Coal ash slurry pours into the first of two settling ponds adjacent to the Riverbend Steam Station on Mountain Island Lake in Gaston County, North Carolina, January 23, 2008. (Photo: Jeff Willhelm / Charlotte Observer / MCT via Getty Images)
In tests conducted in late 2017, one in three coal-fired power plants nationwide detected “statistically significant” amounts of contaminants, including harmful chemicals like arsenic, in the groundwater around their facilities.
This information, which utility companies had to post on their websites in March, became public for the first time under an Obama-era environmental rule regulating coal ash, the waste generated from burning coal.
Mixed with water and stored in ponds and landfills at nearly 300 facilities across the country, coal ash has been found to contain carcinogens and toxins like mercury and lead. For decades, people living near coal-fired plants have feared the ash was seeping into the ground and contaminating their drinking water.
But now, just as residents are getting their first indication of whether neighboring plants might pose a threat, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is advancing a proposal to amend the rule, giving states the authority to lessen consequences and weaken requirements for polluting power plants.
As the rule stands today, if a plant exceeds federal limits for certain pollutants in groundwater and the utility company can’t prove its coal ash pond has an adequate liner to hold in the toxins, the pond would be shut down. The new proposal would give states the power to allow the pond to remain open while the plant cleans up the contamination. It would also set more lenient thresholds for types of contaminants that trigger mandated cleanups.
Pruitt has said the plan would save utilities an estimated $31 million to $100 million per year in compliance costs and give states flexibility to set their own standards that are “at least as protective” as the federal ones, rather than…