Communities across the country depend on clean rivers, lakes, streams, and wetlands for drinking, recreation, and wildlife habitat.
January 13, 2026 (Boston, MA) – The Trump administration has proposed a rollback of long-standing water quality protections of the Clean Water Act. The proposal would sharply curtail the ability of states and federally recognized tribes to assess and certify that major new infrastructure projects, such as oil and gas pipelines, will not pollute water resources.
“Communities across the country depend on clean rivers, lakes, streams, and wetlands for drinking, recreation, and wildlife habitat,” said Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at Conservation Law Foundation (CLF). “The provisions of the Clean Water Act have prevented innumerable harmful projects from moving forward. Now, it’s in the crosshairs because of the maniacal, but ultimately doomed-to-fail, efforts of the administration to resuscitate the dying fossil fuel industry.”
The Environmental Protection Agency will now collect feedback during a required public comment period.
CLF experts are available for further comment.
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