The Environmental Protection Agency told a federal court this week that, after reviewing industry complaints, the agency plans to rewrite rules imposing federal limits on toxic metals in wastewater discharged from power plants.
The new standards the EPA is seeking to revise were finalized in 2015 to modernize 1982 rules on toxic discharges produced by coal-burning power plants under the Clean Water Act. In April, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced he was considering whether to initiate a rule-making to revise the rule.
In a Monday court filing with the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the agency said it will review the rule at the behest of the Utility Water Act Group, an organization composed of power plant-owning electric utilities and the U.S. Small Business Administration. The wastewater released from coal-fired power plants into rivers and lakes typically contains highly toxic heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, mercury, and selenium.
In the court filing, the EPA said it plans to conduct a rule-making to revise the rules crafted by the Obama EPA. Because the agency plans to rewrite the rule, Pruitt asked the appeals court to halt litigation over the wastewater rule.
The EPA administrator said in an April statement “some of our nation’s largest job producers have objected to this rule, saying the requirements set by the Obama administration are not economically or technologically feasible within the proscribed [sic] timeframe.”
Industry advocates have blamed more stringent environmental rules for the premature retirement of coal-fired power plants. But the Obama EPA estimated that only about 12 percent of the nation’s steam electric power plants would have to make new investments to meet the higher standards.
Based on Obama EPA estimates, the 2015 rule would prevent more than 1 billion pounds of pollutants from being discharged into the nation’s rivers and lakes each year. Electric generating plants dump 64,400 pounds of lead, 2,820 pounds of mercury, 79,200 pounds of arsenic, and 1,970,000 pounds of aluminum into the country’s waterways every year. Some of these pollutants, including arsenic, are known carcinogens, while others, such as lead, have been linked to developmental and reproductive problems. This pollution has also been linked to fish die-offs, the EPA explained in 2015.
The Trump administration has launched a series of reviews of environmental rules, including smog and mercury restrictions and the Clean Water Rule. Similar to the wastewater rule, where those rules were being litigated in the courts, the administration asked judges to delay rulings and hearings while the regulations are reviewed.
Attached to this week’s court filing was a letter Pruitt sent to the Utility Water Group and the Small Business Administration letting them know that “after carefully considering your petitions, I have decided that it is appropriate and in the public interest to conduct a rule-making to potentially revise the new, more stringent Best Available Technology Economically Achievable effluent limitations and Pretreatment Standards for Existing Sources in the 2015 rule that apply to bottom ash transport water and flue gas desulfurization wastewater.”
As part of the rule-making process, the EPA will provide notice and an opportunity for public comment on any proposed revisions to the 2015 final rule, Pruitt said in the letter.