Several states are suing the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for putting on hold an Obama-era rule to protect wetlands and waterways. And this month an organization of wetlands scientists filed a brief with the court in support of those states and the Clean Water Rule of 2015. Royal Gardner, a professor at Stetson University College of Law, helped write the amicus brief. He’s director of the Institute for Biodiversity Law and Policy and was interviewed by WMNF’s MidPoint.
“This suspension rule has to go through the normal administrative procedures, which requires the agencies to consider comments submitted by members of the public. And, in this particular case, the Society of Wetland Scientists and several other scientific societies emphasized the need to consider the scientific record before making any decision in terms of suspending or revoking the Clean Water Rule. The agencies expressly refused to do that. And so what we are arguing in support of the states in the Southern District of New York is that the suspension rule is arbitrary and capricious because it fails to consider the scientific basis of the Clean Water Rule.”
Our guest on MidPoint was the Society of Wetland Scientists’ immediate past president, Gillian Davies. She talked about the Clean Water Rule, how it affects wetlands and why wetlands are important.
A separate amicus brief was written by the NYU law school on the economic damage that would occur if the Clean Water Rule is permanently repealed.
Listen to the full show here:
Here is a link to more WMNF News stories about the Clean Water Act.
In the second half of the show we turned to the day’s major events in Palestine and Israel. There were massive demonstrations in Gaza where the Israeli military shot and injured more than 2,700 people and killed more than 50 protesters.
We heard President Donald Trump’s recorded video message that was played at the gala ceremony marking the move of the U.S. Embassy to Israel to the shared city of Jerusalem. We heard the speech that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner gave and took listener comments about it all.
