The Trump administration on Thursday finalized a rule that removes federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands and hundreds of thousands of the nations streams.

The new rule , put together by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, will serve as a replacement to President Barack Obama s 2015 Waters of the United States regulation, better known as WOTUS or the Clean Water Rule. President Donald Trump made it his mission early in his presidency to dismantle the Obama-era measure, which had sought to clarify which streams and wetlands should be protected under the 1972 federal Clean Water Act.

The Obama rule extended federal safeguards to 2 million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands , ultimately securing the drinking water of millions of Americans .

Today, thanks to our new rule, our nations farmers, ranchers, developers, manufacturers and other landowners can finally refocus on providing the food, shelter and other commodities that Americans rely on every day, instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars on attorneys and consultants to determine whether waters on their own land fall under the control of the federal government, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a call with reporters Thursday.

Environmental experts have warned of the far-reaching and likely devastating impacts of the Trump rule, which could put the drinking water of millions of Americans at risk, imperil food safety and threaten countless natural habitats and the creatures that call them home.

The move is about protecting polluting industries instead of public health, said Blan Holman, a lawyer and water expert at the Southern Environmental Law Center.

This rule is the culmination of an insider campaign to gut bipartisan protections that have safeguarded the nations water for decades, and will endanger the health and environment of families and communities across the entire country, he said in a statement to HuffPost. If allowed to stand, this bulldozing of clean water protections would be among this administrations dirtiest, most dangerous deeds.

Trump has excoriated the Obama water rule as a disaster and one of the worst examples of federal regulation. He signed an executive order within weeks of taking office to scrap the rule and ultimately repealed it in September .

But Trump and his team werent content with merely scrapping the Obama-era regulation. The presidents personal business stands to directly benefit from the overhaul, as it will ease restrictions on pesticide and fertilizer use at golf courses.

The new rule doesnt just toss out the protections introduced by Trumps predecessor, but eliminates protections to smaller headwaters that have been in place for decades, according to legal experts and environmentalists. More than half the countrys wetlands and millions of miles of streams are expected to lose federal protection under the new rule, Politico reported .

Waters that have been protected for almost 50 years will no longer be protected under the Clean Water Act, Patrick Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School, told The New York Times this week.

The final rule will take effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, likely later this week.