The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed relaxing federal regulations for the disposal and management of coal-burning waste from power plants, also called coal ash, opening the door to easier cleanup and disposal site monitoring requirements at both operating and decommissioned coal facilities as the Trump administration aims to get more of them to produce power, often against the owner’s priorities. public service and the community.
The agency’s proposed changes, announced April 9, include repealing the legacy site surface impoundment rule, implemented in the Biden administration, that extended site closure and cleanup requirements for disposal of ash laden with toxic pollutants to older, inactive facilities. The new EPA proposal says it aims to eliminate what the administration describes as “unfeasible and impractical” regulatory requirements enacted in 2024 that utilities have claimed an energy production load.
Other revisions will provide state authorities more leeway to tailor groundwater monitoring, remedial actions, reservoir closure and post-closure requirements to site-specific risks and factors, and use new technologies.
Another provision would revise the definition of “beneficial use” of waste for the manufacture of materials such as cement and drywall “by eliminating the requirement for an environmental demonstration for the nonroad use of more than 12,400 tons of unencapsulated.” [residuals] to the ground” and excludes from federal regulation fly ash used in the manufacture of cement in cement kilns and flue gas desulfurization plaster used in wall panels and in agriculture.
The EPA says the revisions could potentially reduce the need to dispose of coal ash while “improving the strength, durability, and workability of the resulting cement and concrete.”
A public comment period will run through June 12, with two informational webinars on April 15 and 16 and a public hearing set for May 28, the EPA says.
Coal ash spill disasters spurred rulemaking
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Although coal ash makes up the nation’s second-largest industrial waste stream, it took major ash deposit collapses to spur regulation, such as at a TVA site in Tennessee in 2008 that released 5.4 million cubic yards of hazardous sludge over 300 acres and into the Emory River, at an estimated $2 billion in construction spending over the next four years. cleaning a 2025 US Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Also in 2014, an accident at the Duke Energy site in North Carolina spewed 39,000 tons of ash and 27 million gallons of ash pond water into the Dan River, with a short-term repair tab of more than $295 million and long-term costs also estimated in the billions.
In 2015, EPA promulgated minimum standards for the safe disposal of coal ash in landfills and surface impoundments, including requirements for groundwater monitoring, structural integrity checks, and leak site closure procedures.
Power companies strongly opposed the Biden administration’s efforts to extend the cleanup mandate to facilities exempted by the 2015 rule. An early January 2025 letter to Lee Zeldin, then a candidate for EPA administrator, that was co-signed by 10 electric power companies, authorities and cooperatives identified the “unprecedented expansion” of federal coal ash regulations.
“States and electric companies have challenged these rules because they exceed EPA’s statutory authority,” the letter said. The new administration “should refuse to defend these illegal rules and should seek their immediate rescission.”
He now characterizes the proposed amendments as “common sense changes” that reflect the administration’s push for “American energy dominance … and to accommodate unique circumstances in certain [coal ash] facilities,” Zeldin said the revised rule “will increase transparency and promote resource recovery while continuing to protect human health and the environment.”
Environmental groups counter that the proposed changes are a concession to the coal industry’s priorities at the expense of requirements needed to protect groundwater and drinking water supplies from future ash contamination, particularly at older landfills that still lack protective lining and control systems.
Under the EPA’s proposed amendments, disposal site owners would be able to test for groundwater contamination 500 feet or more from disposal areas, rather than the edge of the site as now required, “effectively allowing a contamination zone,” the nonprofit group Earthjustice said.
Coal power providers are looking for flexibility
Since the initial coal ash rules were implemented, energy providers have sought greater flexibility in administering cleanup programs and reducing compliance costs, including what the 2025 letter to Zeldin called “one-size-fits-all, one-size-fits-all closure requirements.” The letter criticized the EPA’s so-called legacy rule, which includes an “after the fact” risk assessment based on “incomplete data, inadequate methodologies and unreasonable assumptions.”
Scott Brooks, a spokesman for the Tennessee Valley Authority, operator of the power plant in Kingston, Tenn., where the 2008 spill occurred, says the agency “supports efforts to ensure that coal ash regulations are based on sound science” and believes that “a site-specific, science-based approach results in the best and safest outcomes for the communities we serve.”
Duke Energy senior vice president of security services and business generation Jessica Bednarcik, who was one of the signatories of the 2025 letter, told a North Carolina media outlet that the proposed coal ash reviews would have no effect on what she says is a multibillion-dollar coal ash cleanup program started under a 2021 agreement with state regulators and environmental groups.
