Will Trump order throw enviro-rulemaking into chaos?

REUTERS/Carlos Barria

The environmental blog Grist reports:

On Monday, the president signed “a big one”: an executive order mandating that for every new regulation created, two regulations must be eliminated.
The order also says that the total cost of regulatory changes should be zero. Rules related to the military, national security, and foreign affairs are exempted, of course.
Experts are scratching their heads over what this will mean. “The whole rule-writing area is now in complete chaos and environmental rules are going to be caught up in that,” said Georgetown environmental law professor Hope Babcock.
“An agency can’t just say here’s a regulation and goodbye two,” said Georgetown law professor William Buzbee. “Every change in regulation requires a new rulemaking. What this will really do — this is requiring so much work — is most agencies will have incentives to avoid doing any rulemaking.”
And getting rid of regulations isn’t easy. The president has to “faithfully execute” all laws and cannot undo agency regulations that enforce laws like the Clean Air Act. Any rollback, such as eliminating a species from the endangered list, would have to be completed in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act, which takes time, according to Babcock. “You can’t just by executive fiat rescind a rule,” she said.
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Pa. Senate Republicans take new shot at union dues


The Associated Press reports today:
Republicans in the Pennsylvania state Senate are making another attempt to end the ability of public-sector labor unions to collect full dues and political action committee contributions through payroll deductions from members’ paychecks.
The GOP-controlled Senate State Government Committee cast an 8-4 party line vote Tuesday to advance the legislation and a resolution to amend the constitution.
The bill passed the Senate 26-23 in 2015, but died in the House last year. It is also opposed by Democratic Governor Tom Wolf.
The bill would bar the state, school districts and local government employers from deducting any portion of union dues that underwrite political activity and union political action committee contributions from the paychecks of unionized workers.
Only deductions that pay for contract negotiation costs and other non-political activity would be allowed.
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Local congressmen divided on Trump immigration order

Dave Davies reports for NewsWorks:

As demonstrators swarmed to airports to protest President Trump’s executive order on refugees and immigrants, our region’s Congressional representatives have had to figure out what they think about the travel ban.
It was easy for Democrats. Many made their way to Philadelphia International Airport to join protesters, including Philadelphia U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, South Jersey Rep. Donald Norcross, and Delaware U.S. Sen. Tom Carper and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester.
For Republicans it was a trickier calculation, since their party holds the White House.
All seven GOP Congressional representatives I contacted issued statements expressing some degree of concern about Trump’s order or its implementation. None was available for an interview except U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent of the Leigh Valley, a critic of Trump during last year’s campaign.
In a phone interview, Dent said the order was overly broad and badly implemented. “This was not properly vetted, and the implementation has been very rough,” he said, “and that’s why I’ve called on the administration to halt enforcement of this action until more people can take a look at it.”
Dent, who represents a large Syrian immigrant population, is the only area representative contacted who explicitly called on the administration to stop enforcing the order.
Finding fault, but not too much

Because there’s no pending Congressional action on the order, every representative can craft his or her own critique. There’s no need to give the Trump order a clear thumbs up or down.
The most supportive of local Republicans was New Jersey U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur, who represents swaths of Burlington and Ocean counties.  He said while Trump’s order “could have been implemented better, I applaud him for acting. Our new president deserves the chance to make our country safer and I will work in Congress to help the Administration settle on a long-term fix that protects our people and our values.”  
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Delaware River water project measuring its effectiveness

delaware river (spring)

The Delaware River Watershed Initiative, a wide-ranging collaboration between environmental groups seeking to protect water quality in the 13,500 square-mile area, is beginning to monitor and measure its progress since being launched in 2014.

The initiative, led by the William Penn Foundation, aims to shield the basin’s water supplies from forest loss, runoff from farms and storm drains, and aquifer depletion. It has spent the past two and a half years providing grants and coordinating the efforts of more than 40 conservation nonprofits.

Jon Hurdle reports in NJ Spotlight:


Now, the 10-year program is moving into a second phase in which it will assess progress toward its goal of restoring clean water across the watershed from upstate New York to the mouth of the Delaware Bay.
“We need to prove to our board that this is working,” said Clare Billott, program officer for the DRWI, speaking at the biennial Delaware Estuary Science and Environmental Summit, a gathering of conservation groups brought together by the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary.
With the foundation’s initial investment of $35 million, the program is a major effort to protect water in a region that supplies drinking water to some 15 million people. DRWI officials said the program would complement the new federal Delaware River Basin Conservation Act, which requires the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to coordinate the work of conservation groups in the region.
Billott said the foundation has provided $15 million a year since the initiative began, and has leveraged another $15 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and $60 million from other sources.
While the funding may not yet have produced improvements in water quality throughout the watershed, it has helped to improve some local conditions, and has created an alliance of conservation groups that are jointly working toward common goals, Billott said.
“The biggest single thing that we got out of Phase 1 is that every one of these groups say that they are working with others,” she said.
In its upcoming second phase, the initiative’s managers will look at what participating groups have achieved, but they won’t be expected to have already hit their targets, Billott said.
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NJ Democratic leaders on Trump immigration order



Non-verbatim summary of a news conference today
in New Jersey on President Trump’s immigration order.


U.S. Senator Bob Menendez The U.S. was founded by those escaping from religious persecutions.   What we are doing is rejecting, for example, those Iraqi interpreters who helped our military at a critical juncture during wartime. This undermines national security.
It sends the message Don’t join the Americans because they will turn their backs on you. We will do what we can to de-fund elements of the (Trump) executive order.  In all my years working on immigration I’ve never seen such fear and also such absolute commitment to push back.


U.S. Senator Cory Booker: Trump has put American citizens at greater risk and has undermining our core values. The ban applies to seven countries, none of which has been involved with the death of Americans for 40 years. He is carving out exemptions based on religious beliefs. It send the signal that we are declaring war on Islam. We are not, but it plays into the hands of terrorists. It blocks constructive partnerships with other countries.
 It also creates an environment at home that isolates immigrant communities.  To force local police to enforce the order undermines the job of local police in creating cooperation with local communities. We all believe in the ideal of religious freedom. We cannot accept this and are calling on all Americans to reject it.


Newark Mayor Ras Baraka;  We are standing behind our position as a security city. We support residents who come to work every day and help to build our community. We will not participate. Won’t let him (Trump) use local police to return people to where he thinks they belong.  We need to bring the world closer together not push it apart.


Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop: The order is personal for me. Most of my family came here escaping Nazi Germany. Many of my relative died in the camps. We have a large Syrian community in Jersey City. We had a productive meeting today with community leaders and want to make our security city even stronger and to be an example to other
like-minded cities.


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