Coalition Sues Trump EPA Over Illegal Repeal of Mercury and Air Toxics Standards

A coalition of public health, environmental, and community advocates filed a lawsuit today challenging the Trump administration’s repeal of standards that limit brain-damaging mercury, lead, and other hazardous air pollution from coal-fired power plants. Since EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) took effect in 2015, they’ve driven down dangerous mercury pollution from power plants by more than 90%. The standards have also delivered significant public health benefits, lowering the risk of cancer, heart and lung disease, and premature death.

The following is a statement from the coalition challenging the repeal in court:

“The repeal of these protections will mean more asthma attacks, emergency room visits, and premature deaths. This administration is not just rolling back rules, it is eliminating the monitoring infrastructure needed to know what is coming out of these smokestacks in the first place. It is allowing coal plants to spew out more neurotoxic mercury into our air and food supply, while simultaneously keeping the communities most at risk in the dark about how serious that threat is. This is a betrayal of the EPA’s core mission.”

The repeal of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards follows a two-year exemption from the protections that the Trump administration granted to many coal plants, even though, according to the EPA’s own record, 93% of US coal capacity had already met or were on track to meet those standards.

Since the Trump administration gave the country’s dirtiest coal plants a free pass, sulfur dioxide emissions have increased 18% nationally and neurotoxic mercury emissions have risen 9%. The sulfur dioxide spike was the second-largest single-year jump by percentage since EPA began publishing this data 30 years ago.

Today’s lawsuit also challenges EPA’s rollback of real-time continuous emissions monitoring at power plants, which would have given communities accurate real-time data on the pollution they’re breathing and a stronger tool for enforcing compliance. The repeal violates the Clean Air Act, ignores the scientific record, and abandons safeguards that protect communities living near coal plants and downwind of their pollution.

The lawsuit was filed today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by Earthjustice (representing Air Alliance Houston, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Clean Air Council, Kentucky Resources Council, Montana Environmental Information Center and Downwinders at Risk), Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, Clean Air Task Force (representing some of the other groups), Clean Wisconsin, Conservation Law Foundation, Dakota Resource Council, Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental Law and Policy Center, Natural Resources Council of Maine, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), Physicians for Social Responsibility, Sierra Club and Southern Environmental Law Center (representing some of the other groups).