EPA rule change gives coal plants break on cleanup
NASHVILLE — The Trump administration will let some leaking or otherwise dangerous coal ash storage ponds stay in operation for years more and some unlined ponds stay open indefinitely under a new rule change.
The move by the Environmental Protection Agency is the administration’s latest rollback of environmental and public health regulations governing operators of coalfired power plants, which are taking hits financially as cheaper natural gas, solar and wind power make dirtierburning coal plants less competitive.
Friday’s move weakens an Obamaera rule in which the EPA regulated the storage and disposal of toxic coal ash for the first time, including closing coalash dumping ponds that were unstable or contaminating groundwater.
The looser strictures announced Friday are “important to powerproducing utilities that Americans in a number of states rely on every day,” EPA assistant administrator Peter Wright said in a statement.
Coal ash is a byproduct of burning coal for power and contains arsenic, mercury, lead and other hazardous heavy metals. U. S. coal plants produce about 100 million tons annually of ash and other waste.
Data released by utilities in March 2018, after the Obama administration required groundwater monitoring around coal ash storage sites, showed widespread evidence of contamination at coal plants from Virginia to Alaska.
For decades, utilities largely disposed of coal ash by sluicing it into huge open pits. In 2008, a sixstorytall dike on a massive coal ash pond at a Tennessee plant collapsed, releasing more than a billion gallons of coal ash into the Swan Pond community. It remains the largest industrial spill in modern U. S. history and prompted the 2015 regulations that were intended to increase oversight of the industry. But the change in administrations brought a change in priorities, with President Trump vowing to boost the struggling coal industry by rolling back regulations.
The latest rollbacks will allow some coal plants to keep their storage ponds open for years longer than envisioned in the 2015 rule.
“The reason the utilities are arguing to keep the ponds is because they have put in these unlined pits out the back door of the power plant that act as a catchall for their toxic waste,“said Lisa Evans, an attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice. “They don’t want to get rid of them because they are cheap.”