over how there is a big stink over their development and nobody wants to play there. The farmers will be similarly distressed to find their crops aren’t doing so great – because where do they get the water to irrigate their crops?
Trump is running America is running America like a CEO – doing long term harm for the illusion of short-term growth, taking the gamble that it won’t be his problem when the consequences hit.
Great for bragging about having a great economy in the next election cycle, not so great the second the bill comes due.