{"id":4789,"date":"2020-02-03T20:39:19","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T01:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/waterkeeperschesapeake.org\/?p=4789"},"modified":"2020-02-05T12:53:02","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T17:53:02","slug":"maryland-pushes-back-against-epas-attempt-to-take-away-states-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/waterkeeperschesapeake.org\/es\/maryland-pushes-back-against-epas-attempt-to-take-away-states-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Maryland se opone al intento de EPA de quitarles derechos a los estados"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Aaron Zoellick, WKC Legal Intern<\/em><\/p>\n

Long before President Trump was inaugurated, it was clear that unraveling environmental protections was going to be a key part of his agenda. With the initial appointment of Scott Pruitt, and now Andrew Wheeler, as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the administration set out to rollback or eliminate nearly 100 environmentally friendly rules and regulations in under four years<\/a>.\u00a0These rollbacks threaten the health and safety of people, wildlife, and the environments in which we live; from the air that we breath, the water that we drink, the food that we eat, and the myriad of ways in which commercial goods are manufactured, inspected, and transported across the country.<\/p>\n

\"\"Many of the rollbacks will not only be detrimental to the work that has been done in revitalizing the Chesapeake Bay to make up for mistakes of the past, but also in combatting climate change as we prepare for the future. One rollback<\/a>, for instance, was finalized this month and would remove many streams, wetlands, and groundwater from federal protection. The rollback, in particular, will undoubtedly undo much of the hard-fought work over the last 30 years and leave the Chesapeake Bay and its surrounding neighbors more vulnerable to the future impacts of climate change.<\/p>\n

In August 2019, the EPA submitted a Proposed Rule<\/a> that aims to silence any state that attempts to stop a major project from moving forward due to its associated harmful water quality impacts. Under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act (CWA) states are authorized to \u201ccertify\u201d whether a major, federally-licensed project will have an impact on state water quality standards. A state has the choice to approve a project, approve with additional conditions, deny, or waive a \u201cWater Quality Certification\u201d for any project that may have an impact on state waters.<\/p>\n

The Proposed Rule on Section 401 received nearly 125,000 comments from the public. A majority of states and their respective environmental agencies or Governors sent in comments opposing the rule, including the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE).<\/strong> In MDE\u2019s comment, Secretary Ben Grumbles stated that the Rule would \u201cundermine state authority and jeopardize the ability of states to protect their water from pollution associated with federally permitted activities\u2026.\u201d Secretary Grumbles even goes so far to say that the Proposed Rule \u201cputs forth a series of constraints on state implementation of CWA 401 that are contrary to law\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would be easy in the face of this onslaught against the environment to give up hope and believe that all is lost. In such times though it is important to remember a quote from Fred Rogers, \u201c[l]ook for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.\u201d In the weeks, months, and possibly years to come, many of the regulatory rollbacks initiated by the Trump administration are set to make their way through the courts. Indeed, the administration hastily forced almost every environmental rollback without firming up the necessary legal arguments to merit such a strong regulatory changes.<\/p>\n

Here, in the Chesapeake Bay, local legislators are working to guarantee that states retain the authority they are entitled to under the Clean Water Act.<\/strong> At the beginning of the 2020 session of the Maryland General Assembly, Delegate Jim Gilchrist introduced the 401 Water Quality Certification Improvement Act that would ensure Maryland\u2019s ability to thoroughly review and analyze all the proposed water pollution impacts from any given federally-licensed project that may affect Maryland waterways. Furthermore, the bill puts the burden to identify, quantify, and evaluate all associated pollution impacts where it belongs, on the project developer.<\/p>\n

While the difficulties ahead are many, so too are the reasons to be optimistic. All across the country advocates for clean and vibrant waterways, forests, fields, and neighborhoods are pushing back against these unprecedented rollbacks. The Trump administration may be claiming that they are doing what is best for the environment but, in fact, it is they – those that choose to deny the overwhelming science behind climate change, and those that choose time-and-time again to neglect and ignore the nation\u2019s waterways \u2013 that are living in the land of make believe.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned on how you can help save Maryland\u2019s authority to protect our local waterways from federally approved projects!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Por Aaron Zoellick, pasante legal de WKC. Mucho antes de la toma de posesi\u00f3n del presidente Trump, era evidente que desmantelar las protecciones ambientales ser\u00eda un aspecto clave de su agenda. Con el nombramiento inicial de Scott Pruitt, y ahora de Andrew Wheeler, como directores de la Agencia de Protecci\u00f3n Ambiental (EPA), la administraci\u00f3n se propuso revertir\u2026 Lee mas<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4790,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,38,10],"tags":[545,82,77,533,84,624],"class_list":["post-4789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clean-water-advocacy","category-federal-policy","category-legislation","tag-401-certification","tag-clean-water-act","tag-epa","tag-epa-rollbacks","tag-maryland","tag-mdga2020"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/waterkeeperschesapeake.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/waterkeeperschesapeake.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/waterkeeperschesapeake.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waterkeeperschesapeake.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waterkeeperschesapeake.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/waterkeeperschesapeake.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waterkeeperschesapeake.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/waterkeeperschesapeake.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waterkeeperschesapeake.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waterkeeperschesapeake.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4789"}],"curies":[{"name":"gracias","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}