On January 15, a group of utility companies wrote a letter to Lee Zeldin, then president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. “We provide the electricity for millions of homes, businesses, and institutions across the U.S., create thousands of good-paying jobs, and drive economic progress and American prosperity,” the letter stated, alluding to avoiding enforcement of pollution regulations.

After the polite opening, they got right to their main request: “Two matters in particular call for immediate action: (1) regulations on greenhouse gas (‘GHG’) emissions from existing coal-fired and new natural-gas power plants that mandate a carbon capture technology that has not been adequately demonstrated and (2) the unprecedented expansion of the federal regulation of coal combustion residuals (‘CCR’).”

The companies contend that the federal government has overstepped its authority in its enforcement of these two areas of regulation. The letter asked Zeldin to go easy on them — by avoiding enforcement of pollution regulations and delivering the regulatory authority back to states and rescinding a 2024 rule that mandated cleanup of coal ash at inactive power plants.

What the power companies call “coal combustion residuals,” and describe as “a natural byproduct of generating electricity with coal … used for beneficial purposes in U.S. construction and manufacturing,” is known more colloquially as coal ash — a toxic mixture of heavy metals like arsenic and mercury, which, because coal plants are usually built near bodies of water, often comes in contact with groundwater when it is buried in an unlined pit. Over the last century and a half of American coal power generation, power companies have dumped coal ash at hundreds of active and inactive power plants across the country.

Zeldin is now the administrator of the EPA, and it appears the power companies are getting their wish. Amid a barrage of press releases that, on March 12, proposed 31 deregulatory actions, were two that seem designed to significantly weaken enforcement of pollution regulations, particularly coal ash regulations, environmental attorneys told Grist.

Read the full article about the enforcement of pollution regulations by Gautama Mehta at Grist.