https://phys.org/news/2020-01-trump-aims-waterway-aiding.html The Trump administration is lifting protections for some of the nation's millions of miles of streams, arroyos and wetlands, nearing completion on one of its most far-reaching environmental rollbacks. The changes announced Thursday will scale back which waterways qualify for protection against pollution and development under the half-century-old Clean Water Act. President Donald Trump has made a priority of the rollback of clean-water protections from his first weeks in office. Trump says he is targeting federal rules and regulations that impose unnecessary burdens on businesses. Chiefs of the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced the changes at a builders' convention in Las Vegas. more at link.....
And some more "progress" by Donald.....[tic] https://phys.org/news/2020-01-trump-team-rollback-boost-geothermal.html Trump team proposes rollback of desert protections to boost geothermal energy: In step with President Donald Trump's push for more energy development in California's deserts, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced Thursday it wants to transform 22,000 acres of public land in the southern Owens Valley into one of the largest geothermal leasing sites in the state. The agency has determined that the aquifer deep beneath the surface of the vintage Old West landscape of Rose Valley, about 120 miles north of Los Angeles, is a storehouse of enough volcanically heated water to spur $1 billion in investments and provide 117,000 homes with electricity. Yet the decision is sure to set off a new water war in an arid part of the eastern Sierra Nevada that is sprinkled with dormant volcanoes, spiky lava beds and rare species, such as desert tortoises. The BLM contends it can balance competing interests with its plans to amend Obama-era restrictions on energy development across 22,000 acres in a region it calls the Haiwee Geothermal Leasing Area. more at link....
Trump may not care about desert tortoises, but Mitch McConnell will try and squash that project considering it threatens his family and relatives.
