under the bushel basket

Whenever Trump takes an action against those who are unpopular with his base – the Muslims, the Gays, the Transgenders, the immigrants, the people of color, the educated – he makes a big show of it. He sits at either the Resolute Desk or that toy one surrounded by the people to whom he panders, signs his name with a sharpie, and then holds the document up for all to see what he has done.

But when it is an action that hurts people across the board, including his base, he does it quietly so we only learn about it if some news outlet tells us and unless there is some more dazzling news.

He did that quiet thing this past week.

In the town in which I grew up, people spent a lot of hot summer days at the pond formed by a dammed up river near downtown . Young boys like me would show off our manliness by pointing to the hair on our arms and legs that got colored brown by whatever was in the water,

We swam in that pond, swallowed some of its water when we swam, and exposed our sight and hearing to whatever that brown stuff was whenever we swam under water with our eyes open.

Eventually, after decades of use, the pond was found to be polluted with whatever factories and other businesses upriver were dumping into the water, the pond was closed to swimming, and a public swimming pool was built.

There were paper mills in and around Fitchburg, Massachusetts, that, like most manufacturing plants with waste water, just dumped it into the Nashua River. As a kid, unaware of the underlying danger to this practice, I was fascinated by how colorful that river was downstream from the factories. It was like watching multi-colored spilled paint meandering down a gutter.

In places like this where rivers were the sewers of factories, people organized to clean rivers up, and in 1972 Washington passed the Clean Water Act. It was one of the United States’ first and most influential modern environmental laws, but it was usually applied to large, very noticeable bodies of water, like rivers, lakes, and ponds.

That being the case, in 2015 President Obama instituted a clean water rule that widened the scope of what the Act covered to include streams and wetlands, restricted pollution caused by certain land use, and made it necessary to get permits from the EPA to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides that could run off into water on a person or company’s property and from there could spread to streams, rivers, and lakes.

It was because of this history that Trump could boast,

“Something I want to make clear to the media: We have among the cleanest and sharpest — crystal clean, you’ve heard me say, I want crystal clean — air and water anywhere on Earth,”

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and state his desire that,

 “We want to have the cleanest water on earth. We want to have the cleanest air on earth. Our numbers, as you saw, we had record numbers come out very recently. Our numbers are very, very good. Our environmental numbers, our water numbers, our numbers on air are tremendous.”

It was because of the Clean Water Act and all its amendments over time, and President Obama’ clean water rule that Trump could make his claims and boast,

“I want clean air. I want crystal clean water. And we’ve got it. We’ve got the cleanest country in the planet right now. There’s nobody cleaner than us, and it’s getting better and better.”

So a person could be a little confused as to why the Trump administration announced a repeal of a major Obama-era clean water regulation that limited the amount of pollution and chemicals in the nation’s rivers, lakes, streams and wetlands.

Trump found fault with Obama’s rules, claiming they limited the rights of farmers, real estate developers, and landowners, so his action limits the number of waterways the federal government can protect from pollution, and its oversight of larger bodies of water.

Under his limitations to safeguarding water, the country’s sources of safe drinking water and habitats for wildlife could be substantially harmed.

According to Jon Devine, director of federal water policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council,

“The clean water rule represented solid science and smart public policy. Where it has been enforced, it has protected important waterways and wetlands, providing certainty to all stakeholders.”

The regulations, as they will now stand, will benefit oil and gas producers, golf course owners, and real estate developers.

And for those who forgot, the Trump Organization, of which Trump is a sole or principal owner of certain businesses under its umbrella, is involved in real estate development, property management,  construction , golf courses, and a winery, all entities that will benefit over the general population whose access to clean recreational and drinking water can be adversely affected while Trump’s fortunes improve.

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