July 30, 2019 Washington, D.C.
Today, the Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accelerated its ongoing effort to gut landmark safeguards that protect public health and the environment from toxic coal ash pollution by weakening safeguards for coal ash piles and sites where coal ash is placed on or beneath the ground.
On the chopping block are federal safeguards for coal ash waste piles and construction projects that use ash as fill.
The Trump administration’s proposal, which comes in response to industry requests, exempts coal ash waste piles — often-mountainous heaps of non-containerized waste placed on land — from regulatory safeguards designed to protect public health.
In addition, the proposed Trump administration change encourages greater use of toxic coal ash as a cheap alternative to soil as a filler in construction and landscaping by removing all volume restrictions for such waste projects. The proposal allows projects where coal ash is placed on land for any purpose, usually without barriers, to contain unlimited volumes of coal ash and subjects users to completing safety demonstrations only when coal ash is placed in inherently dangerous areas, such as within five feet of groundwater, in floodplains, and over sinkholes. There is no required notification to the public that such projects are occurring and no requirement to share demonstrations with the public unless directly asked. EPA data show there are many known re-use or fill projects using coal ash that have contaminated water, including drinking water in excess of federal safety standards.
“The Trump EPA, led by Andrew Wheeler is doing everything in its power to gut essential public health protections from toxic coal ash in the 2015 rule,” said Earthjustice Senior Counsel and coal ash expert Lisa Evans. “Despite compelling and damning scientific evidence highlighting the harm to groundwater from coal ash, and court victories by community groups requiring the EPA to strengthen the 2015 rule, Wheeler is giving this gift to his former employers at the cost of public health. It is a disgrace to everything the EPA stands for, and we will do everything in our power to stop it.”
Coal ash contains deadly toxic substances, including carcinogens like arsenic, cadmium and chromium, and neurotoxins such as lead and lithium, which have polluted air and water at hundreds of coal ash dumpsites across the nation. Coal ash is one of the nation’s largest industrial waste streams, and decades of dumping by the coal industry have created dangerous leaking dumps at almost all U.S. coal plants. One of the coal ash piles affected by the proposed rule is a ten-story waste pile in Guayama, Puerto Rico. There has been a public outcry about the pile for years because of the public health threat the open pile poses to the community.
Toxic coal ash dust at the Making Money Having Fun Landfill in Bokoshe, OK.
Photo used with permission