Green groups sue Trump over offshore drilling rollbacks
A coalition of environmental groups is suing the Trump administration for rolling back drilling protections put in place after the deadly Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 left millions of gallons of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Northern District of California, targets changes the White House made to offshore drilling regulations that required increased monitoring of safety equipment, including the caps designed to fit over well heads and stop leaking oil.
“The Trump administration is now rolling back these regulations allegedly to reduce the burden on industry,” said Chris Eaton, an attorney with Earthjustice who helped file the suit. The problem, he said, is the federal government is “basically just rolling the dice when it comes to worker safety and oil spills.”
The Obama-era regulations were put in place in 2011 in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and a new agency — the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), part of the Department of the Interior — was tasked with enforcing them.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/447885-green-groups-sue-trump-over-offshore-drilling-rollbacks