The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to extend compliance dates for coal-fired plants subject to wastewater zero-discharge standards, according to a court filing from the agency. President Trump’s new look EPA has claimed the 2024 Steam Electric Effluent Limitations Guidelines (ELG) rule as an undue burden on plant owners. The rule establishes stricter discharge standards for certain types of wastewater generated at coal plants. including flue gas desulphurization (FGD) wastewater, bottom ash transport water and combustion residual leachate (CRL).
The EPA last week asked the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to pause litigation against the rule until 30 days after the agency completes a rulemaking process to extend the rule’s compliance deadlines. This first rulemaking, expected to be finalised by the end of 2025, would push back key dates, allow transitions between compliance alternatives and seek more data on the rule’s zero-discharge technology requirements. A second, later, rulemaking would consider revising limits for unmanaged combustion residual leachate and possibly the zero-discharge standards themselves.
Wastewater discharges from coal plants can include toxic and bio-accumulative pollutants such as selenium, mercury, arsenic and nickel, halogen compounds such as bromide, chloride and iodide, nutrients and total dissolved solids.
The EPA under former president Joe Biden claimed that the 2024 regulation would reduce pollutant discharges by an additional approximately 660 to 672 million pounds per year. The rule set compliance deadlines of 8 July 2024 to 31 December 2029 for direct dischargers, and 9 May 2027 for pretreatment standards.
Changes under Trump
Under Trump, however, the agency has pledged to ease environmental regulations on the power sector. The EPA has already proposed rolling back several regulations that would affect coal-fired generation. Notably, this includes the EPA power plant rule, which would require the longest-running existing coal-fired units and most heavily utilized new gas turbines to implement carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS) by various compliance dates in the 2030s.
The EPA also proposed weakening a regulation that requires power plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic (MATS) pollutants. The EPA intends to finalise action on this proposal by December 2025. The Trump administration has already granted exemptions to 47 companies (representing at least 66 coal plants) from MATS standards. The exemption runs from 8 July 2027 to 8 July 2029. Many coal-fired plants added pollution-control systems in the previous decade to comply with MATS regulations.
Trump has long promised to boost the take up of what he calls ‘beautiful’ coal to fire power plants and for other uses, but the industry has been in decline for decades. While some plants may stay open longer than originally anticipated, most others still have plans to retire or be repowered to natural gas. There seems to be no appetite to build new coal power in the USA.
