Traverse City, Mich. • The Trump administration on Thursday revoked an Obama-era regulation that shielded many U.S. wetlands and streams from pollution but was opposed by developers and farmers who said it hurt economic development and infringed on property rights.
Environmental groups criticized the administration's action, the latest in a series of moves to roll back environmental protections put into place under President Barack Obama.
The 2015 Waters of the United States rule defined the waterways subject to federal regulation. Scrapping it "puts an end to an egregious power grab, eliminates an ongoing patchwork of clean water regulations and restores a longstanding and familiar regulatory framework," Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler said at a news conference in Washington, D.