WILLIAMSTOWN — Thomas Jorling helped draft two of the nation’s cornerstone environmental laws — the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972.

Thomas Jorling, a co-drafter of the Clean Water Act of 1972, at his home in Williamstown. Jorling reflects on what he sees as a rollback of the act's protections under the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency. "By relaxing the overall federal protection, you're in effect encouraging some states to sacrifice their environment in order to attract economic development," he said.

Now 85 and a longtime Williamstown resident and Williams College professor and director of the Center for Environmental Studies, the Boston College-educated lawyer is watching what he sees as a rollback of those protections under the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency.

Earlier this year, The Eagle spoke with Jorling about his role in shaping federal environmental law and his concerns about recent EPA efforts to narrow protections for federally regulated waters. Massachusetts and some nearby states have their own wetlands protections, but the narrowing of protections could reshape which wetlands and waterways are protected from development and pollution for other states that do not have their own laws.

This Q&A has been edited for clarity and brevity.

The All Persons Trail at Mass Audubon's Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary includes an elevated wooden path. The sanctuary is home to extensive wetlands, primarily shaped by a thriving beaver population.

The Eagle: What is your Williamstown connection?

Jorling: [Living in Washington, D.C.,] I had reached the point where we had two young children, and had made a commitment to the family that we would try and find a small New England town.

And the opportunity at Williams arose. And that's what led me to join the faculty here, back in the end of 1972. … We've always kept our home here in Williamstown, so this was our anchor.

The Eagle: How did you help draft the Clean Water Act?

Jorling: [I was asked] if I'd be interested in a position to be the counsel for the committee for the minority members — the Republican members.

I finally agreed to serve as minority counsel [in 1968], and that's when I encountered [majority counsel Leon] Billings, who was my counterpart. It was an unusual time in our political life, certainly compared to the current world of politics.

The mood of the country was strongly supportive of addressing environmental degradation.

Drafting the Clean Water Act was an extensive process. [The committee] wanted to do something that would actually change the trajectory of the nation's waters, [which were] very strong deteriorating trends of water pollution.

[After months of meetings, the committee] finally produced a conference report which passed in the Senate [and] the House. President [Richard Nixon] vetoed it in October, right after its passage, and the Senate and the House then voted to override those vetoes. And so the matter became law on Oct. 18, 1972.

Thomas Jorling, a co-drafter of the Clean Water Act of 1972, at his home in Williamstown. Jorling is a longtime Williamstown resident and Williams College professor and director of the Center for Environmental Studies.

The Eagle: In November, the EPA announced it was limiting what will now be considered “waters of the United States,” or the legal definition that determines which wetlands, streams and waterways are federally protected. What are your thoughts?

Jorling: It's reflective of the general orientation of the current administration. The new administrator … Lee Zeldin, his orientation is to use environmental legislation as a tool for economic development rather than for environmental protection.

Back in 1971, we wanted the regulatory reach of the Clean Water Act to closely mirror the hydrologic cycle [how water moves through streams, wetlands and groundwater] — that if you didn't cover all aspects of how water moves in the natural system, you could not successfully improve the water quality anywhere.

The Eagle: Federal law sets a baseline, but states can adopt stricter wetlands protections. This means if the federal government rolls back environmental protections, individual states — if they chose to maintain or enhance environmental protections — would have to act. How do you see this impacting wetlands nationwide?

Jorling: You can't make a national determination, because different states — for instance, Massachusetts and New York — their laws are going to continue to be implemented in a protective way. But in other areas, what we will see is basically … the sacrificing of important components of the hydrologic cycle that prevent flooding and contamination. We'll see deterioration of that in the name of development. We'll see areas developed that the consequences of that development [that] by the next generation [will result] in the flooding and deterioration of the water quality.

Massachusetts and some nearby states have their own wetlands protections, but the narrowing of protections on the federal level could reshape which wetlands and waterways are protected from development and pollution for other states that do not have their own laws.

The Eagle: You mentioned earlier that even though some states have wider protections than the federal rollback, the changes will still increase pressure to loosen them. Why is that?

Jorling: By relaxing the overall federal protection, you're in effect encouraging some states to sacrifice their environment in order to attract economic development. And that's a one-way path to overall environmental degradation. … So that's the real risk, a governor of a state that has no environment, no wetlands protection, or relies only on the federal government [laws]. … They're going to [go] to developers and say, ‘Come to our state. You can develop here.’”

The Eagle: As mentioned, President Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act and the Senate and House then voted to override those vetoes — a rare move that required a two-thirds vote in both chambers. Why did President Nixon veto it?

Jorling: The legislation included grants — money to the communities, to cities and towns — to upgrade their wastewater treatment plants. Conventional wisdom [at the time] persuaded the president that it was too expensive, and that was the reason they vetoed it. But the [1970s] was an important decade. The public was very supportive [of protecting the environment].

The Eagle: Why was that?

Jorling: You didn't need to have a scientific instrument to realize how degraded both the air and the water had become. And so the public pursued that and basically supported strong action to reverse those trends. By the end of the decade, you had the emergence of, sort of the conservative reaction in the country.

We're going through a period now where, clearly, at least the administration believes the country does not want any more regulation, especially environmental regulation, and they're taking many steps to reverse it.

The Eagle: When explaining why the Trump administration is narrowing federal oversight, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has said the changes will still protect water from pollution but “cut red tape” for industry. What do you think about that?

Jorling: I think [Zeldin] is doing a disservice to his oath of office. His oath of office is to implement the environmental laws as they are written. And he's determined to implement them the way he wants the outcomes to be, which is to help the American economy reach new heights. There's nowhere in the statutes where the administrator of the EPA has that authority.

The Eagle: Since some states have stronger wetlands protections than others, will they be able to protect their wetlands like they previously were?

Jorling: I think it's going to vary state by state. Yes, in some states, including Massachusetts and New York, wetlands protection laws are as protective as the federal law was before the new administration tried to pull it back. In those states, things will continue, although there will be great pressure on the states to try and relax their regulations as well. But in other states, their protections will sort of match the federal rollback. There will be great damage done.

An accessible trail at Thomas and Palmer Brook in Great Barrington was opened to the public in 2020. The trail is part of 333 acres of protected forest and wetland.

The Eagle: You’ve seen this legislation since the beginning. Did you expect it would eventually get stripped like this?

Jorling: I'm naive enough to think that when a person assumes control of the federal government, and they swear an oath of office to implement the law that that's what they will do. What we have now is people that are in the executive branch who are determined to roll back the laws on their own, on their own authority. And to me, that's very troublesome from just sort of the principles of government.

The recourse is only going to be the electoral process again, hopefully we'll start to see environmental protection, climate protection, emerge as a major issue, as it was back in the ’70s.

The Eagle: You created the legislation during a period of bipartisan cooperation, and now, the two seem opposed, particularly on environmental protections.

Jorling: I worked for the Republicans in that era, and they were of a very different kind of cloth than the ones we now associate with that party. If you go back through the history of conservation and [the] environment, it was often led by Republicans, starting with Theodore Roosevelt. … It's just a sad change in the character of the Republican Party.

The Eagle: Could Massachusetts, though it already has stronger wetlands protections, continue to strengthen its laws?

Jorling: It will be up to the voters of Massachusetts. I think the orientation would be to protect the environment. But if we get into this battle that existed before the Clean Air and Clean Water acts were enacted, states would compete for economic development by sacrificing their environment. That's something that will adversely affect all of us.

One of the things that's abundantly clear after four decades of implementation of these two statutes is they were implemented to great success in the improvement of the air and water quality — and at the same time, economics thrived. So the argument that you can't protect the environment without sacrificing economic development is just shown repeatedly to be an error.

When the Clean Water Act was being enacted, the concern was that it was going to cost too much money to implement. The exact opposite has occurred. Every city that has waterfront, when the water became clean, the shoreline developments just thrived. Whether it be New York City, Boston, Chicago, everywhere has boomed because the environment has improved.