SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
coal ash
'We Don't Have Time for This': New Biden Power Sector Rules Spare Existing Gas Plants
"EPA must tackle carbon emissions from existing gas-fired power plants—soon to be the largest source of power sector carbon emissions," one campaigner said.
Apr 25, 2024
President Joe Biden's Environmental Protection Agency announced a final quartet of rules on Thursday to limit climate-warming emissions from existing coal and new gas-powered plants, as well as reduce mercury, wastewater, and coal ash pollution from coal facilities.
While several environmental groups and climate advocates praised the new rules, others pointed out that they still exclude emissions from existing gas-powered plants, which are currently the nation's leading source of electricity. A rule on these plants has been pushed into the future, likely until after the November election, which means they may not be regulated for years if pro-fossil fuel Republican Donald Trump retakes the White House.
"We don't have time for this half-assed BS, EPA!" Genevieve Guenther, founding director of End Climate Silence, wrote on social media. "Later is too late."
"As critical as these carbon rules are, the agency's job is not yet done."
The carbon dioxide rule is the first federal rule to limit climate pollution from currently running coal plants, according toThe Associated Press. It mandates that coal plants that intend to operate past 2039 and new gas-powered plants must cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 90% by that date. The EPA calculates that this would cut CO2 emissions by 1.38 billion metric tons by 2047, which is equal to taking 328 million gas-powered cars off the road or cancelling power sector emissions for almost a year. By the same date, it would cost the industry $19 billion to comply, but generate a net $370 billion in economic benefits due to reduced costs from healthcare and extreme weather. It would also prevent as many as 1,200 early deaths and 1,900 new asthma cases in 2035 alone.
The effect of the rule would be to force coal plants to either cease operations or find a way to remove their emissions with carbon, capture, and storage technology, according to the AP.
"The EPA's new rulemaking once again claims that carbon capture is an effective means of reducing climate pollution, even though it has never worked in the real world," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. "The Biden administration must take aggressive actions outside of this rulemaking to rein in fossil fuels—primarily by using existing federal authority to halt new drilling and fracking, and stop new fossil fuel infrastructure like power plants, pipelines, and export terminals. Pretending that carbon capture can dramatically reduce climate pollution is nothing but a dangerous fantasy."
The New York Times reported that the rules "could deliver a death blow" to coal, which has already declined from producing 52% of U.S. electricity in 1990 to 16.2% in 2023.
"EPA's new carbon standards for coal-fired power plants, coupled with parallel rulemakings cracking down on mercury and air toxics, coal ash, and toxic power plant wastewater discharge, rightly force the hand of all coal plants that remain: clean up or make an exit plan," Julie McNamara, a senior analyst and deputy policy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' (UCS) Climate and Energy Program, said in a statement.
Sunrise Movement communications director Stevie O'Hanlon called the regulations a "game-changer."
"These regulations are the kind of bold action that young people have been fighting for," O'Hanlon added. "President Biden must continue moving us toward ending the fossil fuel era: It's what science demands and what young people want to see from him."
The Biden administration has promised to eliminate power sector emissions by 2035; the new regulations, along with the Inflation Reduction Act, put the U.S. on course to slash those emissions by 75% by that date, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"The age of unbridled climate pollution from power plants is over," NRDC president and CEO Manish Bapna said in a statement. "These standards cut carbon emissions, at last, from the single largest industrial source. They fit hand-in-glove with the clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act to make sure we cut our carbon footprint. They will reduce other dangerous pollutants that foul the air we breathe and threaten our health."
"Congressional Republicans are already parroting the oil and gas lobby's talking points criticizing the rules."
Beyond fossil fuel control, the other three rules would strengthen toxic metals standards by 67% and mercury standards by 70%, cut coal wastewater pollution by more than 660 million pounds per year, and establish for the first time regulations on the disposal of coal ash in certain areas.
"The suite of power plant rules announced by EPA Administrator Regan represents a significant step forward in the fight for ambitious climate action and environmental justice," Chitra Kumar, the managing director of UCS' Climate and Energy Program, said in a statement. "Together, these rules help address a long-standing legacy of public health and environmental harms stemming from coal-fired power plants that scientific studies show have disproportionately hurt communities of color and low-income communities."
However, the groups also said the administration must move to regulate existing gas plants.
UCS' McNamara said that "as critical as these carbon rules are, the agency's job is not yet done."
"EPA must tackle carbon emissions from existing gas-fired power plants—soon to be the largest source of power sector carbon emissions—and it must look beyond carbon to reckon with the full suite of health-harming pollution these plants disproportionately and inequitably force on the communities that surround them," McNamara added. "When all the heavy costs of fossil fuel-fired power plants are tallied, it's unequivocally clear that clean energy presents the just and necessary path ahead."
NRDC's Bapna agreed, saying, "Existing gas-fired power plants are massive carbon emitters. They kick out other dangerous pollution that most hurts low-income communities and people of color. The EPA must cut all of that pollution—and soon—in a way that confronts the climate crisis and protects frontline communities."
At the same time, climate campaigners are already mobilizing to defend the new rules from Republican lawmakers who want to reverse them. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said she would introduce a Congressional Review Act resolution to "overturn the EPA's job-killing regulations announced today."
"Congressional Republicans are already parroting the oil and gas lobby's talking points criticizing the rules," Sunrise's O'Hanlon said. "They're making clear whose side they are on. They'd rather please the oil and gas CEOs who back their campaign than save tens of thousands of lives."
"The regulations are clear eyed about the science: To stop the climate crisis and save lives, we must move off fossil fuels," O'Hanlon continued. "Biden can keep building trust with young people by declaring a climate emergency and rejecting new fossil fuel projects in the coming months."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The EPA Must Strengthen the Coal Ash Draft Rule to Protect Community Health
The Coal Combustion Residuals Rule is a historic opportunity to ensure that corporations are held responsible for cleaning up their mess and ensuring my community and many others have access to clean drinking water.
Jul 18, 2023
Water is what binds us all. Lake Michigan gives us life but is increasingly being commodified and plundered for corporate greed.
Unfortunately, I know this reality all too well. I grew up in a community with poisoned water and air in Ottawa, Illinois, home to a radium superfund cluster and an epicenter of the frac sand mining industry. Now calling Michigan City, Indiana, my home, I treasure Lake Michigan, which supplies drinking water to myself and more than 10 million people across four states.
A new proposed legacy rule (the Coal Combustion Residuals Rule or CCR rule) by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded its public comment period on Monday, July 17—an historic opportunity to ensure that corporations are held responsible for cleaning up their mess and ensuring my community and many others have access to clean drinking water.
With each passing day, I fear that another industrial disaster will be too much for our lake and community to bear, a community where half of our population struggles to meet their basic needs.
Hundreds of toxic sites containing coal ash, the harmful waste from burning coal, sit just feet from the Great Lakes, including in Michigan City. Coal ash includes a poisonous soup of substances harmful to human health: arsenic, chromium, lead, and mercury among them. For decades, Northern Indiana Public Service Company has been operating its Michigan City Generating Station coal-burning plant along the lakeshore and is due to shut down by 2028. Here, a deteriorating steel seawall, battered by rising lake levels and shoreline erosion brought on by the worsening climate crisis, is the only barrier between the onsite coal ash fill and imminent catastrophe.
The CCR rule (the original 2015 rule governing coal ash waste disposal) was enacted in response to a lawsuit following the 2008 Kingston, Tennessee, coal ash spill that left more than 50 workers dead, hundreds ailing, and caused mass contamination across Uniontown, Alabama, a predominantly Black community. National Geographicreported this spill as the “largest industrial spill in the nation’s history–nearly ten times the size of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill two years later in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Despite this tragedy, and the ever-present reminders of the dangers of coal ash, many loopholes remain today that exempt half of the country’s toxic coal ash from federal regulation. Of the estimated 566 noxious landfills and ponds at 242 coal plants in 40 states that were excluded from the original rule, the vast majority of them are contaminating our drinking water, rivers, streams, and Great Lakes and harming the health of residents, environment, and economy nationwide. You might live near one without knowing it.
These loopholes have direct implications for us here in Michigan City. With each passing day, I fear that another industrial disaster will be too much for our lake and community to bear, a community where half of our population struggles to meet their basic needs. We do not have to look far to know what happens when disaster strikes the Great Lakes. In 2011, a bluff collapsed at the We Energies Oak Creek Power Plant in Wisconsin, dumping a pickup truck, dredging equipment, soil, and 120 yards of coal ash debris into the lake.
The clock ticks as the pollution in Michigan City continually seeps through the aging seawall. Yet the EPA has continuously stood idly by, failing in its mission to protect both people and the environment. So we sued them.
In 2023, led by Earthjustice, the Hoosier Environmental Council on behalf of Just Transition Northwest Indiana, the NAACP, and numerous other groups, we reached a settlement and won a commitment from the EPA to revisit the federal coal ash rule to consider closing the loopholes. This is our collective moment to get a law that truly protects communities, not corporations.
The EPA must close the remaining loopholes, most notably addressing inactive landfills at old power plant sites and ensuring robust implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of the CCR Rule. Otherwise, it will be more of the same, a useless draft rule that is only words on paper.
On June 28 the EPA held its first in-person hearing on the new proposed legacy rule. We mobilized hundreds of impacted residents and leaders from across the country, including our fellow members from the Climate Justice Alliance, to EPA’s public comment hearing in Chicago. Together, we braved the world’s worst air quality that day to share our stories and the impact of regulatory inaction. For nearly 8 hours, individuals from marginalized communities to health professionals, academics, organizations, and working-class residents took to the mic to give testimony. One by one, we bore witness to heart-wrenching accounts of cancers, rampant infertility, spoiled quality of life, loss, and betrayal.
This week, as public comment draws to a close, we demand, along with countless environmental justice communities, to see the EPA enact the strongest possible ruling. The EPA must close the remaining loopholes, most notably addressing inactive landfills at old power plant sites and ensuring robust implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of the CCR Rule. Otherwise, it will be more of the same, a useless draft rule that is only words on paper.
To date, the Biden Administration has set up historical commitments and resources to address environmental injustices such as Justice40 (reshaping hundreds of federal programs to ensure that 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments flow to “disadvantaged communities”) and the first-ever White House Office of Environmental Justice. Yet, we have not seen more vigorous enforcement and accountability of polluters and corporations who continue to profit at the expense of community and environmental health.
In fact, we have seen more support for the ailing fossil fuel industry from the Biden Administration, like relying heavily on carbon capture and storage (CCS) strategies and tax handouts that extend the life and profits of the fossil fuel corporations. Just one week before we rallied support at the EPA hearing, our fellow Climate Justice Alliance members were in Phoenix, Arizona, calling on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council to stop the Biden Administration’s overreliance on CCS and hydrogen projects to reduce emissions. These commitments mean nothing if the Biden Administration does not listen to those they are sworn to protect.
As the CCR Rule public comment period ends, this is a critical opportunity for the Biden Administration and the EPA to LISTEN to the powerful messages of impacted communities, meaningfully demonstrate their commitment to environmental justice, close ALL the loopholes in the federal rule, hold polluters accountable, and clean up our nation’s coal ash crisis for good.
Keep ReadingShow Less
As Coal Ash Spews Into N.C. River, More 'Ticking Time Bombs' Threaten
One of largest such spills in U.S. history shines light on 'high-risk' unregulated coal ash dumping grounds near waterways
Feb 06, 2014
As a busted pipe at a Duke Energy power plant continues to leak arsenic and lead-laden coal ash into the Dan River that flows through North Carolina and Virginia, residents are demanding that energy giants stop pumping their waterways with poison.
"Any coal ash dump next to a river or lake is a ticking time bomb, and Duke has lost all credibility when it says it's responsible to hold the fuse," Greenpeace Charlotte organizer Monica Embrey said while protesting outside of Duke Energy's headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina on Thursday along with dozens others. "Duke should clean up its mess in the Dan River and make sure that Charlotte isn't next."
"This could have been avoided. The Environmental Protection Agency has dragged its feet on the issue of coal ash for more than five years," said Matt Wasson, director of programs for Appalachian Voices, in an interview with Common Dreams. "We've been warning about this, commenting to the EPA in public comment periods, and talking to the press."
Duke Energy is still scrambling to repair the leak in a storm pipe at the bottom of a 27-acre coal ash pond. Duke Energy spokesperson Meghan Musgrave told Bloomberg on Tuesday that an estimated 10 percent of the pond's 992,000 tons of ash ( 99,200 tons) have spilled into the Dan River.
Yet Kerul Dyer of Rainforest Action Network told Common Dreams, "There is no way of knowing exactly how much has spilled already because the monitoring by Duke Energy is inadequate."
The coal ash had been stored at the Dan River Steam Station in Rockingham County, North Carolina, which was retired in 2012 and is now a dumping ground for residue left behind by burned coal. While the spill occurred Sunday, the company waited until Monday to publicly announce what appears to be the third largest coal ash spill in U.S. history.
"Here in North Carolina alone, we have 14 coal-fired power plants, each of which has one or more of these unlined, outdated coal ash impoundments," said Wasson. "And every one of these is unlined and built with really shoddy construction standards. We've known that a toxic material like coal ash has to be taken out of these."
The Sierra Club charges that, while big coal ash spills attract media attention, "dangerous contaminants are quietly seeping from coal ash dumps into groundwater supplies across the country or blowing into the air of communities, exposing people and wildlife to toxic substances."
Kara Dodson of Appalachian Voices previously told Common Dreams there is evidence that local residents were already getting sick from leaks and contamination from Duke Energy's ash dumping ground.
Coal ash is known to contain a toxic cocktail of dangerous heavy metals, including arsenic, mercury, lead, and boron. According to the EPA's own estimates, the ash spilled into the Dan River contained over 7,000 pounds of arsenic.
Eye witnesses say the ash has transformed the river into an unnatural gray sludge.
"Two miles downstream, the river is completely opaque, cloudy with this really unnatural ashen gray color, dark and milky," said Wasson. "If you scooped from the sediment from the bottom, all you get is coal ash. It appeared to me that entire bottom of river was covered in 6 to 12 inches of coal ash."
"We are also taking samples 20 miles downstream," he added. "One of our staff people last night said the thickness of ash on bottom is increasing a lot. It's like a lava flow of toxic material moving downstream at slow but steady pace."
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, there are 676 coal ash containment units at 240 facilities in the United States. Forty-five of the units are considered "high hazard," including ten Duke Energy units in North Carolina.
While the EPA floated the idea of regulating coal ash in 2010, it has dragged its feet and to date has released no rules regulating the dangerous residue. This is in part due to pressure from coal and utility companies. In 2009, Duke Energy lobbyist Bill Tyndall personally lobbied the Obama administration against regulating coal ash ponds, according to documents and statements highlighted by Greenpeace.
Environmental groups say the ability of coal companies to dispose of dangerous ash with no regulation highlights the danger, and power, of this industry. "The coal ash waste problem is widespread," said Dyer. It is another high risk factor in the coal industry overall."
Unedited footage of the spill in the Dan River can be seen below:
Eden, NC Coal Ash Spill - UNEDITED FOOTAGEDuke Energy said that 50000 to 82000 tons of coal ash and up to 27 million gallons of water were released from a pond at its ...
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular