Back-to-back records for Midwest precipitation
Meanwhile President Trump continues his efforts to roll back regulations on climate change
As the Midwest posts its second straight record year for rainfall, President Trump continues his efforts to undermine regulations trying to asses climate change. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
The Midwest set a record for precipitation last year — for the second year in a row.
The Midwest Regional Climate Center reported this week that average precipitation across nine Midwestern states was 46.09 inches, breaking the previous record of 43.06 set the year before in 2018. Illinois measured 49.85 inches of rain and snow last year on average, the fifth-highest figure the state has posted over the last 125 years since 1895.
Meanwhile, President Trump on Thursday proposed new limits on a 50-year-old environmental regulation that had come to require assessments on climate change for major construction projects to be approved. He moved to limit the time to complete environmental-impact assessments to two years or less with a new regulation including language that prohibits climate change being raised as an issue that is “remote in time … or the product of a lengthy causal chain.”
Farmers already knew about the precipitation record. Heavy rains and flooding slowed spring planting across Illinois and other states, and many farmers never recovered, especially with an early snow hitting across several states before Halloween — all considered impacts of climate change that farmers hope will not become the new normal.
Of the nine Midwest states, all posted precipitation totals in the top 10 over the last 125 years, with Iowa’s 41.49 inches ranking 10th on its record books. Three states set records: Michigan at 41.45 inches, Wisconsin at 44.34 inches, and Minnesota at 35.51 inches. Like Illinois, Kentucky posted its fifth-highest amount over the last 125 years, at 61.28 inches.
Increasing examples of climate change — from Midwest precipitation to wildfires in California and now Australia — have not tempered Trump’s attack on environmental regulations, however. On Thursday in Washington, D.C., he announced plans to alter the National Environmental Policy Act, first adopted in 1970 under President Nixon.
Trump pitched the changes as a boon for infrastructure and blamed environmental regulations for jeopardizing major projects like pipelines, which have been delayed for years while environmental-impact assessments were conducted. The proposed new rules would set deadlines and limit page counts for such assessments. It would also limit the say local residents have in potentially fighting such projects, while excluding privately funded projects not relying on government subsidies from the regulations.
“We will not stop until our nation’s gleaming new infrastructure has made America the envy of the world again,” Trump said. “It used to be the envy of the world, and now we’re like a Third World country. It’s really sad.”
The Washington Post reported: “The proposed rules would narrow the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to assess the impact of a major project before a spade of dirt is turned and to include the public in the process.”
Critics charge that it would also forbid a project’s ultimate impact on climate change being raised as a concern — as with fossil-fuel projects including pipelines and coal mines. Proposed new language states: “Effects should not be considered significant if they are remote in time, geographically remote, or the product of a lengthy causal chain.”
The New York Times reported that “since taking office Mr. Trump has proposed nearly 100 environmental rollbacks.” Environmental groups criticized the proposal, and James A. Thurber, a political-science professor at American University, told the Times it was akin to “altering the Ten Commandments of environmental policy.”
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin tweeted: “The Trump administration is trying to gut the only federal law that requires the federal government to consider the environmental impact of its projects and actions. That must not be allowed to happen. Ignoring climate change is unacceptable.”
In a separate tweet, Durbin also warned Illinois residents about potentially record January rainfalls this weekend, which again could cause flooding with the frozen ground being more resistant to absorption, so 2020 is already off to a start that could set a third straight record.