Trump’s environmental rollback will be costly to NC

President Trump is making good on a campaign promise to rollback clean water rules. Late last month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced a dramatic reduction in the reach of the Clean Water Act, exempting many streams and most of the nation’s wetlands from protection. It’s a big win for farmers and real estate developers, who say compliance with the rule was costly and complicated. But the changes will likely hurt many North Carolina homeowners, and they’ll waste a lot of taxpayer money — consequences the administration refuses to acknowledge.

Under the newly-announced EPA rule, builders will no longer need a permit to fill, dredge or pollute many waters that have no surface connection to larger bodies of water. That means they’ll no longer need to minimize their environmental impact. But the newly unprotected waters can feed into groundwater and affect drinking water. And wetlands provide important flood control for nearby communities. That’s why EPA’s own Science Advisory Board, which includes members selected by the Trump Administration, says the rule risks public health.

For North Carolinians, the change eliminates protection for almost 1.7 million acres of wetlands, most of which lie in coastal areas. Wetlands are nature’s sponges. They absorb floodwater, then slowly release it as flooding abates. They’re so effective that federal disaster programs encourage states to build new, man-made wetlands. That means taxpayer money could be used to rebuild wetlands eliminated under the new EPA rule.

Wheeler says it’s impossible to accurately predict the cost of the rule change, but the agency’s own analysis predicts the change will result in “increased flood risk” and “downstream inundation damages” as well as “greater drinking water treatment” costs unless states decide to make up for federal cuts.

It is perhaps ironic that EPA announced its rollback the day after North Carolina scientists presented data showing severe flooding will increase in the coming decades. Homeowners who survived Dorian, Florence and Matthew probably weren’t surprised to learn we’ll be hit with increasingly severe storms and flooding. But they might not have realized that flooding will become a daily hazard for many coastal residents as sea levels rise. Wilmington, for example, can expect 100 days of “sunny day” flooding by 2050. Unless there’s a complete retreat from flood-prone areas, which is highly unlikely, expect the cost of both flood damage and mitigation to skyrocket.

Wheeler presented the rollback as win for federalism, saying states now have the “flexibility” to set their own rules. What he really means is state governments must now build the scientific capacity to replicate what the federal government can already do — another enormous waste of taxpayer dollars.

It’s highly unlikely North Carolina will decide to impose clean water protections abandoned by the federal government. The General Assembly has already passed legislation prohibiting state regulators from imposing environmental standards that are more restrictive than federal ones. And, after years of cuts to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s budget, no one can reasonably expect the legislature to fund new positions.

Instead, we can expect natural flood protections to decline even as flooding increases. And we can expect an expensive lawsuit to stop a costly rule that should never have been promulgated if — as Wheeler says — its costs can’t be quantified. Expect taxpayers to foot that bill,too.

This story was originally published February 8, 2020 at 11:58 AM.