The changes to the Clean Water Act’s protections are expected to hit California and other Western states especially hard. Clean water regulations are “essentially about how you provide drinking water. Waters that lose protection under the Trump rule will still be covered under California law. Most states don’t have nearly enough money or environmental expertise to fill the void created by vastly scaled-down federal regulations. He repeated an inaccurate claim that regulations enacted under Obama extended the Clean Water Act’s protections to puddles.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 23, 2020 13:18 UTC