A group of public service companies on January 15 letter At that time, Lee Zeldin, the candidate to lead Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, who was elected president at that time. “We provide electricity for millions of houses, businesses and institutions in the US, create thousands of good paid businesses and increase economic progress and American welfare,” he said.
After the polite opening, they were entitled to their main demands: “They call for two issues especially for emergency action: (1) Greenhouse gas (‘GHG’) emissions (‘GHG’), which necessitates a carbon capture technology that is not shown sufficiently, and (2) CCR’s federal regulation ”
Companies claim that the federal government has exceeded its authority in the implementation of these two regulations. The letter asked Zeldin to go back to them by reversing the regulatory authority to the states and canceled the 2024 rules that necessitated the cleaning of coal ash in the inactive power plants.
What is described as “coal combustion ruins ve and is defined as yanıl a natural by -product of production with coal and electricity… Used for useful purposes in the construction and manufacture of USA” is known as coal ash – coal plants are usually associated with groundwater, because it is often contacted with groundwater when it is built near the water. From the end century and a half From the production of American coal energy, energy companies threw coal ashes to hundreds of active and inactive power plants Throughout the country.
‘Free expected’: EPA suggests to ignite hundreds of scientists
Zeldin now seems to be the manager of EPA and energy companies are getting their wishes. In a statement to Grist, environmental lawyers, two people seem to have been designed to significantly weaken the implementation of coal ash arrangements in the midst of the proposed press release on March 12.
Zeldin said to this, “the greatest day of our nation has seen.”
EPA in the first announced States will encourage the permission and implementation of the coal ash rule. When the states are transferred to the authority to give their own coal ash ashtray permissions by EPA, they need to comply with strict standards as strict standards as federal rules, but in some cases the state environmental institutions only went out of the bandit and changed this need.
Georgia, which has the authority to give its permission for coal ash in 2019, has controversial plans in various coal power plants to permanently store millions of tons of coal ash in the striped storage areas partially dipped by EPA in partially dipped in groundwater. In the neighboring Alabama, the state organizers sought the same delegate authority where their colleagues in Georgia were given, but EPA last year rejected his application Because they planned to allow the power of the violation of federal rules in the same way Like Georgia.
Alabama’s was the first to apply for a coal ash program operated by the state rejected by EPA; so farOnly Georgia, Texas and Oklahoma were approved. However, new approvals may come: “EPA will propose a determination in the North Dakota Permit Program within the next 60 days.”
EPA also said that under President Joe Biden, a rule that he concluded in 2024 would “review”, arrangements of coal ash, a turning point that regulates only the coal cults in active use, and to örünüyor the coal ash pools covering the coal ash pools covering.
EPA’s review of the 2024 Old Coal Ash rule will focus on that the deadline will not be extended to comply with the rule. Earthjustice Senior Consultant Lisa Evans said in writing that the time periods in the rule are much softer than they needed. “The industry received great concessions from Biden EPA to create very long periods of time in the future,” he said.
Since it is not reached about 70 years after waste removal of coal ash peak contamination levels, longer dates may only mean less effective cleaning. “The longer you ignore these sites, the worse the pollution will be, Ev Evans said.
In the second statement about the coal ash, EPA said that he would review a list of the biggest execution priorities announced in 2023 and applied to the financial years of 2024 – 2027. List National enforcement and compatibility attempts, or necı, included six “priority spaces için for the action, one of which was korum protecting communities from coal ash contamination”.
EPA now plans to “align ıyla with President Trump’s executive orders. He said that this will be carried out by reviewing the “NECI list immediately” and that the execution would not be able to close the production of race and socioeconomic status (under environmental justice attempts) or focus on the most emergency health and safety problems ”.
There was no further details of what this means for the real executive actions of the agency. However, an internal agency note sent by Jeffrey Hall of the Agency’s Executive and Compliance Department has a fuller picture. The grade seen by Grist summarizes how to update the NECI list.
Hall’s note, priorities, “NECIs and the administration’s directives and priorities to adapt” was reviewed, and all EPA enforcement and compatibility actions “temporary” to put forward a series of instructions. These do not inform EPA’s execution and harmony assurance work ”and“ execution and harmony assurance actions (distribution from discovery) or any stage of energy production or human health or human health or human health.
Regarding the coal ash, the GPA is focused on the perceived incompatibility against existing performance standards and monitoring and test requirements, and it is largely motivated by the executive orders of the President and the attempt of environmental justice. Accordingly, the note, “Active Energy Power Plant Facilities for coal ash for the application and harmony assurance, will focus on close threats to human health” foresees.
Because of the expression of attention, Evans said that it would be entirely possible to justify any implementation of the rule of coal ash under the EPA’s necı ”.
This will be the dramatic reversal of the upgraded sanction rising under biden management. In 2024 – the first year of the coal ash necı priority – EPA 107 Compliance Evaluation 18 coal ash areas in the state. That year, only five enforcement cases (orders or agreements that EPA requires companies to take certain actions), Evans said that if EPA is allowed to continue the investigations, it would find a reason for the execution action on many other sites.
Evans said that the necessity of the implementation of the application only in a close threat to human health, the agency required the appropriate management and monitoring of toxic waste areas before damage and spills occur, and the application of the coal ash rule designed to prevent “close threats’ effectively restricted the application.
For example, Evans said the directive would prohibit EPA from requiring an ancillary program to repair a faulty groundwater monitoring system. “Public services played the system in some plants by designing monitoring systems that intentionally missed the leak from a coal ash casting.” report Environmental Integrity Project, which claims to be a common practice in manipulating monitoring data to underestimate the degree of contamination between Earthjustice and energy companies.
Energy companies need to dig wells to evaluate the quality of groundwater in coal ash breakdowns, and compare it with nearby calcareous water samples to measure contamination levels. However, the 2022 report documented examples such as coal power plants in Texas, Indiana and Florida, where the EPA found that the “background” wells used to provide basic examples of water quality were excavated in contaminated areas near the coal ash. The report also documented the application of “intertwined” monitoring or analyzing data from each well in order to evaluate changes in contamination levels over time rather than contrasting with non -contaminated wells. This method does not work unless the wells are contaminated to start and are banned by EPA instructions – but the report has found that it is used in 108 coal power plants throughout the country.
Essentially, a free transition can be made under the new enforcement guidance. Evans said, “Although these are very important violations (because contamination is not discovered and not cleaned), they may not lead to a ‘close threat’ if there is no data showing toxic release,” he said.
Memo’s section, which is interested in the coal ash, stated that “any orders or other execution action that will unjustly load power production or significantly disrupt” execution and harmony assurance office assistant require “advance approval önemli.
Note justifies this requirement based on the intention of the Trump administration “releasing American energy”. However, Nick Torrey, a senior lawyer at the Southern Environmental Law Center, has little to do with energy production – and has more interest in the profitability of public services.
Torrey said, “There is nothing affecting power production about cleaning coal ash, these are two separate activities,” he said. “So they look like the ear, they give priority to the interests of pollutants on people’s drinking water.”
