After being sanctioned by federal regulators for plowing up protected wetlands on his California farm, a US lawmaker is now spearheading an effort to roll back federal water protections — including the very same provisions that he once paid penalties for violating.

If the scheme is successful, environmental groups say industrial polluters could more freely contaminate wetlands, rivers, and other waters, harming both the nation’s water resources and the communities depending on them. It could also benefit the lawmaker spearheading the attack, since he still owns the farm where he was found to be destroying wetlands.

In 2017, before he was a lawmaker, Republican California representative John Duarte was fined $1.1 million by federal regulators for disturbing wetlands and streams on a five-hundred-acre plot of land owned by his business, Duarte Nursery. The settlement ended a long and public legal battle between Duarte and environmental authorities over violations of the Clean Water Act, the landmark 1972 legislation that protects the nation’s rivers, wetlands, and other bodies of water.