Companies Seek Relief From Coal Clean-Up Rules – CleanTechnica

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Last Updated on: 25th February 2025, 11:23 am

Nothing says pure, unadulterated political power quite like demanding the government refuse to protect citizens from toxic pollution leaching dangerous chemicals into the groundwater that communities rely on for their drinking water. That is exactly what twelve utility companies are doing, now that fossil fuel interests have hijacked all three branches of the US government. On January 15, 2025, those corporations sent a letter to Lee Zeldin, then the nominee to become the next EPA administrator, exhorting him to take “immediate action” to roll back federal regulation of toxic coal ash and rescind recent enforcement actions.

The companies want the EPA to relieve them of their obligation to prevent coal ash from contaminating groundwater. The letter, which was obtained by Canary Media and has not previously been reported on, is signed by executives representing a dozen power plant operators who between them are holding more than half a billion cubic yards of the dangerous material, a byproduct of burning coal in power plants. According to Earthjustice, coal ash contains hazardous pollutants, including arsenic, chromium, lead, lithium, mercury, radium, selenium, and other heavy metals, which have been linked to cancer, heart and thyroid disease, reproductive failure, and neurological harm.

The fact that utility companies, whose mission is to serve their communities, want to be able to allow this toxic sludge to leach into the environment, only illustrates the degree to which the business community is leveraging rage against the federal government to excuse dumping extremely dangerous contaminants irresponsibly. Doing otherwise is dangerous government overreach and if your kid gets sick and dies, well freedom isn’t free. Their job is to increase shareholder value, not worry about you and your family. Toughen up and stop whining!

“These are powerful corporations asking for the administration to do their bidding even if those actions put health and the environment at risk, which they certainly will,” said Lisa Evans, senior attorney for Earthjustice, which compiled groundwater monitoring data in 2022 that revealed the scope of the coal ash pollution that will remain in the US even after a transition to clean electricity — assuming there ever is one.

The Coal Ash Dirty Dozen

The companies represented in the letter are Duke Energy; Vistra; Southern Illinois Power Cooperative; Ohio Valley/Indiana-Kentucky Electric Corp.; Talen Energy; Louisville Gas & Electric/​Kentucky Utilities; Gavin Power LLC; City Utilities of Springfield, Missouri; Basin Electric Power Cooperative in North Dakota; and the Lower Colorado River Authority. If you are a customer of one of these companies, feel free to let their top officials know how much you appreciate them turning your neighborhood into a toxic waste dump and then trying to pass the cost of cleaning it up on to your shoulders. God forbid their stockholders should suffer. You must be some kind of commie pinko woke moron if you think anything different.

The federal government lacked specific coal-ash regulations until 2015, when the Obama administration adopted rules following a long, contentious process. The standards omitted ​“legacy” coal ash stored in landfills and repositories that had closed before the rules took effect, and they were barely enforced until 2022, when the Biden administration made them a priority. After years of litigation by environmental advocates, EPA last spring expanded cleanup requirements to include legacy impoundments, closing a major loophole that helped power plant operators skirt responsibility for toxic pollution at scores of sites nationwide. Those rules are currently in effect but are being challenged in federal court by Republican attorneys general and power industry groups. If you live in a Red State, be sure to drop your local AG a note thanking him or her for poisoning your family and protecting polluters. Maybe you can ask them to send you a few pounds of coal ash to put into your vegetable garden, since it is such wonderful stuff.

The industry letter calls on the EPA to drop its legal defense of the legacy impoundment rules. It also asks the agency to rescind its prohibition on scattering coal ash to build up land, a practice companies call ​“beneficial reuse” that experts say can be extremely dangerous. In Town of Pines, Indiana, for example, this practice led to a massive Superfund cleanup. The letter demands EPA revoke its closure order and guidance on coal ash at the Gavin Power Plant in Ohio, noting that the case could provide precedent for lawsuits concerning other sites. The letter also calls for the Trump administration to review other previous EPA enforcement at specific sites, ​“in light of new priorities.” and calls for review of contracts awarded for coal ash enforcement.

Lisa Evans disputed the letter’s contention that federal coal ash regulations are not ​“practical and based on demonstrated risk. Their claims are nonsense and unfounded. For the Trump administration, it doesn’t matter whether these arguments have any merit; it matters who is asking.” The vast majority of coal ash sites nationwide are contaminating groundwater, the companies’ own data shows. Duke Energy has excavated ash from a number of sites in North Carolina, following criminal charges related to the 2014 Dan River spill. Talen’s coal ash in Montana is putting the Northern Cheyenne Tribe at risk. American Electric Power, former owner of the Gavin plant, bought out the entire town of Cheshire, Ohio, because of pollution from the plant. It must be so comforting to know your utility supplier has been adjudicated to be a criminal enterprise.

Lee Zeldin Says He Is A Moderate

As a Congress member from New York, Zeldin frequently voted against environmental protections. He also pledged to overturn the state’s ban on fracking during an unsuccessful run for governor. The letter says the rules ​“threaten the reliability of the power grid, jeopardize national security, are a drag on economic growth, increase inflation, and hinder the expansion of electric power generation” needed for AI and other technologies. Sure, let’s poison thousands of people so AI can expand and gobble up every available electron. That’s a helluva plan.

Prior to Trump’s reelection, the EPA was increasingly prioritizing coal ash. In 2023, the agency announced coal ash was among six top enforcement priorities for fiscal years 2024 through 2027, saying failure to comply with the rules can cause significant ​“harm to human health and the environment…..through catastrophic releases of contaminants into the air or contamination of groundwater, drinking water, or surface water.”

To change rules enshrined in federal law, the EPA will need to initiate a lengthy rule making process that includes public comment. Any new rules would need to meet standards in the Administrative Procedure Act, including having a ​“rational basis,” as the act says. If the agency were to adopt rules that failed to meet these criteria, advocacy groups would likely sue. “You can’t just revoke a rule and replace it with one that’s friendly to industry,” said Evans. ​“If the reality is coal ash is contaminating groundwater at nearly every site in the country, it’s going to be hard for the Trump administration to write a rule that allows utilities to continue to pollute.” Actually, if your name is Trump and you are surrounded by sycophants and a compliant Supreme Court, you can do anything you want. Just sign an executive order and bazanga! It’s done.

Zeldin has been given his marching orders as contained in the Project 2025 fascist playbook being implemented by the puppet president. They include relaxing or eliminating environmental regulations and clawing back spending opposed by Republicans. In addition, he is charged with rooting out gender and equity oriented programs and workers. One of the tasks assigned to him is to report “on the legality and continuing applicability” of the 2009 finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to the environment. Undoing that finding would undermine the legal footing of many key EPA climate regulations. His fellow cabinet member Chris Wright, the new Energy Secretary, told Faux News last week that more carbon dioxide is a good thing because it might increase crop yields in addition to many other wondrous benefits. He neglected to  mention there will be far fewer mouths to feed as an overheating planet leads to an increase in human mortality.

Zeldin also has until March 21 to issue guidance pulling back on the social cost of carbon, a metric used to estimate the future benefits of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Trump’s order directed the EPA to consider eliminating the social cost of carbon altogether, a step beyond Trump’s first term when his administration greatly reduced its value but still used it as a basis for administrative rule making. Eliminating any discussion of a social cost of carbon is right in line with the effort to relieve utility companies of responsibility for the damage done by the toxic mess left behind by decades of burning coal. Giving corporations a free pass on toxic waste is one sure way to make America great again, that’s for damn sure.