November 20, 2025

Why Does the Trump Admin Want to Stop Protecting Waterways?

The integrity of the nation’s waters appears to have been tossed aside – and no attempt is being made even to quantify what is being lost.

By Nancy Stoner, Senior Attorney

The Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972 by a huge bipartisan majority in Congress. Born out of the Midwest’s shock and horror when the polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire in Ohio, it has been one of the most successful environmental statutes in our country’s history. The Clean Water Act brought back to life lakes, streams, and coastal waters across the Great Lakes region and the country that had previously been so degraded by industrial contaminants and sewage that they were not safe for swimming, fishing, or drinking.

The Clean Water Act works by reducing or eliminating pollution from industry, power plants, wastewater plants, and other sources into protected waters. While that work is not yet done, the tremendous progress we have made has been largely due to the success of the permitting programs:

• The section 402 pollution discharge program,
• The section 404 program for permitting dredge and fill materials into wetlands and streams, and
• The section 401 program that enables states and tribes to ensure federal permitted activities meet water quality standards

All hinge on whether a river, lake, wetland, or coastal water is protected under the Clean Water Act, if it falls under the category “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS). The administration is seeking to narrow down this previously-broad category, to exclude many waterways that Americans love and depend on. The new proposal would gut the process of protecting waterways so that they are safe for drinking, for swimming, for fish and frogs to live in, and so that they can prevent flooding and store carbon to reduce climate change.

Why does the Trump Administration want to stop protecting waterways?

It isn’t because that’s what the public wants. Poll after poll for decades show that an overwhelming percentage of the public — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents — want clean, safe water. They especially want to know that the tap water is safe to drink everywhere in the US, but they also want to know that they can swim, paddle, or wade in the rivers without getting an infection or diarrhea and that there are fish to catch in the rivers that are safe to eat.  People love clean water. They love the Great Lakes; they love the creeks in their backyards; and they love the prairie potholes and swamps where they go to watch herons and ducks on the weekends with their kids.

So, what does the Trump administration say about why it’s doing this?

1. It will save polluters money. That is literally what the proposal says and even attempts to quantify. While acknowledging that the rule, if finalized, would lead to fewer lakes, streams, wetlands and other water bodies being protected from pollution, the proposal merely claims that the costs of failing to protect these waters is “uncertain.” The proposal doesn’t account for the cost to the public of contaminated drinking water, dead fish, flooded homes, sewer overflows, waterborne illnesses, or any of the other costs of polluted water – which are all really expensive impacts for everyday people! Instead, this administration only cares about the costs to corporations. They don’t even attempt to quantify which cost is higher. It just says that it doesn’t know what it will cost the public to pay for all these avoidable impacts of water pollution and even claims that it would be illegitimate for EPA and the Army Corps to decide how many waters to protect based on consideration of pollution impacts to the public.
2. The Supreme Court made us do it. The Supreme Court did dramatically reduce the scope of Clean Water Act protections in the Sackett v. EPA case in 2023, but the Biden EPA and the Corps immediately amended the regulations to reflect the more limited scope of the Act, eliminating protections for most of the freshwater wetlands and all of the ephemeral streams. There is no excuse for the Trump EPA to take another cut, exposing even more waterways to pollution and leaving more communities vulnerable to flooding.
3. It is necessary to provide greater clarity and prevent the regulations from changing every time a new President is elected. This one is really far-fetched. How is changing the scope of the Act to allow more pollution, more flooding, and more climate change because President Trump was re-elected going to the make it less likely that the Democrats will amend the regulations once they are back in power? According to the proposal, it is because this proposed regulation, unlike all those that preceded it, provides clarity. Really? The main test for whether a river or stream is protected is whether it flows all year or during the “wet season,” a term that is rarely if ever applied to non-tropical areas like most of the US. Maybe they should test drive the concept in Florida before rolling it out as a regulatory threshold in the Great Lakes, Mississippi River Basin, or the Finger Lakes.

EPA and Army Corps have lost their way. They are supposed to implement and enforce the Clean Water Act to protect our waterways, not undermine one of its most successful statutes. The proposed rule doesn’t appear to be related to stopping pollution, reducing flooding, protecting drinking water, protecting wildlife habitat, or mitigating climate change. They even say on that the proposal will have no effect on children’s health, since the since it’s “simply a definitional rule.” That’s outrageous! All of government is based on “simple definitions” that have real-world impacts. A definition that removes critical clean water protections from vast areas of the country means American kids will be exposed to a lot more polluted water. That’s plain as day to anyone with a lick of common sense. What happened to wanting to “make America healthy again?”

The basic purpose of the Clean Water Act, to protect the physical, chemical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters, appears to have been tossed aside – and no attempt is being made even to quantify what is being lost. Once again, polluters are getting a handout and everyday people are getting stuck with the mystery bill.