April 20, 2026

Trump Administration Chooses Coal Ash Pollution Over Your Health

By Nancy Stoner, Senior Attorney

No one really questions whether having coal ash pits leaking into your drinking water source is good for you or your family’s health. Leaking coal ash pits at power plants across the country are known to be contaminating surrounding groundwater with metals and toxins that threaten public health. Exposure to coal ash contaminants can increase risks of cancers, heart and thyroid diseases, cognitive impairments, respiratory disorders, prenatal mortality, and more. 

EPA Knows the Risks

According to the U.S. EPA’s own website from March of 2026, there are approximately 775 coal ash pits across the country, the harm from which “can be significant and occur through catastrophic releases of contaminants into the surrounding environment.” 

So, the U.S. EPA recognizes the threat to your health that leaking coal ash pits pose. But the Trump administration’s EPA doesn’t appear to care enough about your health to require power plants to prevent those 775 coal ash sites across the US from leaking. Midwestern states are particularly at risk, with both active and abandoned coal ash pits across the region ELPC works to protect.

It isn’t just that the Trump EPA is doing nothing to address this public health threat. It is actively rolling back the protections that were put in place over the past 10 years by the scientists and engineers at EPA whom you pay with your tax dollars. Now the Trump EPA is using your tax dollars to pay those same scientists and engineers to roll back those public health protections.  

What’s Driving This?

Why is the Trump administration EPA doing that? It isn’t to keep the cost of energy down because if it were, EPA would support solar and wind energy, which are the cheapest forms of energy and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions. No, it isn’t about public health or environmental protection, but instead to prop up the uneconomical, polluting fossil fuel industry.   

What is the U.S. EPA proposing to do?  The proposed new rule would:

• Exempt hundreds of dangerous coal ash dumps from all regulation. EPA refers to these older, dry dumps as Coal Combustion Residual Management Units (CCRMU). They are found at nearly every coal plant site and are known to be contaminating groundwater. 

• Grant state agencies and EPA regional offices broad discretion to deviate from established, effective monitoring and cleanup requirements at the request of the coal power industry. The proposed rule creates permit exemptions and variances with weak standards that will likely result in no cleanup being required at many sites. 

• Allow companies to assess groundwater contamination 150 or more meters from a coal ash dump rather than at the dump’s edge, effectively permitting a zone of contamination. EPA even suggested that it might be appropriate to move monitoring as far as the boundary of these large power plant sites. 

• Allow states and EPA to increase the amount of cobalt, lithium, molybdenum and lead permitted in coal ash-contaminated water above federal safe standards. 

• Permit companies to leave coal ash in dumps even when it is known to be in contact with groundwater and leaking from the site. The current rules forbid leaving coal ash stored in contact with groundwater, because of the threat to nearby waterways, wells, and communities. 

• Delay the closure and cleanup of more than a hundred legacy coal ash dumps by removing deadlines and allowing permitting authorities to wait years before establishing standards or simply deciding not to require closure and cleanup. 

• Remove all safety standards for “piles” of coal ash waste no matter how large they are or where they are located. Waste piles are currently regulated as landfills because they present the same risks and the rule requires liners, monitoring, dust control, closure, and cleanup for them. Under the proposed rule, utilities would be able to create massive piles of coal ash with no responsibility whatsoever for addressing the serious risks they pose. 

• Eliminate restrictions on the use of coal ash as a substitute for clean soil in any location, even in places such as parks, playgrounds, residential developments and hospitals, despite high levels of arsenic and radium in coal ash. 

How to Take Action

How can you weigh in against this horrible proposal?  EPA is taking public comment on this proposal through June 12. Instructions for submitting comments can be found below.

SUBMIT PUBLIC COMMENT

You can also sign up to testify virtually against this proposal on May 28, 2026. The sign-up link can be found below.

SIGN-UP TO TESTIFY

You don’t need to be an expert to testify. Just share with U.S. EPA your concerns about the impact of leaking coal ash pits on your health and the health of your family and community. You can also take the opportunity to let EPA know that you support investment in solar and wind power and other renewable fuels that will bring down the cost of your electric bill and will also reduce the speed at which climate change is occurring.   

If, as it claims, U.S. EPA wants to improve grid reliability, it should work with the Department of Energy to facilitate development of clean energy sources, such as wind and solar. Instead, the Trump administration is preventing those clean energy sources from being permitted and built, demonstrating clearly that it is giving handouts to the fossil fuel industry, not protecting public health or the environment. ELPC opposes this proposed rule because it is inconsistent with EPA’s mission and threatens public health.