Congress passes first rollback of Obama environmental rule

WASHINGTON — The Senate sent the first of what is likely to be many rollbacks of environmental regulations to President Trump's desk Thursday.

The Senate voted 54-45 to scrap a rule designed to limit the dumping of mining waste in local waterways. The Stream Protection Rule was put in place by the Department of the Interior in the final days of the Obama administration, tightening standards for contamination of water and restoration of streams damaged by mining operations. The House approved the rollback Wednesday.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the resolution “aims to put a stop to the former administration’s blatant attack on coal miners.”

“In my home state of Kentucky and others across the nation, the Stream Buffer Rule will cause major damage to communities and threaten coal jobs. One study actually estimated that this regulation would put as many as one-third of coal-related jobs at risk,” McConnell said on the floor ahead of the vote.

“This Republican-led Congress is committed to fulfilling our promises to the American people. That work continues now as we consider legislation to push back against the harmful regulations from the Obama administration,” McConnell said. “Fortunately, we now have the opportunity to work with a new president to begin bringing relief from those burdensome regulations.”

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“I’m excited about our chance to repeal regulations that deny Kentucky’s hardworking men and women their chance to fully flourish in their professions,” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said in a statement. “Getting rid of this overzealous attempt to destroy Kentucky’s coal industry will send a message that ‘business as usual’ will no longer be tolerated from federal regulatory agencies.”

Lawmakers used the Congressional Review Act to reverse the legislation. The CRA allows Congress to vote to repeal regulations that were issued in the last 60 days that Congress was in session. The act has only been used once before to overturn a regulation, but with a new Republican president, the GOP-led Congress is teeing up a host of Obama-era rules for possible repeal.

Rep. John Yarmuth, the lone Democratic representative from Kentucky, vehemently opposed the rollback when it came up in the House on Wednesday.

Yarmuth brought a bottle of polluted well-water from Kentucky and said that if a Republican colleague would be willing to drink it, he would vote in favor of the legislation. No one took him up on it.

“This bottle of — I guess you can call it a liquid —  wasn’t taken from an industrial waste site or from the runoff of a landfill. This came from the drinking well of the Urias family’s home in Pike County, Kentucky,” Yarmuth said on the House floor Wednesday. “The Stream Protection Rule that the House is about to block would serve as one of the only safety measures that would protect these families from poisoned drinking water, higher rates of cancer, lung disease, respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease, birth defects and the countless negative health effects that plague this region.”

Environmental groups were also upset by the decision.

"This is an unconscionable attack on basic clean water safeguards for communities already devastated by toxic pollution from coal mining,” said Bob Wendelgass, president and CEO of Clean Water Action.

“With communities across the country increasingly alarmed by contaminants like lead, flame-retardant chemicals, and many other pollutants showing up in their drinking water, shredding safeguards for clean water is the exact opposite of what Congress should do,"  said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters.