"Even as coal ash storage basins are leaking massive amounts of pollution in the wake of Hurricane Florence, the coal industry is working on a novel legal strategy to stop the federal regulation of this toxic byproduct of coal combustion. The very same week that coal ash turned some river water in North Carolina into gray pudding and the pollution amassed to the point that it could be seen from space, coal companies have been successfully limiting their liability for this contamination under the Clean Water Act.
The coal industry was already enjoying a banner year under the Trump administration — one capped by the rollback of a 2015 Environmental Protection Agency rule that had set basic limitations on the disposal of coal ash. The waste contains carcinogens and neurotoxins, including arsenic, boron, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, lead, lithium, and mercury, and is often stored in unlined pits.
The 2015 rule required that any coal ash storage facility within five feet of a groundwater aquifer be closed. The new rule, which the EPA finalized in July, extended the time coal companies have to close those ash ponds by 12 months, allowed states to suspend the monitoring of some groundwater near coal ash waste sites, and removed a requirement that only engineers can sign off on changes to coal ash ponds."
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