Day of Slack Rains, 30th of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Electra): Last month, the Stable Genius said he would open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling. Last week, he further announced that drilling would also be allowed in a remote stretch of tundra and wetlands in another part of Alaska that is among the Arctic’s most important wildlife habitats.

The decisions to drill in Alaska would “unlock Alaska’s energy potential, create jobs for North Slope communities, and strengthen American energy security,” according to the administration. Although Trump has repeatedly said he wants clean air and clean water, decisions like these show that he believes environmental concerns should not supersede the needs of the economy. 

Yesterday's proposal to scale back the Clean Water Act of 1972, which Congress passed to protect “waters of the United States,” would benefit real estate developers eager to build on shorelines, farmers with fields that run along waterways, and manufacturers who build petrochemical factories on tidal marshes. The proposal "is going to be met with a lot of relief” from those businesses and landowners, according to Lee Zeldin, the Stable Genius' underqualified administrator of the EPA.

But wetlands store carbon dioxide, and provide food, shelter and breeding grounds for a variety of species, and also protect against flooding by absorbing tidal surges during storms.

As stated yesterday, the proposal would exclude from federal protection wetlands that sit beside “intermittent” or “ephemeral” streams, those streams that sit dry for most of the year but fill up after rainfall or snowmelt and provide more than half of the water flowing through this country's river systems. The proposal could affect up to 55 million acres of wetlands, an area roughly the size of Utah.

The proposed rule addresses what constitutes “waters of the United States” in the Clean Water Act. The Obama administration widened the definition to protect the headwaters of rivers and smaller streams that aren’t always full of water. Trump repealed that rule in his first term, and a 2023 Supreme Court decision (Sackett v. EPA) makes it harder for subsequent administrations to strengthen the protections.

The case involved an Idaho couple who wanted to build a house near federally protected wetlands. The Supreme Court ruled that those wetlands were not, in fact, federally protected, and with the newly proposed rule, many more acres of waterways may no longer be protected. The National Association of Home Builders said that the proposal would help in “reducing regulatory red tape, cutting permitting costs and lowering the cost of doing business in communities across the country.”

So short-sighted. So that an Idaho couple can face less red tape, so that homebuilders can lower their permitting costs, and so industries can build their sprawling factories on cheap wetland property, the Stable Genius is sacrificing the continent's ability to protect against floodwaters and to filter our fresh-water resources, while exacerbating climate change and reducing critical habitat. 

A great America is a clean, healthy country on clean, healthy land. A cut-rate, dollar-store America is one where natural resources and ecological services are sacrificed to increase the bottom line of business.