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The Trump EPA just proposed gutting rules that protect your drinking water from toxic coal ash. Coal ash contains arsenic, lead, mercury, and other heavy metals. When it’s stored in unlined ponds near rivers and groundwater (which it often is) those toxins leach into the water supply. Communities downstream pay the price.
Here’s what this proposal would do:
Weaken groundwater monitoring near coal ash sites
Let companies clean up only where ash was dumped not the entire contaminated property
Give states power to grant exemptions from national safety standards
Make it easier to “reuse” coal ash in ways that spread contamination further
This isn’t hypothetical. A Tennessee dike failure in 2008 spread coal ash over 300 acres. Workers who cleaned it up developed cancer. In 2014, tens of thousands of tons spilled in North Carolina. These are the disasters that forced the EPA to regulate coal ash in the first place.
Now the Trump administration wants to roll back those protections and they’re doing it piece by piece. Earlier this year they already delayed monitoring requirements for hundreds of coal ash dump sites until 2032. They weakened mercury emission limits. They halted coal plant shutdowns.
“These commonsense changes to the CCR regulations reflect EPA’s commitment to restoring American energy dominance, strengthening cooperative federalism, and accommodating unique circumstances at certain CCR facilities,” Zeldin said in a written statement.
Always worry when they say “common sense”. This is what “energy dominance” looks like. Corporations get flexibility. Communities get poisoned water.
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The Trump EPA just proposed gutting rules that protect your drinking water from toxic coal ash. Coal ash contains arsenic, lead, mercury, and other heavy metals. When it’s stored in unlined ponds near rivers and groundwater (which it often is) those toxins leach into the water supply. Communities downstream pay the price.
Here’s what this proposal would do:
This isn’t hypothetical. A Tennessee dike failure in 2008 spread coal ash over 300 acres. Workers who cleaned it up developed cancer. In 2014, tens of thousands of tons spilled in North Carolina. These are the disasters that forced the EPA to regulate coal ash in the first place.
Now the Trump administration wants to roll back those protections and they’re doing it piece by piece. Earlier this year they already delayed monitoring requirements for hundreds of coal ash dump sites until 2032. They weakened mercury emission limits. They halted coal plant shutdowns.
“These commonsense changes to the CCR regulations reflect EPA’s commitment to restoring American energy dominance, strengthening cooperative federalism, and accommodating unique circumstances at certain CCR facilities,” Zeldin said in a written statement.
Always worry when they say “common sense”. This is what “energy dominance” looks like. Corporations get flexibility. Communities get poisoned water.
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Source