Environmental Groups Sue Trump for Rolling Back Obama’s Offshore Drilling Rules
SEE YOU IN COURT
Reuters
A coalition of environmental group challenging the Trump administration's rollback of drilling protections with a new lawsuit. Ten organizations, including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, have sued Trump for scrapping Obama-era protections that went into effect after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill released millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and resulted in the deaths of 11 people.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the Northern District of California, claims the partial repeal of regulations puts “workers’ lives, coastal communities, and the environment at substantial risk.” Trump said his rollbacks—which reduce safety-equipment testing and switch to third-party inspections of well safety systems—were an attempt to get rid of “excessive bureaucracy.” Chris Eaton, an Earthjustice attorney who helped file the suit, told The Hill that Trump’s regulatory slashes amount to the feds “basically just rolling the dice when it comes to worker safety and oil spills.”