While President Donald Trump vacationed in Florida during the holiday break, his officials in the Interior Department were busy dismantling many of the environmental policies and regulations set by his predecessor, The Washington Post reports.
On December 29, the last business day of the year, Trump officials rescinded a rule that put restrictions on hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, on public lands.
“The move today represents just another example of the Trump administration sacrificing our public lands, air and water in order to pad the bottom line of oil and gas companies,” EarthJustice attorney Mike Freeman told the Post.
On that same day, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement released new rules for offshore drilling production, removing one that required an independent auditor inspect safety and pollution prevention equipment put in place after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The department also moved to rescind an Obama-era policy that protects migratory birds, and to renew mining leases on the border of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a reversal of a decision made during former President Barack Obama’s final weeks in office. These leases belong to a Chilean mining firm owned by the family of Andrónico Luksic, who rents a home to the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
"This shameful reversal by the Trump Administration shows that big corporate money and special interest influence now rule again in Republican-controlled Washington," Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, said in a statement, according to the Post.
"We will have to uncover why the financial interests of a large Chilean corporation, with a terrible environmental record, has trumped the need to protect Minnesota’s priceless Boundary Waters Canoe Area."
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