EPA Seeks to Delay Monitoring and Clean up Requirements for Toxic Coal Ash, Adopting the Wishes of the Coal Power Industry

Washington, D.C. —

Today the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it intends to grant the wishes of the coal power industry and extend compliance deadlines for monitoring and cleaning up coal ash, effectively allowing coal plant owners to stall clean up beyond 2030.

Toxic coal ash is contaminating water at nearly every current and former coal plant site in the U.S. For nearly a decade, coal plants stalled and evaded the law requiring them to clean up toxic coal ash stored at their plants.

“Trump’s EPA is abandoning its responsibility to communities across the country, allowing toxic coal ash to continue contaminating water supplies,” said Lisa Evans, Senior Counsel, Earthjustice.

EPA published the proposed rule at the same time top agency officials were meeting with communities harmed by coal ash and health experts who were requesting that cleanups not be delayed.

“They sat in a room and listened silently to the devastating experiences of people whose communities have been poisoned by coal ash. They never mentioned that they were, at that very moment, weakening coal ash protections,” Evans said. “The longer industry delays dealing with its toxic mess, the more toxic waste enters our water, and the more difficult and costly cleanup becomes. These coal power companies cannot escape liability for their reckless release of toxic coal ash.”

Vast quantities of toxic coal ash are insecurely stored near popular lakes, rivers, and streams and in contact with groundwater. This likely includes hundreds of old, unlined landfills that have likely been contaminating groundwater for decades. These are the dumps for which EPA proposes to delay clean-up even further. View the Earthjustice map of power plant sites across the country with coal ash dump sites.

Earlier today the head of EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM) and senior staff members met with public health experts, county officials, and residents of towns whose water has been contaminated by coal ash. They listened as residents described how several communities’ drinking water has been contaminated with coal ash.

Even as the experts, officials, and residents asked EPA to not extend compliance deadlines and to require timely cleanups, EPA was preparing to announce that it was doing just that. The delays proposed by EPA in the direct final rule were requested by the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group (USWAG), the Edison Electric Institute, and the Cross-Cutting Issues Group, comprised of electric generating companies, who requested that the EPA extend compliance deadlines while EPA undertakes a review of the coal ash regulations.

Background

Earthjustice represents communities across the U.S. that have fought for years to hold coal-fired power plant operators responsible for their reckless disposal and storage of coal ash.

An Earthjustice lawsuit compelled the EPA to adopt its first-ever safeguards to protect people from toxic coal ash in 2015, but the rule excluded landfills and waste piles that stopped receiving coal ash before the rule went into effect. The Legacy Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR) Surface Impoundment Rule extends federal monitoring and cleanup requirements to hundreds of older coal ash landfills and ponds across the country that have been leaking toxic pollution into groundwater.

EPA reports that many plants are illegally closing coal ash ponds with toxic ash sitting in and polluting groundwater and threatening human health. Water weaponizes coal ash, carrying its toxic pollutants to nearby streams, rivers, and drinking water aquifers.

Coal ash is a toxic mix of hazardous pollutants, metals, carcinogens, and neurotoxins, including arsenic, boron, cobalt, chromium, lead, lithium, mercury, molybdenum, radium, selenium, and other heavy metals. These have been linked to cancer, heart and thyroid disease, reproductive failure, and neurological harm. Coal ash is disproportionately located in low-income communities and communities of color.