October 20, 2025

No One Voted for Polluted Water: Don’t Delay Power Plant Effluent Limits

EPA’s proposal would give a green light to power plants to keep dumping toxic pollutants into our waterways.

By Nancy Stoner, Senior Attorney

The Midwest is blessed with water, from the Great Lakes and Mississippi river to thousands of lakes, streams, and wetlands. But the Midwest is also home to the highest concentration of coal plants in the country, which were historically sited along waterways for cooling and waste disposal.

ELPC Senior Attorney Nancy Stoner testifying to U.S. EPA

Fortunately, technology has progressed, so power plants don’t need to discharge toxins into the water anymore. In the last few years, EPA established generous rules over a long timeline for facilities to adjust and clean up their act. Unfortunately, the Trump EPA is trying to push back the deadlines and delay much-needed protections for the water we all depend on.

On October 14, 2025, I testified to the U.S. EPA in strong opposition to this proposal to delay the deadline for power plants to stop discharging toxic wastes into waterways. Our drinking water, swimming beaches, and aquatic habitat depend on it. Here’s why we need to stick to the existing deadlines, and what it means for the Midwest.

READ FULL TESTIMONY

No Reason Not to Follow the Rules

EPA is proposing to postpone compliance dates for the effluent limitations guidelines (ELG) and standards for the steam electric power generating point source category. That’s a mouthful, but it basically refers to power plants that burn fossil fuels to heat water that turns turbines and creates energy. Burning coal, gas, and oil creates toxic waste, but power plants don’t have to discharge that waste into our waterways. EPA’s own analysis demonstrates that power plants can meet the deadlines in the current rule, ending toxic discharges that contaminate drinking water supplies, swimming beaches, and aquatic habitat.

EPA’s own analysis demonstrates that power plants can meet the deadlines

EPA has identified feasible and economically achievable technologies that industry could implement today to comply with these ELGs. ELPC urges the EPA to retain the existing and already very generous compliance deadlines of more than five years for most power plants.

The proposed rule’s main justification for extending this deadline is that energy needs continue to grow in certain sectors. But the proposed rule does not even try to demonstrate that complying with the ELG would reduce energy production from these power plants. To meet those energy demands, the federal government should stop trying to shut down and instead reinstate incentives for renewable energy sources, not allow more water pollution from old, out-of-date energy sources.

Protecting Public Health

The steam electric effluent limitations guidelines (ELG) were designed to protect the American public from power plant discharges of arsenic, selenium, mercury, lead, cadmium, boron, and bromides into our waterways. These toxic pollutants cause cancer, birth defects, and other public health and aquatic risks.

EPA’s proposal would allow power plants to continue to dump toxins into drinking water sources for some 30 million Americans

According to EPA’s own analysis, the rule that EPA is now seeking to delay would prevent over 660 million pounds of pollutants from being dumped into U.S. waterways each year. It would reduce the number of receiving waters that exceed levels of pollutants deemed unsafe for human health by 63%; and would reduce the number of receiving waters that are unsafe for fishing by 69%.

EPA’s proposal would allow power plants to continue to dump toxins into drinking water sources for some 30 million Americans who already drink water from sources likely contaminated by power plant wastewater.

The Midwest Matters

There are approximately 52 steam electric generating facilities operating in the nine Midwestern states which ELPC works to protect. EPA’s proposal would give a green light to these power plants to keep dumping toxic pollutants into our waterways.

Just to give two examples:

• In Ohio, the Cardinal Power Station discharged more than 500,000 pounds of arsenic into waters that flow into the Ohio River between 2015 and 2024; and
• In Indiana, the Petersburg Generating Station discharged more than 115,000 pounds of arsenic and more than 106,000 pounds of lead into waters that flow into the White River between 2015 and 2024.

Fossil fuel fired power plants have been allowed to pollute our drinking water, aquatic life habitats and recreational water sources for too long. They have put the health of downstream communities and economies at risk.

No one voted for EPA to abandon its mission.  No one voted for polluted water.

The American people want clean water.  In a recent poll by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 96% of respondents indicated that clean, safe tap water was important to them in the kind of place they want to live – more important than any other single factor. Americans want EPA to protect them from pollution, not prolong it. No one voted for EPA to abandon its mission.  No one voted for polluted water.

We appreciate EPA’s consideration of my testimony, and we appreciate the work of EPA staff who continue to try to achieve the Agency’s mission of protecting the health and welfare of communities across the country. The shutdown needs to end so that the staff can get back to work.