Trump Repeals Stream Protection Rule, Freeing 6,000 Miles Of Appalachian Waterways From Burden Of Federal Protection

WASHINGTON. Surrounded by a cohort of coal miners assembled in the Oval Office Thursday, President Donald J. Trump signed legislation repealing the Stream Protection Rule, liberating an estimated 6,000 miles of Appalachian streams from the regulatory hardship of not being permitted to fill with coal mining waste.

The measure, House Joint Resolution 38, used the Congressional Review Act to erase a rule finalized in the final month of the Obama administration, which had required coal companies to monitor water quality near their mines, avoid mining practices that permanently bury streams, and restore waterways once extraction was complete. Administration officials described the rule as an unreasonable constraint on an industry's right to leave a region worse than it found it.

"For too long, the streams of Appalachia have enjoyed a federal protection they did nothing to earn," said a senior administration official, who noted that the 6,000 miles of waterways and 52,000 acres of forest the rule would have safeguarded could now resume their natural role as a destination for the byproducts of mountaintop removal. "We are giving these communities back something they have been missing, which is the freedom to live downstream from a coal mine without the government getting involved."

The signing fulfilled a frequent campaign promise by Trump, who had vowed repeatedly to end the war on coal, a war that the coal industry had been losing for over a decade for reasons, including cheap natural gas and automation, that the repeal of a single water-quality rule was not expected to address. White House aides confirmed that the legislation would create no measurable number of coal jobs but would meaningfully reduce the number of streams that coal companies were obligated to keep clean.

Environmental scientists noted that the rescinded rule had been designed in part to protect endangered freshwater mussels and the drinking water of communities across coal country, populations that one official acknowledged had "had it pretty easy until now." The coal executives present at the ceremony, several of whom had personally lobbied for the repeal, were each handed a commemorative pen.

At press time, residents of Appalachian mining towns were being congratulated on their newly restored right to test their own well water.