WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pointed to farmers Monday as winners from the administration’s proposed rollback of federal protections for wetlands and waterways across the country, describing farmers crying in gratitude when he ordered the change.
But under longstanding federal law and rules, farmers and farmland already are exempt from most of the regulatory hurdles on behalf of wetlands that the Trump administration is targeting. Because of that, environmental groups long have argued that builders, oil and gas drillers and other industry owners would be the big winners if the government adopts the pending rollback, making it easier to fill in bogs, creeks and streams for plowing, drilling, mining or building.
Government numbers released last month support that argument.
Real estate developers and those in other business sectors take out substantially more permits than farmers for projects impinging on wetlands, creeks, and streams, and who stand to reap the biggest regulatory and financial relief from the Trump administration’s rollback of wetlands protections.
Speaking to the American Farm Bureau Federation in New Orleans, Trump told farmers the federal protections for waterways and wetlands were “one of the most ridiculous” regulations.
“It was a total kill on you and other businesses,” Trump said. He claimed farmers and builders alike wept in gratitude when he signed an executive order in 2017, as one of first official acts of his presidency, directing a rewrite of the wetlands protections.
“We’re going to keep federal regulators out of your stock tanks, your drainage ditches, your puddles and your ponds,” Trump told the cheering farmers Monday.
Opponents contend the Trump administration put farmers front and center as beneficiaries of the proposed rollback because of the strong regard Americans historically hold for farming.
“The administration understands good optics in surrounding themselves with farmers,” in proposing the rollback, said Geoff Gisler, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Surrounding themselves with folks that would represent the industries that actually benefit would not be as good an optic.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which administers the wetlands protections with the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Association of Home Builders confirmed Friday that developers and other industries, not farmers, have felt the biggest impact from the federal wetlands protections and would get most of the financial breaks under the rollback.
“The residential construction industry does pull more wetlands permits than farmers do,” Liz Thompson, spokeswoman for the National Association of Home Builders, said in an email.
The Trump administration’s pending rollback of wetlands protections “could be a benefit to builders who will see some relief in terms of cost and time. That said, builders will still be regulated and will still be the industry that pulls the largest number of 404 permits which are very costly,” Thompson wrote, referring to the section of the Clean Water Act dealing with the regulatory enforcement and permits.
