Tell the EPA: Don’t Delay Protections from Toxic Coal Waste

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to roll back protections by moving the goal posts for planned coal retirements. 

This new EPA proposal presents a threat to communities’ groundwater by allowing toxic coal companies to operate past their planned retirement dates. With coal ash contaminating groundwater with harmful chemicals such as arsenic, chromium, lithium, and more, citizens deserve the utmost protection. Without accountability, more toxic waste will enter our water, making cleanup more costly and difficult when coal plant retirement inevitably arrives.  

We urge you to submit a comment to the EPA voicing your concern over their proposal to delay compliance and closure of retiring coal plants.  Below is a sample message that we encourage you to modify to make your own. Then go here to submit your comment on this issue via the EPA’s public comment portal.

As a concerned citizen, I oppose the US Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to delay the closure of toxic, poisonous coal ash ponds. 

Coal ash harms people and contaminates groundwater, as articulated and regulated under the 2015 Coal Ash Rule. The EPA’s recent proposal is simply extending a loophole for coal plants to continue polluting.

While the proposal would currently apply to 11 coal plants, the impacted facilities still heavily pollute surrounding communities with little oversight. For example, the Naughton Power Plant in Wyoming violated the Coal Ash Rule with 2022 exceedances of Lithium (x242), Selenium (x150), and Sulfate (x66). If the proposal is accepted as-is, this plant would get an additional three years to close the coal ash pond leaking 242 times the federally allowable level of Lithium into the groundwater.

People do not need excuses; they need protection. Coal-fired power generation has been in decline for years, along with its performance and reliability. The EPA has already given coal plants over a decade to transition away from coal-fired facilities or retrofit the coal ash impoundments. Delaying compliance deadlines will only cost Americans who will pay with their health and pocketbooks.

I oppose the EPA’s proposal to delay the compliance and closure of certain coal ash ponds. I urge the EPA to rescind the proposal so it can hold polluters accountable and protect citizens from harmful coal.  

Click here to submit your comment today. The deadline to do so is Feb. 6.