Trump EPA Delays Cleanup of Hundreds of Coal Ash Dumps in Advance of Larger Rollback

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a new final rule today that will delay investigation and monitoring of millions of tons of toxic coal ash at U.S. coal plants until 2032. The rule comes just days before a deadline for owners and operators to report on previously unregulated coal ash dumping at power plant sites.

EPA refers to these dump sites as Coal Combustion Residual Management Units (CCRMU). Delaying monitoring and cleanup of these types of coal ash dumpsite – found at nearly every current or former coal plant in the U.S. – will allow the hazardous pollutants, metals, carcinogens, and neurotoxins in coal ash to continue leaking into water sources.

“Rather than enforcing the law and making polluters clean up their toxic coal ash, Trump’s EPA lets them continue to pollute our water with toxic chemicals that threaten our health. The longer industry delays, the more toxic waste enters our water, and the more difficult cleanup becomes,” said Lisa Evans, senior counsel at Earthjustice. “There is no reason to delay monitoring for hazardous pollutants that we know are leaking from these coal ash dumpsites. Every year of inaction brings more and wider-spread contamination. Today’s announcement means that communities will have to wait until 2032 to even know how much toxic pollution is leaking from hundreds of dump sites around the country.”

Power plant owners and operators were to report the location and volume of coal ash stored in CCRMU for the first time this year and then to initiate groundwater monitoring by May 8, 2029, and report results publicly by January 31, 2029 , as required by Legacy Coal Combustion Residuals Surface Impoundments and CCR Management Units Rule, the co-called “Legacy Coal Ash Rule.”  Today the EPA extended the deadline for monitoring to February 10, 2031 and public reporting to January 31, 2032 — a delay of three years.

Instead of cleaning up their messes a decade ago, the owners of coal-fired power plants stalled, evaded, and disregarded the law, and now these corporate polluters are successfully lobbying the current Trump administration to gut protections.

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.

Coal ash is a toxic mix of hazardous pollutants, metals, carcinogens, and neurotoxins, including arsenic, boron, cobalt, chromium, lead, lithium, 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 working class communities and communities of color.

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. As a result of Earthjustice litigation, the Legacy Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR) Surface Impoundment Rule and CCR Management Units Rule extended federal monitoring and cleanup requirements to hundreds of older coal ash landfills and ponds across the country that account for roughly half of all the coal ash waste ever generated in the U.S.

The administration has said it plans to issue a new rule soon that is expected to further gut monitoring and cleanup requirements for coal ash.

See a map of current and former power plants with coal ash dump sites, including legacy ponds and CCRMU, as well as more recent coal ash landfills and ponds: Where are Coal Ash Dump Sites?

Detailed information by state can be found at Coal Ash in the United States: Addressing Coal Plants’ Hazardous Legacy, in the charts CCRMU is described as “potential ash dump(s).”