Obama's Coal Ash Regulations Barely Got Going, And Now They're Worse Than Gutted
On Monday, in yet another last-ditch effort to save the coal industry from obsolescence, EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler proposed new rollbacks of regulations addressing toxic waste generated by coal-burning power plants.
The original regulations, established just four years ago under President Obama, were historic. For the first time ever, power plants would be required by federal law to monitor groundwater near coal ash ponds and clean up ponds that were actively leaking. For the first time ever, there would be federal limits on the concentration of toxic metals in the wastewater discharged from these plants into waterways. “Think about that,” said Elizabeth Southerland, who was a director in the EPA’s Office of Water under Obama. “2015. Every other industry sector in the country by then had all kinds of treatment requirements on their wastewater.”
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That monitoring is one of the only aspects of the Obama-era rules that was fully implemented. And because of that, we know that most of these sites do leak. Earlier this year, the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice analyzed industry data and found that more than 91 percent of the sites being monitored had unsafe levels of toxic pollutants in their groundwater. In August, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Obama-era rules were, in fact, not aggressive enough. The ruling meant that the EPA had to require power plants to shut down all active unlined coal ash ponds near waterways, not just the ones that are leaking. The rules that Wheeler proposed this week incorporate that requirement, but they’re flexible — they allow some power plants to keep using unlined ponds for up to eight more years.
Wheeler’s new proposal also weakens treatment requirements for wastewater by allowing power plants to use a less effective treatment process than the one required under Obama. In addition, utilities will be allowed to discharge up to 10 percent of their wastewater into waterways every day. The EPA asserts that these rules will still prevent 105 million pounds of pollutants from being discharged. But that number is based on an assumption that 30 percent of power plants will voluntarily choose to treat their wastewater with the best available filtration systems. Abel Russ, a senior attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project, finds that framing ironic.
“EPA has an obligation under the Clean Water Act to impose the best available technology,” Russ said. So if 30 percent of the plants are going to install such great filtration systems, Russ pointed out, why aren’t all of them required to do so?
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https://grist.org/article/why-obamas-plans-to-clean-up-coal-ash-barely-got-off-the-ground/
