Trump's new interest in water resources — why now?

BY JEFF PETERSON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 10/22/2020
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
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After spending almost four years attacking programs to protect water resources, President Trump has just issued an executive order creating a new interagency water policy committee, or “water subcabinet,” to “improve our country’s water resource management.”

Is this a genuine effort to modernize water infrastructure to “meet the needs of current and future generations,” or simply dressing up the administration’s long neglect of water resources just in time for the election; in other words, putting lipstick on a pig?

Skeptics will undoubtedly point out that, while a primary objective of the order is “reducing duplication across the federal government,” the new water subcabinet effectively duplicates the existing Water Resources Council.

Why create a new subcabinet when you already have a council made of many of the same heads of departments and agencies? The existing council has statutory powers, including the authority to establish standards for federal water and related land resources projects. The council is also charged with a biennial assessment of the “adequacy of supplies of water necessary to meet…the national interest.” Layering on a new organization has the effect of smothering the statutory framework and shifting attention to a new set of policies and objectives.

One such new policy is cutting back on existing coordination among federal agencies. Section 4 of the order laments the “hundreds of Federal water-related task forces, working groups, and other formal cross-agency initiatives” working to manage water resources and calls for a report within 90 days “on coordinating and consolidating” these efforts. Not every federal interagency coordination workgroup is doing essential work. But, the direction to evaluate these efforts and recommend restructuring in just 90 days that fall after a presidential election suggests a demolition that will take the good with the bad, setting back cooperative work by years.

There is a whiff of politically motivated urgency in the order’s demand that agencies develop, within 120 days, recommendations to improve drinking water and flood control. These are worthy goals, but the Trump administration has spent the last four years working against them. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed changes to regulations for lead in drinking water that more than double the time for replacement of lead pipes. Yet President Trump revoked requirements developed during the Obama administration to steer new federal projects away from flood risk areas.

The president also directs agencies to make recommendations, again within 120 days, for improving water quality, including implementing the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, reducing nutrient pollution in the Mississippi River watershed and continuing restoration of the Florida Everglades. Speeding restoration of these waters, and many others around the country, would be good news. But again, big improvements would be a major turnaround from past actions.

For example, for fiscal year 2018 the Trump administration proposed to zero out all funding for the $300 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and proposed a cut of 90 percent for fiscal years 2019 and 2020. In its budget for fiscal year 2021, however, the administration seems to have awakened to the ecological significance of the Great Lakes, or recognized their importance in swing states, because it has proposed $320 million.

Politics also played a role in funding for the Florida Everglades. Again, the Trump administration initially proposed two-thirds less than requested by Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis but, after lobbying by Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the president increased proposed funding to $200 million. And, while reducing pollution in the Mississippi River is a good thing, it is offset by the recent resurrection of a major Army Corps of Engineers project that the Bush administration vetoed in 2008 in order to protect 200,0000 acres of wetlands along the river.

Aside from the order appearing just weeks prior to the election, there are other reasons to wonder whether any of the resulting recommendations will be acted on if the president is reelected. The short schedule for developing recommendations makes any meaningful public engagement difficult and reduces the chance of public support. And, the delivery date for recommendations late this year or in January of next year, means that recommendations are disconnected from the budget process, arriving after agency budgets are largely fixed.

Finally, in considering whether the Trump administration might have turned a new leaf, it is important to remember the larger context. This is the same administration that has weakened the National Environmental Policy Act, cut Clean Water Act enforcement prosecutions by 70 percent and proposed to cut funding for clean water and drinking water infrastructure projects by 28 percent in fiscal year 2021.

Although much of the new order should be viewed with skepticism, I hope we can all agree with the first line: “Abundant, safe, and reliable supplies of water are critical to quality of life for all Americans…”.

Jeff Peterson is a retired senior policy advisor at the Environmental Protection Agency and the author of “A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas.”

Trump order strips workplace protections from civil servants

BY REBECCA BEITSCH - 10/22/20 

A new executive order from President Trump makes it easier to hire and fire civil servants that work on policy, stripping some protections from career employees before a potential change in administration.

Federal employee unions are billing the order as the biggest change to federal workforce protections in a century, converting many federal workers to “at will” employment.

It also makes it easier to hire new employees outside of the competitive process — something critics say could be used to hire policy employees without appropriate experience.

The order specifically targets policy-related career positions, a move critics say will enable the administration to fire employees that may question their policies.

“By targeting federal workers whose jobs involve government policies, the real-world implications of this order will be disastrous for public health, the environment, the defense of our nation, and virtually every facet of our lives,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said in a release.

“Through this order, President Trump has declared war on the professional civil service by giving himself the authority to fill the government with his political cronies who will pledge their unwavering loyalty to him – not to America," Kelley added.

Trump’s order creates a new category of federal employment, Schedule F, and gives agencies 90 days to determine which policy-related positions should attain the new status. Those employees could then be removed for performance reasons without the opportunity to contest the decision or rely on union representation.

“Agencies need the flexibility to expeditiously remove poorly performing employees from these positions without facing extensive delays or litigation,” the order states.

The National Treasury Employees Union, another major federal workforce representative, called it “yet another in a long line of attacks on the civil service and circumvention of the laws passed by Congress to protect certain career federal employees from partisan, political interference.”

Though civil service protections are often compared to tenure for professors, they are similar to processes in place at private companies, where employees must be notified of performance issues and given a chance to improve before being dismissed.

“This is not solving some problem of ‘you can’t get rid of federal employees.’ You can. If people aren't really performing you can get rid of them. Trust me, I’ve done it,” said Andrew Rosenberg with the Union of Concerned Scientists, who previously served as deputy director for fisheries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

“But you have to go through the appropriate steps and you have to deal with fair labor laws, which you actually should have to do," he added.

But Rosenberg sees another potential side effect of the order: current political appointees could be among employees transitioned into the new Schedule F category, a way to “burrow in” employees that typically turn over with a change in administration.

While the new category makes it easier to fire employees for performance issues, they would still be protected from being dismissed “on the basis of the employee’s partisan affiliation.”

Rosenberg gave the example of new employees hired at NOAA that have a history of questioning climate science.

“It’s always going to cut both ways,” he said, “but just gaming this out, the Trump administration can say ‘Oh, it’s not partisan. We’ve had examples [of poor performance] over four years with this person, and they really need to go.’ But Biden coming in would have to build a record showing this isn’t a partisan action.”

The Trump administration has taken numerous actions that critics say have chipped away at the nonpartisan nature of the government, from violating the Hatch Act by encouraging political speech to sidelining scientists. The administration has also moved federal agencies outside of D.C., each time resulting in a loss of as much as 70 percent of staff.

“What it seems like is little brick on top of little brick but what is actually going on is they are building a wall around politics and centralizing political power” for systems that are designed to be apolitical, said Delaney Marsco, an ethics expert with the Campaign Legal Center.

The Atlantic in rare endorsement urges voting for Biden:

 'Vote for the decent man'
BY ZACK BUDRYK - 10/22/20 


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The Atlantic endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden Thursday in only its fourth ever presidential endorsement.

The magazine previously endorsed Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon B. Johnson and Hillary Clinton, but editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that the magazine considered the latter two a referendum on the fitness of their respective opponents.

Goldberg wrote that the same held true for the publication’s endorsement of Biden.

“Biden is a man of experience, maturity, and obvious humanity, but had the Republican Party put forward a credible candidate for president, we would have felt no compulsion to state a preference,” he wrote. “Donald Trump, however, is a clear and continuing danger to the United States, and it does not seem likely that our country would be able to emerge whole from four more years of his misrule.”

The editorial blasts the president as “the worst president this country has seen since Andrew Johnson, or perhaps James Buchanan, or perhaps ever.” It specifically excoriates the president on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, race relations and environmental issues, among others.

Goldberg cites the case of Air Force Major Harold Hering, who in 1973 asked an instructor “How can I know that an order I receive to launch [nuclear] missiles came from a sane president?”

“When contemplating their ballots, Americans should ask which candidate in a presidential contest is better equipped to guide the United States through a national-security crisis without triggering a nuclear exchange, and which candidate is better equipped to interpret—within five or seven minutes—the ambiguous, complicated, and contradictory signals that could suggest an imminent nuclear attack,” Goldberg wrote.

"Two men are running for president. One is a terrible man; the other is a decent man. Vote for the decent man," it concludes.

The endorsement is Biden's latest from several publications that have seldom or never endorsed presidential candidates before. Scientific American and the scientific journal Nature also endorsed the former vice president in recent months.

Fecal transplants: The secret to eternal youth

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Interview conducted by Emily Henderson, B.Sc. Oct 14 2020

Thought Leaders 

University of East Anglia

 Dr. David Vauzour Professor Claudio Nicoletti

In this interview, News-Medical speaks to researchers from the University of East Anglia about their latest research which could reveal the secret to eternal youth, fecal transplants.
What provoked your research into cognitive function?

Indication of the existence of two-way communication between the gut and the brain – known as the ‘gut-brain axis’ – has emerged as an important player in shaping aspects of behavior and cognitive function.

Such relationship provoked this research as a collaboration between UEA, the University of Florence, and the Quadram Institute.


Image Credit: LightField Studios/Shutterstock.com

How does cognitive decline occur in the elderly?

Many parameters are involved in accelerating cognitive decline in the elderly including a combination of biological, genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors.

Such events occur in the brain over a decade or longer.

What role does the hippocampus play in memory and learning?

The hippocampus plays a critical role in the formation, organization, and storage of new memories. It is also one of the first regions of the brain to suffer damage in Alzheimer’s disease.
Before this research, what can the elderly do to help improve their memory and cognition?

The elderly can improve/maintain their cognition by maintaining good general health habits: staying physically active, getting enough sleep, not smoking, having good social connections, limiting alcohol consumption, and eating a balanced diet.

Recent experimental evidence from us (Tarini et al GUT, 2019) suggested that during aging a Mediterranean-like style can help to maintain a healthy microbiota.


Image Credit: oneinchpunch/Shutterstock.com

Can you describe how you carried out your research into fecal transplants and cognitive decline?

We performed fecal transplants from older adult mice to younger adult mice and then assessed the young adults for markers such as anxiety, exploratory behavior, and memory.
What did your results show?

We showed that while the young adults showed no significant changes in markers of anxiety, explorative behavior, or locomotor activity, they did show impaired spatial learning and memory as measured in a maze test.

These changes were paralleled by alterations in the expression of proteins associated with synaptic plasticity and neurotransmission, and changes to cells in the hippocampus part of their brains – responsible for learning and memory.
What is the relationship between the gut microbiome and spatial learning and memory?

There is a growing body of evidence, showing that gut microbiota plays a major role in the development and function of the central nervous system, affecting learning and memory via metabolic, neuroendocrine, and immune pathways.
Do you believe that one day, these transplants could help to improve cognitive decline in the elderly and improve conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease?

Gut bacteria transplants could one day be used to protect against Alzheimer’s disease. However, we are only at the early stage of this research and it may take some years before it becomes available.


Image Credit: Anatomy Image/Shutterstock.com

What are the next steps in your research?

We are currently investigating the reverse process by adding fecal microbiota from young mice to older mice to see if it helps them.

Where can readers find more information?
https://www.uea.ac.uk/news/-/article/could-a-poo-transplant-one-day-be-the-secret-of-eternal-youth-

https://quadram.ac.uk/could-a-poo-transplant-one-day-be-the-secret-of-eternal-youth/

https://gut.bmj.com/content/69/7/1218

About Dr. David Vauzour
Dr. David Vauzour is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia. His research focuses on developing novel strategies to delay brain aging and cognitive decline including Alzheimer’s disease.

To date, Dr. Vauzour has published over 90 peer-reviewed manuscripts, sits on many scientific panels and journal editorial boards, and is currently the co-chair of the ILSI Europe Nutrition and Brain Health Taskforce.

About Professor Claudio Nicoletti

Prof Claudio Nicoletti, former research leader at the Quadram Institute in Norwich is currently Professor of Anatomy at the Dept. of Experimental and Clinical Medicine of the University of Florence, Italy. His main interest is in gut biology/immunology and the gut-brain axis.

Prof Nicoletti is a member of several editorial boards of international journals and scientific panels.

Biden says US 'must stand with Nigerians' peacefully demonstrating for police reform

BY ARIS FOLLEY - 10/22/20 

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Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said the United States “must stand with” protesters in Nigeria who are peacefully demonstrating for police reform following reports that security forces in the country opened fire on protesters in Lagos earlier this week.

“I urge President Buhari and the Nigerian military to cease the violent crackdown on protesters in Nigeria, which has already resulted in several deaths. My heart goes out to all those who have lost a loved one in the violence,” Biden said.

“The United States must stand with Nigerians who are peacefully demonstrating for police reform and seeking an end to corruption in their democracy. I encourage the government to engage in a good-faith dialogue with civil society to address these long-standing grievances and work together for a more just and inclusive Nigeria,” he continued.

The hashtag #EndSARS went viral on Twitter this month as lawmakers, celebrities and other prominent figures have tweeted support for protests demonstrating against police brutality and pushing for an end to Nigeria's Special Anti-Robbery Squad, or SARS.

According to Amnesty International, the police unit, which was formed over three decades ago to tackle violent crimes, has a history of alleged abuses, with “at least 82 cases of torture, ill treatment and extra-judicial execution by SARS between January 2017 and May 2020.”

The unit was dissolved earlier this month, according to The Washington Post, after officers were recorded dragging two men from a Lagos hotel and later shooting one of the men outside.

However, protests continued following reports that some members from the disbanded unit were reportedly hired for other roles.

The African nation drew international attention weeks later after security forces in Nigeria were allegedly seen opening fire on protesters near the Lekki toll gate plaza in Lagos on Tuesday, according to the Post. The shooting prompted the #LekkiMassacre hashtag to go viral on Twitter this week.

A 24-hour curfew had reportedly been implemented in the city at the time. Protestors told the Post the shooting happened shortly after the streetlights cut off in the area.

Amnesty International said Wednesday that at least 12 peaceful protesters were killed by police and military forces between the Lekki protest and another protest that happened the same day in Alausa.

In a statement on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States “strongly condemns the use of excessive force by military forces who fired on unarmed demonstrators in Lagos.”

“The right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression are essential human rights and core democratic principles," he said, while also calling on the security services to "show maximum restraint and respect fundamental rights and for demonstrators to remain peaceful."

"We extend our condolences to the victims of the violence and their families,” Pompeo added.

Columbia report: US could have avoided 130,000 COVID deaths with better response

BY PETER SULLIVAN - 10/22/20 

A new report from Columbia University researchers finds that at least 130,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States could have been avoided if the U.S. had responded to the virus as well as a group of other high-income countries.

The report compares the per capita death rate in the U.S. from the virus with six other high-income countries: South Korea, Japan, Australia, Germany, Canada and France.

It finds that if the U.S. had the same rate of death as France, it would have about 55,000 fewer deaths, while if it had South Korea’s rate it would have about 215,000 fewer.

“We therefore posit that had the U.S. government implemented an ‘averaged’ approach that mirrored these countries, the U.S. might have limited fatalities to between 38,000 to 85,000 lives — suggesting that a minimum of 130,000 COVID-19 deaths might have been avoidable given alternate policies, implementation, and leadership,” the report states.

The report was published by the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. One of the authors, Irwin Redlener, was named to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s Public Health Advisory Committee in March to advise on the response to the coronavirus.

The report points to “abject failures of U.S. government policies and crisis messaging” in helping to explain why the United States has such a high death rate from the virus. The U.S. has has more than 220,000 deaths from the virus so far, according to Johns Hopkins University, which is about 20 percent of all of the coronavirus deaths in the world, even though the U.S. has only 4 percent of the world’s population.

It has the ninth highest number of deaths per 100,000 population in the world, behind only Peru, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Spain and Mexico.

If the U.S. had the same death rate as its neighbor Canada, about 132,000 deaths would have been avoided, the report finds.

To explain the disproportionately high number of deaths in the U.S., the report points to a number of shortcomings in the Trump administration’s response that have also drawn widespread criticism from other experts.

The country has “insufficient testing capacity” and a contact tracing system that is “woefully inadequate,” the report states.

It also points to the lack of a mask mandate or at least “the consistent encouragement of mask use” as harming the response. President Trump has mocked masks and rarely worn one himself.

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The report also points to “politicization, leadership vacuum, and the failure of top officials to model best practices.” Trump in recent days has escalated attacks on his own administration’s health experts, calling National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci a “disaster.” He has also attacked the Food and Drug Administration for harboring a “deep state” and publicly clashed with the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In contrast, the report states: “Many nations facing the pandemic crisis have put politics aside and orchestrated a response led by public health experts and global coordination.”

“Canada, for instance, has witnessed a unique period of political unity surrounding COVID-19 this year,” it adds.

Trump is out of touch with Republican voters on climate change

BY QUILL ROBINSON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 10/22/20 

Ahead of the final presidential debate on Thursday, the Trump campaign is calling for climate change to be removed from the agenda.

In a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates, Trump Campaign Manager Bill Stepien criticized the organizers, writing that “the Commission’s pro-Biden antics have turned the entire debate season into a fiasco and it is little wonder why the public has lost faith in its objectivity.”

According to the latest polls, it’s the Trump campaign, not the debate commission, that is out of touch with American voters — including Republicans — on the topic of climate change.


In a poll conducted by our sister organization, The Conservation Coalition and the Conservative Energy Network, 68 percent percent of Republicans between the ages of 18 and 54 say climate change is important to their vote. The poll also found that more than three quarters of all GOP voters favor the government taking steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

At the first presidential debate, moderator Chris Wallace surprised viewers by bringing up the topic. He pushed Joe Biden on the economic feasibility of his proposals, but most notably challenged Trump on his record of climate change denial. For the first time, Trump acknowledged that human activity contributes to global warming, saying, “I think a lot of things do [contribute], but I think to an extent, yes. To an extent, yes.”

Trump pointed to declining carbon emissions under his administration as well as his support for the Trillion Trees Initiative, a proposal to expand the natural carbon sequestration capacity of the world’s forests. Yet, despite acknowledging the problem for the first time, Trump’s response fell short.

While earning the votes of the progressive base of the climate movement is understandably not a priority of the Trump campaign, his team seems to have missed the growing majority of Republicans who are concerned about the issue. In a year of historic wildfires in the West and relentless hurricanes in the Southeast, more Republicans are going to the ballot box with climate change on their minds.

These voters will never support progressive proposals like the Green New Deal, but they are looking for leadership from their own party. Eighty-five percent of GOP voters between the ages of 18 and 54 say they are more likely to support a Republican candidate who embraces an innovation based approach to climate change. In Congress, Republicans like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) have listened, introducing legislation to invest in clean energy and expand natural carbon sequestration. In House and Senate races across the country, many GOP candidates are also responding by including climate action in their platforms and discussing climate on the campaign trail.

With the election less than two weeks away, Thursday’s debate is an opportunity for the president to show his base that, like them, he takes climate change seriously. The upside is huge — 90 percent of GOP voters between 18 and 54 say they would view Trump more favorably if he supported a conservative approach to addressing climate change. Down ballot, a pivot on climate from Trump would also relieve pressure on Senate Republicans facing grueling reelection races.

Rather than deny Americans the chance to judge the candidates’ positions on an issue they care about, Trump should join Republican voters and lawmakers in supporting an innovation-based approach to climate change. If he doesn’t, Americans will have no reason to believe that he is equipped to meet one of the greatest challenges facing our country in the next four years and beyond.

Quill Robinson is the vice president of Government Affairs at the American Conservation Coalition (ACC). Follow him on Twitter at @QuillRobinson.

Barrett punts on climate, oil industry recusals in written responses
BY RACHEL FRAZIN - 10/21/20 

© Greg Nash

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett declined to weigh in on climate change or say whether she’d recuse herself from cases involving the oil industry in written responses to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee ahead of its Thursday vote on her confirmation.

In response to several questions on climate, Barrett gave responses including “The Supreme Court has described ‘climate change’ as a ‘controversial subject’ and ‘sensitive political topic.’ ’’

“As a sitting judge, it would be inappropriate for me to weigh in further on the matter,” she added.

The response echoed statements that Barrett made during her confirmation hearing last week, when she said that she did not hold "firm views" on climate change. She added that her opinion on climate is not “relevant” and called the subject a "contentious matter of public debate."

The vast majority of scientists believe that climate change is happening and human-caused.

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Barrett also punted on questions about whether she’d recuse herself from oil companies other than Shell and why the American Petroleum Institute, which her father was involved with, was not on her recusal list. She said that four Shell entities were on her recusal list “in an abundance of caution” because her father worked for Shell Oil Company.

She did not directly say why she didn’t similarly recuse herself from any other oil or energy companies or the American Petroleum Institute, saying that “the question of recusal is a threshold question of law that must be addressed in the context of the facts of each case.”

“As Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg described the process that Supreme Court justices go through in deciding whether to recuse, it involves reading the statute, reviewing precedents, and consulting with colleagues. As a sitting judge and as a judicial nominee, it would not be appropriate for me to offer an opinion on abstract legal issues or hypotheticals. Such questions can only be answered through the judicial process,” she added.

Ex-EPA official who spoke about Pruitt scandals claims retaliation in new lawsuit

BY RACHEL FRAZIN - 10/21/20 05:57 PM EDT 

© Getty Images


A former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official who spoke out about scandals involving administrator Scott Pruitt sued the Trump administration this week, claiming that he was retaliated against.

Kevin Chmielewski, who served as the deputy chief of staff in 2017 and 2018, sued both the EPA over his removal and the Energy Department for not hiring him.

Chmielewski's lawsuit alleges that he was “removed for retaliatory reasons and without due process of law because he engaged in a series of allegations to appropriate officials, human resources staff, agency counsel, and Congressional committees that the Administrator was engaged in a pattern and practice of incurring travel expenses, office improvements, and use of staff for personal tasks in violation of federal statutes, regulations and EPA policies.”


While at the EPA, Chmielewski leaked documents and provided information that prompted investigations into scandals like the retroactive altering of Pruitt’s public calendar and a request that staff help him find a condo in Washington.

Pruitt left the agency in 2018 amid a number of ethics controversies and Chmielewski told The Hill at the time that he’d take credit for Pruitt’s departure.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday and first reported by E&E News on Wednesday.

Chmielewski claimed that after being stripped of access to the EPA’s building, he received documents signed by other officials falsely stating that he had resigned. He alleged that he was later told his insurance was canceled.

EPA spokesperson Molly Block declined to comment, saying in an email that “we can’t comment on pending litigation.”

In the suit, the former official also claimed that his actions at EPA caused him not to be hired by the Energy Department.

He said that he was “unable to find work” after his removal from the EPA until the Energy Department in March of this year “informed him that he would be hired.”

His lawsuit claimed, however, that White House officials told him in April that “every time they tried to pass his paperwork through, it was stopped by numerous people because of what happened at the EPA with Scott Pruitt due to Plaintiff’s disclosures.”

Spokespeople for the Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.

Controversial mining to proceed near Georgia swamp without federal permit

BY RACHEL FRAZIN - 10/21/20

© Getty


A controversial plan to mine near the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia will proceed without a federal permit following a Trump administration rollback of waterway protections.

Twin Pines Minerals intends to extract minerals like titanium in a 600-acre area near the swamp, a plan about which environmentalists have raised concerns.

“We have reduced the size of the proposed mine in Charlton County to less than 600 acres, and we have reconfigured its footprint to ensure there will be no impact to ‘waters of the United States’ as defined by the new Navigable Waters Protection Rule,” said a statement from Twin Pines president Steve Ingle.

Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson Billy Birdwell confirmed that Twin Pines on Wednesday withdrew its request for a permit to mine an 898-acre area near the swamp. The 600-acre project will still need a permit from the state of Georgia.

Birdwell said in an email that the Army Corps conducted a jurisdictional determination after the Navigable Waters Rule went into effect and determined that “much of the area no longer required a permit from the Corps of Engineers.”

“Twin Pines may mine on non-jurisdictional wetlands without a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They will need permits from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources,” he said, stressing that this was not a decision made by the Corps but rather its application of the new rule.

The Navigable Waters Rule, which limited the scope of which bodies of water receive protection under federal law, was finalized this year by the Trump administration and went into effect in June.

Ingle said in a statement to The Hill on Wednesday that moving ahead with mining will not impact the Okefenokee’s water level.

“There is no risk to the swamp because we are far enough away (more than 3 miles), and because all mining will occur at an elevation higher than the swamp. Our studies have shown that mining can be conducted safely, such that it will not impact the area’s waterways, groundwater systems, or the swamp itself,” he said.

Environmentalists have fought against mining near the swamp, saying that mining could harm the swamp’s ability to move and store water and that potentially lowered water levels could also destroy habitats, increase wildfire risk and impact nearby rivers.

Christian Hunt, the Southeast Program Representative with Defenders of Wildlife pledged to “fight as long as it takes” to see the Okefenokee’s protection, in an email to The Hill.

"A slight reduction in acreage makes no difference when operations stand to compromise and lower the water table of the swamp," he said. "The only data, anywhere, to suggest that mining would prove benign was that commissioned by Twin Pines itself. Since the government has abandoned its duties, we intend to utilize every tool at our disposal to prevent Twin Pines from spoiling the refuge and causing irreversible damage."

Documents recently shared with The Hill showed that officials with the Fish and Wildlife Service had expressed concerns about the now-withdrawn proposal to mine 898 acres near the swamp.

One official wrote in May that the project could have posed “risks to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge (OKENWR) and the natural environment due to the location, associated activities, and cumulative effects of similar projects in the area," adding, "We opine that the impacts are not sufficiently known and whatever is done may be permanent."

In a statement to The Hill on Wednesday, Ingle referred to the 600 acre project as a “demonstration project.”

“Our only plans at present are to conduct the demonstration project on the footprint that is less than 600 acres if and when the state approves,” he said.

Emails that have previously been reported on by The Hill and others show an Army Corps officials saying in January, when Twin Pines had proposed mining a 1,450-acre area, that the company had proposed a “‘demonstration project’ which would allow some work to commence and collect data in support of the larger overall project.”

The 898-acre project was also referred to as a demonstration project when it was being proposed.

The Okefenokee Swamp is located in Georgia and Florida and occupies 438,000 acres. Of that, 402,000 acres make up the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, which is home to endangered species including the red-cockaded woodpecker, wood storks and indigo snakes, as well as other wildlife.