Burning Coal Leaves Dangerous Waste. Trump'S Epa Eyes Looser Rules For Handling It

In 2022, federal officials rebuked a major coal plant next to the Ohio River for letting coal waste — in a pile so big it could fill the Dallas Cowboys' football stadium twice over — threaten groundwater with heavy metal pollution.

That coal ash, the waste from burning coal, was at risk of leaching into groundwater and spreading toxins, officials said. It was part of a broad crackdown by the Biden administration on coal ash aimed at keeping arsenic and lead out of well water, lowering cancer rates and avoiding disastrous spills.

In January, however, the coal industry including Ohio's targeted Gen. James Gavin Power Plant wrote to President Donald Trump's nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency, asking for weaker standards. Less than two months later, the EPA announced it would consider loosening the rules as part of a historic deregulatory push that also targeted plant wastewater and coal's considerable greenhouse gas emissions. Collectively, the industry hopes the change in direction — and deemphasis on climate change as a threat — lowers costs and delays a surge of plant retirements.

“We just feel like the last administration, all of these regulations were really designed to force the closure of coal plants," said Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of industry group America’s Power.

Now, as data centers and other needs cause electricity demand to soar, Bloodworth says coal power is increasingly essential.

Environmentalists worry about coal ash and its heavy metals in part because there’s so much of it – more than 100 million tons is produced each year, much of which sits near lakes and rivers in sprawling disposal sites. Some is reused, but a lot is stored near coal plants in coal ash ponds that may not have a lining to keep it from leaching into groundwater.

It can be disastrous when companies fail to keep that waste in place. In 2008, a huge dike burst at a Tennessee coal plant. That released more than a billion gallons of coal ash, polluting rivers, toppling homes and shortening the lives of many cleanup workers who spent months exposed to its toxicity.

That disaster helped lead to the first federal standards for coal ash disposal in 2015. Those included requirements for companies to line new storage sites, conduct water monitoring and ensure many leaky ponds closed safely, often requiring the material to be moved elsewhere.

“It contains a lot of important protections, but it didn’t apply to all the coal ash that utilities were managing,” said Nick Torrey, an attorney with the nonprofit Southern Environmental Law Center.

Old coal ash piles at dozens of shuttered plants weren’t included. They are even more likely to be unlined and unsafe, according to the EPA. A federal appeals court in 2018 said old disposal areas at inactive sites threatened to catastrophically fail and pollute groundwater. The Biden administration wrote new rules to ensure those close properly. The rule also targeted the disposal of waste outside designated disposal areas.

The Biden administration also turned a skeptical eye toward states that wanted to manage their own coal ash permitting programs, and rejected Alabama’s request to do so, saying the state allowed coal ash sites to close without sufficiently protecting groundwater.

Now, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says the agency will work closely with states to help them take over permitting. Environmental groups are worried.

“They are basically just going to rubber-stamp the applications,” said Gavin Kearney, an attorney with the nonprofit Earthjustice.

And the Trump administration will weaken enforcement of some current rules. The Biden administration made enforcing coal ash rules a priority, sending officials to examine more than 100 sites. But new enforcement instructions in March said that effort was “motivated largely by environmental justice considerations,” a priority of the last administration aimed at improving conditions in polluted areas that are often majority-Black or Hispanic.

The updated guidance says enforcement at active power plants must focus on “imminent threats to human health," making no mention of shuttered sites.

“The memo leaves room for EPA to enforce against active or inactive sites, but ... I will be surprised if they do,” Kearney said.

The agency also promised to revisit the Biden administration’s rule and consider extending deadlines for safely closing sites and water monitoring.

One site the Biden administration's rule targeted was the Michigan City Generating Station in Indiana, by Lake Michigan, and close to communities that are generally poorer. The decades-old coal plant is expected to be retired in the next few years, and closing means dealing safely with its coal ash. Much of it has already been trucked 40 miles away for safe disposal.

But recent groundwater monitoring found elevated levels of arsenic and other metals. Local activists are worried about land created at the site made partially of coal ash and separated from Lake Michigan by a seawall they say is fragile. The 2024 rules set deadlines for cleanup.

“How many years are we going to have to wait ultimately for this reprieve, for this closure to happen?” said Ashley Williams, executive director of Just Transition Northwest Indiana, a nonprofit community group.

The plant owner, Northern Indiana Public Service Company, a unit of NiSource, said they were looking at any impact possible changes would have on its plans to safely close.

Owners and proposed buyers of the Gavin plant either declined or didn't respond to requests for comment.

The EPA estimated Biden's rules would cost the industry as much as $240 million annually. America's Power says forcing plants like Gavin to remove coal ash that sits below the water table that they don't believe is a significant threat to the area's groundwater and drinking water is extremely costly and can force shutdowns.

Bloodworth of America's Power praised the change in direction.

“If there are three legs of the stool — affordability, reliability and sustainability — the (Biden) administration went way too far” and failed to properly prioritize reliability, Bloodworth said.