Just when you think it can’t get worse for clean water in New Mexico… it does. Trump‘s EPA and Army Corps of Engineers have released a supplemental proposal to further narrow Clean Water Act protections for streams, wetlands and other waters.
Please sign onto this NM sign-on letter by October 9th at 10am, by using the suggesting function and adding your name, title, org and email at the bottom of the letter.
This supplemental rule cements in place the worse possible interpretation of the Sackett decision and removes protections for more 96% of NM’s waters and at least 88% of our wetlands. The proposal would remove protections from New Mexico streams that do not flow year-round and one proposed alternative would only protect wetlands that are indistinguishable from a federally protected water. This would exclude wetlands that are physically near protected waters but are not connected to a river or stream through a continuous surface connection.
The proposal would exclude waterways that run dry for more than 30 consecutive days in any given year. The Rio Grande, the largest river in New Mexico, consistently runs dry for months at a time, with this year seeing some stretches of the river going dry as early as March 27th and staying dry for over 160 days. At the peak of dryness this year over 112 miles of the Rio Grande in New Mexico were dry, including all 13 miles that run through Albuquerque, the state’s largest city. This most recent rulemaking effort is yet another attempt in a long line of previous attacks on protections for wetlands and waters that are critical to the health of our watersheds and the people, wildlife, and ecosystems that rely on them. The supplemental proposal would dramatically shrink Clean Water Act protections for more waters across the country and remove protections from the vast majority of wetlands and streams that do not flow year-round. This builds on the administration’s earlier effort to narrow the definition of “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) and is now open for public comment.
Please sign on by adding your name, title, org, and email using the suggesting function at the bottom of the letter: