U.S. Rep. David Rouzer is among those lauding President Trump for signing an executive order that could kill what critics contend was an Obama-era power grab regulating land use all the way down to the local level.

“The Waters of the United States rule would be a disaster for the farm families, small businesses, local governments, and any land owner in southeastern North Carolina,” Rouzer, a Republican representing the 7th Congressional District, told Carolina Journal.  

“I’m pleased the president took the first step necessary to nullify this burdensome regulation,” Rouzer said. “This is a big win for common sense and the American people.”

Rouzer has been an outspoken critic of the Waters of the United States rule, or WOTUS, as it’s commonly called. He has been a sponsor of legislation to scrap it because of the federal overreach and the devastating economic consequences he said it would have on his district and other parts of North Carolina.

The rule would allow the EPA, under the Clean Water Act, to regulate inland “navigable waters” in a way that critics contend was never intended. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has said the rule “made puddles and dry creek beds across this country subject to the jurisdiction of Washington, D.C.,” a prospect some have likened to the federal government becoming a local zoning administrator.

Trump’s executive order directs the EPA to review then revise or rescind WOTUS, a process that could take years.

In his remarks from the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Tuesday, Trump called the rule “one of the worst examples of federal regulation, and it has truly run amok.” He said farmers, ranchers, and agricultural workers opposed it nationwide because, “It’s prohibiting them from being allowed to do what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s been a disaster.”

Trump called the rule “a massive power grab. The EPA’s regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands, and regulations and permits started treating our wonderful small farmers and small businesses as if they were a major industrial polluter.”

He cited a case in Wyoming in which the EPA fined a rancher $37,000 a day “for digging a small watering hole for his cattle. His land. These abuses were, and are, why such incredible opposition to this rule from the hundreds of organizations took place in all 50 states.”

Daren Bakst, former director of legal and regulatory studies for the John Locke Foundation who now is a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., did a question-and-answer session with Heritage’s Daily Signal news operation. Bakst talked about how WOTUS was, at essence, an attack on property rights.