WASHINGTON — Cabinet chiefs and GOP lawmakers celebrated alongside farm and business leaders Tuesday as the Trump administration made good on one of its biggest promised environmental rollbacks, proposing to remove federal protections for thousands of waterways nationwide.

Environmental groups called the proposed overhaul of federal water protections one of the gravest assaults ever on the aims of the 1972 Clean Water Act, the foundational U.S. water protection law. Administration supporters praised President Donald Trump for knocking back what they said was federal overreach.

The Obama-era water protections targeted for replacement by Tuesday’s regulatory overhaul “was never about clean water,” Rep. Sam Graves, a Republican and farmer from Missouri, and one of about a dozen GOP Congress members at Tuesday’s launch at headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency. “It was always about the federal government getting more control over our water and our lives.”

“I want to thank him for keeping that promise,” Graves declared of Trump.

“Thank you, Mr. President, for giving us this Christmas present.”