Assistant Professor Bonnie Keeler is co-author of a new policy forum article in Science, "A water rule that turns a blind eye to transboundary pollution," which focuses on assumptions of federalism in environmental regulation.
The article notes that under the Trump administration, the US Environmental Protection Agency and US Army Corps of Engineers departed from precedent to support the deregulation of US waterways in the repeal of the 2015 Clean Water Rule and its replacement with the 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule. In doing so, they assumed (with little evidence) that many states would fill gaps in federal oversight. It describes how this environmental federalism approach downplays the importance of cross-state pollution and relies on flawed methods of benefit-cost analysis that could be used to weaken other statutes.