The Trump administration’s haphazard approach to scaling back environmental regulations is causing uncertainty for states, businesses and consumers.
The latest example is a decision by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to rescind Obama-era guidelines that required the state of Washington to set more stringent standards for water quality than the state had established in 2016.
In announcing that decision, the administration agreed with the state’s earlier complaints that the standards were unrealistic; but Washington officials warn that the process for reaching that decision was inappropriate and risked “almost certain litigation,” according to a statement from Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
That points out the festering incompetence of the Trump administration. Ferguson’s office has led 13 lawsuits against the administration and has joined 24 others filed by other states. Among the more than 20 cases that have been decided, Washington’s attorney general has yet to lose a case.
Overall, efforts to deregulate environmental restrictions have resulted in 41 court outcomes, according to New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. Of those, the administration has lost 38 cases, mostly regarding orders from the EPA.
The latest case involves an ongoing dispute between Washington and federal regulators under the Clean Water Act’s “fish consumption rule.” The rule sets standards for the level of various pollutants in water — pollutants that are ingested by fish and, therefore, ingested by humans. The EPA under President Barack Obama set guidelines that drew complaints from heavy industry such as pulp and paper mill operators, who said they were unachievable. Washington officials have been working to develop plans for meeting the stricter standards, but now the Trump administration says they do not have to.
The problem lies in carelessness by the administration, an approach that persistently disregards the law and ignores the wishes of stakeholders such as state governments and tribal leaders in favor of the whims of big business. As the Brookings Institution detailed in a report last year, the administration’s failed attempts at deregulation typically have resulted from agencies not following established protocol for changing the rules.
This has created battles between regulators and state governments. Rather than demonstrating leadership, the administration has created situations that actually undermine business and consumers. “It is difficult to communicate to your customers that New Jersey or Minnesota or Vermont has evaluated the risk to their residents differently, and that one state places a lower value on protection of public health than another,” a municipal water treatment manager from Michigan said last week in congressional testimony.
Another result is individual states — including Washington — seeking to impose stricter emissions standards for new automobiles and light trucks, after the administration attempted to ease guidelines established under the Obama administration.
As a candidate, Trump promised to roll back environmental restrictions, and he won the election. Clearly, there is some appetite for such a rollback.
But the erratic process for altering the rules has created confusion and chaos rather than efficiently draining the regulatory swamp. Given Ferguson’s legal success in opposing the administration, when he asserts that the latest action will result in “almost certain litigation,” the Trump administration might want to rethink its actions.
