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Updated 9 hours ago
President Trump is preparing executive orders aimed at reversing Obama-era policies on climate and water pollution, according to individuals briefed on the measures.
While both directives will take time to implement, they will send an unmistakable signal that the new administration is determined to promote fossil-fuel production and economic activity even when those activities collide with some environmental safeguards. Individuals familiar with the proposals asked for anonymity to describe them in advance of their announcement, which could come as soon as this week.
One executive order, aimed at bolstering American energy independence, will instruct the Environmental Protection Agency to begin rewriting the 2015 regulation that limits greenhouse-gas emissions from existing electric utilities. It also instructs the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management to lift a moratorium on federal coal leasing.
A second order will instruct the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers to revamp a 2015 rule, known as the Waters of the United States rule, that applies to 60 percent of the water bodies in the country. That regulation — issued under the 1972 Clean Water Act, which gives the federal government authority over not only major water bodies but also the wetlands, rivers and streams that feed into them — restricts development and some farming operations on the grounds that these activities could pollute the smaller or intermittent bodies of water or choke them off altogether.
Trump has joined many industry groups in criticizing these rules as examples of the federal government exceeding its authority and curbing economic growth. While any move to undo these policies will spark new legal battles and entail work within the agencies that could take as long as a year and a half to finalize, the orders could affect investment decisions within the utility, mining, agriculture and real estate sectors, as well as activities on the ground.
Bloomberg reported several elements of the executive orders Friday.
The greenhouse-gas limits on existing power plants, dubbed the Clean Power Plan, represented a central component of President Obama's climate agenda. The regulations, which were put on hold by the Supreme Court and are being weighed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, direct every state to form detailed plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from such sources as coal-fired power plants, enough to decrease carbon pollution by about one-third by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.
Separately, Trump and his deputies are reopening a question of water policy that has bedeviled government officials from both parties for two decades. Two Supreme Court decisions that came down during the George W. Bush administration, in 2001 and 2006, spurred uncertainty over exactly which bodies of water fall under the federal government's jurisdiction. The Bush administration worked on drafting regulations to address the issue, but once Obama took office, the EPA began rewriting them. The current rule gives the federal government wide latitude to protect smaller tributaries on the grounds that they still need to be preserved as critical water supplies.
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