"Clean Water Rule: Trump Analysis Slashes WOTUS's Economic Benefits"

"U.S. EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers are disputing their own economic analysis of the 2015 Clean Water Rule, now saying most benefits they previously ascribed to the Obama-era regulation can no longer be quantified.

The agencies criticize their previous calculations in a new analysis of the economic impacts of repealing the Clean Water Rule, which seeks to clarify which wetlands and small waterways are protected by the Clean Water Act.

The Trump administration has made repealing the Clean Water Rule, also known as the Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule, a priority. The administration's new economic analysis, released this week along with a proposed WOTUS repeal, maintains the previously calculated costs of implementing the rule but reduces the regulation's benefits by 85 to 90 percent.

With the new calculations, the benefits of implementing WOTUS no longer outweigh the costs, as they did in the Obama administration analysis from three years ago."

Ariel Wittenberg reports for Greenwire July 7, 2017.