Trump administration puts safety, drinking water at risk at the request of power coal ash polluters 

WASHINGTON —The Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate protections against coal ash that communities fought for after contaminated water and disastrous coal ash spills clearly grants the wishes of coal ash polluters to the detriment of families and communities, the Southern Environmental Law Center and other environmental groups pointed out in comments submitted to EPA before its public comment period ended. Nearly two hundred groups representing communities across the nation and thousands of Americans also objected to the proposal. 

“We’ve seen what happens when coal-burning utilities decide how to handle their coal ash — it was a disaster for communities across the South, resulting in coal ash spills and hundreds of families forced to live on bottled water for years under the threat of coal ash pollution,” said Nick Torrey, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represented community groups and secured commitments to clean up over 270 million tons of coal ash in southern communities. “Now the Trump administration and coal ash polluters want to take us back to the bad old days of toxic coal ash stored in massive unlined, leaking pits contaminating our water with arsenic, lead, and mercury.” 

Communities across the South fought for protections against contamination of drinking water sources from toxic coal ash that politically powerful utilities stored in huge leaking, unlined pits next to rivers and lakes. Now, the administration’s proposed rule would side with those polluters by eliminating common-sense, nationwide minimum safeguards that protected clean water against coal ash pollution and prevented further catastrophic coal ash spills and other disasters. Thousands of people across the South contacted the administration and their members of Congress to object to this proposal. 

Both North Carolina and Tennessee suffered catastrophic coal ash spills that prompted the rules now being rolled back—TVA spilled over a billion gallons of coal ash slurry into people’s homes and the Emory River in Kingston, TN, in 2008, and Duke Energy spilled coal ash and millions of gallons of polluted wastewater into the Dan River in North Carolina and Virginia in 2014. Duke’s spill shut down the water intake for a community hundreds of miles away, Virginia Beach. In addition, Duke Energy later pleaded guilty 18 times for nine Clean Water Act crimes throughout North Carolina.  

Among other dangerous changes, the Trump administration’s proposed rule would allow “flexibilities” to let utilities leave their leaking toxic coal ash submerged in groundwater next to rivers and lakes that serve as drinking water sources, forever. The current federal coal ash rules have an important safety feature that utilities cannot just cover up toxic coal ash in unlined, leaking lagoons sitting in groundwater because the saturated ash underneath would keep leaking toxic metals like arsenic and mercury into the surrounding rivers and drinking water sources, forever. Utilities previously tried to challenge this common-sense requirement for years and lost every time in court, but now the Trump administration proposes to do polluters’ bidding.  

To exemplify that states can handle the problem, EPA falsely points to coal ash cleanups in the Carolinas that resulted after many years of legal battles by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of community groups against politically powerful coal-burning utilities like Duke Energy—litigation necessitated because states actually failed to handle the problem of coal ash pollution. North Carolina also now has a unique coal ash law that no other state has, which was enacted after Duke Energy’s disastrous Dan River coal ash spill and community outcry.  

“That this administration is doing the bidding of industrial polluters instead of protecting families and clean water is shameful, but we are ready to keep fighting against coal ash pollution on behalf of communities,” Torrey added.  

Coal ash contains arsenic, lead, mercury, and many other heavy metals and toxic pollutants that are particularly harmful to young children and contaminate our drinking water sources, rivers, lakes, and groundwater.