I read this article and the ones it links too and there’s not enough detail in any of them to figure out WTF is going on with this. It’s clear that they’re changing something about the Water Quality permitting process but the articles keep talking about things like Climate Change which is primarily about Air Quality.

Another thing that is unclear is why the articles keep talking about “wider impacts to water resources” while not saying what those may be. It also appears that these undefined water resource issues are no longer bound by State lines so if a project crosses or touches multiple States then any of them can refuse to issue a WQ permit based on what’s happening somewhere else.

There’s more going on here than just pipelines too as “carbon sequestration” is called out specifically, which makes me wonder if Wyoming isn’t involved in this because of the Carbon Capture and Deep Well Sequestration project being built in the SE corner of the State. When its done it will be the biggest of its kind in the world and I can see why they’d be pissy about another State being able to stop the project.

Obviously chemical dumping into water is bad and shouldn’t be allowed but on the other hand one Polity shouldn’t be able to deny a permit based on what’s happening inside the area of another Polity.

I wish these kinds of articles would at least attempt to get into the nuts and bolts of what’s changing.