By Mike Tony
Charleston Gazette-Mail
It was just over 18 months ago that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule it said would reduce pollutants discharged through wastewater from coal-fired power plants by more than 660 million pounds per year.
The rule stood to have a long-lasting environmental impact in heavily coal-de-pendent West Virginia, since the toxic pollutants targeted by the rule have a pervasive presence throughout West Virginia’s many impaired waterways, complicating drinking wa-ter treatment and threaten-ing aquatic life.
But that rule was finalized by the Biden adminis-tration. The Trump administration has taken a decidedly different tack.
President Donald Trump’s EPA has pushed back compliance deadlines for reducing discharges of toxic metals and other pollutants from coal-fired power plants into waterbodies.
The EPA on Dec. 23 issued a final rule that gives steam electric power plants six more years, to Dec. 31, 2031, to evaluate possible paths to compliance to keep operating. It also extended compliance deadlines by five years, to Dec. 31, 2034, for flue gas desulfurization wastewater, wastewater used to move combustion residue from boilers and leachate containing combustion residuals.
The EPA contended the move would allow facilities to address increases in electricity demand and provide energy reliability.
The agency argued in a rule analysis document it published along with the newly finalized rule that electricity market changes since just last year, includ-ing growing demand for electricity due to data cen-ter expansions and AI demand being encouraged by the Trump administration, resulted in a “high degree of uncertainty” regarding its 2024 impact estimates for the rule, like air quality effects, as finalized 18 months ago.
Read the rest of the story at the Charleston Gazette-Mail