President Donald Trump’s new executive orders to streamline oil and gas pipeline projects could strip states of some authority on water and energy issues, leading some to question whether the administration’s oft-stated “cooperative federalism” principle is actually “convenient federalism” or “fair-weather federalism.”
Those are terms used respectively by Julia Anastasio, head of the Association of Clean Water Administrators, and Ward Scott, policy adviser with the Western Governors Association, to describe the order that Trump signed on April 10.
The order directs the EPA to revise its interpretation of a section of the Clean Water Act that allows ...