July, 18 2018, 12:00am EDT
![Earthjustice](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012672/origin.jpg)
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Lisa Evans, Earthjustice, (978) 548-8645 or levans@earthjustice.org, Larissa Liebmann, Waterkeeper Alliance, (212) 747-0622 x 122 or LLiebmann@waterkeeper.org, Brian Willis, Sierra Club, (202) 895-0420 x103 or brian.willis@sierraclub.org, Michael Kelly, Clean Water Action, (202) 895-0420 x103 or mkelly@cleanwater.org, Andrew Rehn, Prairie Rivers Network, (217) 344-2371 x 208 or arehn@prairierivers.org, Tim Maloney, Hoosier Environmental Council, (812) 369-8677, Tom Pelton, Environmental Integrity Project, (443) 510-2574 or tpelton@environmentalintegrity.org, Ruth Santiago, Comite Dialogo Ambiental, Inc., (781) 312-2223 or rstgo2@gmail.com
Trump Administration's New Rule Weakens Toxic Coal Ash Pollution Safeguards
EPA Announcement Puts People at Increased Risk to Cancer, Heart Disease, Stroke, Brain Damage
WASHINGTON
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed yesterday the first rule of its two-part rulemaking to weaken the first-ever federal regulations that provide health and environmental safeguards for communities near toxic coal ash waste dumps. The rule was made public this morning.
The new rule:
- Fails to add boron, a common and dangerous coal ash contaminant, to the list of pollutants that will drive cleanup of groundwater at contaminated sites nationwide.
- Weakens drinking water protection standards by removing strong national limits for groundwater contamination for several hazardous chemicals, namely lead, cobalt, lithium and molybdenum.
- Extends compliance deadlines for closing unlined leaking ash ponds and ash ponds within five feet of groundwater and permits hundreds of leaking ponds to continue to operate.
- Permits state officials to terminate groundwater monitoring.
- Allows state officials to judge whether sites are following the rules instead of qualified, professional engineers.
All of these changes significantly weaken the protections established in 2015. Every single one of the changes is in response to an industry petition filed with the Trump administration in 2017.
Coal ash is the toxic waste left over from hundreds of coal-burning power plants throughout the United States. For decades, coal ash has been dumped into giant pits, where toxic chemicals seep into water and blow into the air. Coal ash waste is filled with some of some of the deadliest known toxic chemicals, including heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and chromium. The toxics raise the risk for cancer, heart disease, and stroke, and can inflict permanent brain damage on children.
"Today's rule indicates Wheeler is continuing EPA's radical drive to remove critical health protections at the behest of industry," said Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans. "This is the first major rule signed during Andrew Wheeler's time running the EPA, and his true colors are shining through. Wheeler is ignoring the serious health threats to hundreds of communities at risk from contaminated drinking water."
"This indefensible gutting of our nation's first-ever coal ash pollution control rule cements the shameful environmental legacy of the Trump Administration," said Lisa Hallowell, Senior Attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project. "Today's action opens the door for weakened monitoring and cleanup standards, which means - in no uncertain terms - that the public and the environment on which we all depend will be in harm's way."
In October 2015, the first-ever EPA safeguards to protect communities near coal ash dumps went into effect after Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of public interest groups and a Native American tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes. The EPA received more than a half-million comments from people supporting the safeguards that the EPA gutted today.
EPA is finalizing this rollback of coal ash protections just as the nation is discovering that nearly all coal ash ponds and landfills are leaking toxic pollutants to groundwater. The EPA's 2015 coal ash rule required utilities to test the water near their coal ash dumps to make sure hazardous chemicals were not leaking into drinking water sources. Coal ash contains concentrated levels of heavy metals, which are released to water when the ash is dumped into unlined pits. According to recently released industry data, about 95 percent of all the dump sites have contaminated groundwater with toxins like arsenic and boron to levels the EPA has deemed unsafe to drink.
We now know that the coal ash dumps are leaking, but EPA is looking the other way. Requirements to close these leaking dump sites and to clean up poisoned water were set to go into effect later in 2018, but the new rule weakens cleanup standards and pushes closure and cleanup dates to 2020.
"We will not stand by and allow the Trump Administration to give carte blanche to well-funded polluters that threaten the water of thousands of communities across our country with their toxic coal ash," said Dalal Aboulhosn, Sierra Club's Deputy Legislative Director for Land and Water. "We'll use every means we have to beat back this latest attempt to weaken basic clean water protections for working families, farmers, and outdoor businesses - whose lives and livelihoods are being threatened by coal ash every day. Our work will not be completed until every coal ash pit is properly secured and every local resident has access to an online monitor that confirms it."
"This administration is doing everything it can to give coal a free ride, including dismantling our bare minimum protections," said Larissa Liebmann, staff attorney at Waterkeeper Alliance. "The corporate dollars saved by weakening the CCR rule will be born by the communities living near coal ash disposal sites -- they will pay the costs of contaminated drinking water and polluted waterways."
"EPA failed for three decades to protect our water from toxic coal plants and now the Trump administration is turning back the clock, doubling down on that failure, and leaving communities in jeopardy," said Jennifer Peters, Clean Water Action's National Water Programs Director. "Trump clearly doesn't care who his administration puts at risk as long as he can give handouts to the corporate polluters who write the checks for re-election campaigns."
The EPA and Wheeler are caving to pressure from polluters who have fought hard against common-sense pollution protections for coal ash dumps. Over 1,400 coal ash waste dumps are spread across the nation, and at almost every site, the toxic waste has contaminated water sources.
"These changes aren't going to help Illinois," said Andrew Rehn of the Prairie Rivers Network. "We need professional engineers, not political appointees or polluters, making decisions about the safety and clean up of coal ash."
"Decades of regulatory inaction on coal ash disposal has left Indiana with a toxic legacy of serious groundwater contamination - with unsafe levels of arsenic, lead, boron, and radium, among other contaminants -- confirmed at fifteen disposal sites in Indiana located on the shores of the White River, the Wabash River, Kankakee River, the Ohio River and Lake Michigan," said Tim Maloney of Hoosier Environmental Council. "It is simply negligent for the EPA to roll back the long-overdue federal coal ash standards that the agency adopted in 2015, and would result in this pollution being left in place to continue contaminating our waterways and drinking water sources for many years to come."
Federal protections are critical, because the dumps are ticking time bombs. In 2008, the single-largest toxic waste spill in U.S. history happened when a billion gallons of coal ash sludge burst through a dam at the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston plant and covered 300 acres, destroying dozens of homes. In 2014, a portion of a coal ash dump in North Carolina collapsed, fouling 80 miles of the Dan River with toxic sludge.
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
800-584-6460LATEST NEWS
Ralph Nader to New York Judge: Prison Time for Trump 'More Imperative Than Ever'
"Your task is to ensure that the sentence matches the character of the offender, including his clear and present danger to the peaceful transfer of presidential power."
Jul 03, 2024
Legendary consumer advocate and attorney Ralph Nader is calling on the New York judge who presided over Donald Trump's hush money trial to hit the former president with a prison sentence, arguing the case for jail time is "open and shut" and that the defendant poses a grave threat to democracy.
"The law endows you with the discretion to sentence Mr. Trump to prison up to four years based upon the circumstances of the felonies and the obligatory appraisal of the character of the offender after a customary investigation—time-honored sentencing considerations," Nader and Bruce Fein, an attorney who specializes in constitutional law, wrote in a letter to New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.
Nader released the letter, dated June 28, on the day the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority ruled that current and former presidents are entitled to sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution—a decision that threw a wrench in the hush money proceedings and the separate election-subversion case led by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
On Tuesday, Merchan granted a request from Trump's legal team to delay the presumptive GOP presidential nominee's sentencing in the hush money case—in which he was found guilty on 34 felony counts—and consider how the Supreme Court's immunity ruling could impact the proceedings. Trump is now scheduled to be sentenced on September 18, "if such is still necessary," Merchan announced.
Nader argued in a social media post that "a prison sentence is more imperative than ever."
In light of the Supreme Court blocking all avenues of accountability for Trump with its decision in Trump v. United States, Judge Merchan is the last best hope to preserve the Republic from its overthrow by Donald Trump. See our letter to Judge Merchan, which explains why a…
— Ralph Nader (@RalphNader) July 1, 2024
In their letter to Merchan, Nader and Fein wrote that "the future of the United States will be materially influenced by your sentencing Donald J. Trump."
"Mr. Trump threatens a counter-revolution against the American Revolution and the United States Constitution in favor of executive absolutism indistinguishable from French King Louis XIV," Nader and Fein continued. "Mr. Trump and his would-be vice-presidential running mates have repeatedly refused to endorse the peaceful transfer of presidential power after the 2024 presidential election if Mr. Trump shouts electoral fraud without any testing in courts of law or other due process."
"Do not be oblivious to what all the world can see. Mr. Trump covets dictatorial powers like his friend Vladimir Putin in Russia," they added. "Germany's Weimar Republic invited its demise by ignoring Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, a playbook for the Nazi ascent to absolute power for which the world paid a staggering price. Your task is to ensure that the sentence matches the character of the offender, including his clear and present danger to the peaceful transfer of presidential power. Set a standard to which the wise and honest judge may repair with a jail term—at least a serious fraction of the four-year statutory maximum."
A jail term would not necessarily end Trump's bid for another four years in the White House, and legal experts have struggled to answer the question of what would happen if the former president was elected from prison.
"I don't think that the Framers ever thought we were going to be in this situation," Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, toldThe New York Times last month.
Nader, a four-time presidential candidate, has vocally warned of the fascist threat posed by Trump and the GOP, a threat he says has only grown in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. United States. Trump's advisers have already signaled that the former president intends to exploit the high court's ruling if he wins in November.
"The six Supreme Court dictators have issued an opinion that 'the king can do no wrong,'" Nader wrote in response to the decision. "They have given absolute immunity to presidents to use the Insurrection Act and the vague national emergency and national security declarations to suppress citizen protests and their political opponents."
"Today will live in infamy as a dictatorial, judicial putsch against the American Republic," Nader added. "Our founders, led by Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and George Washington would have been stunned."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Complicit in the Genocide': First Muslim Biden Appointee Resigns Over Gaza
"This administration has chosen to uphold the status quo instead of listening to the diverse voices of staff urgently demanding freedom and justice for Palestinians."
Jul 02, 2024
A political appointee at the U.S. Interior Department on Tuesday became the youngest—and first Muslim American—appointee of President Joe Biden's to resign as his administration continues to "fund and enable Israel's genocide of Palestinians."
"Marginalized communities in our country have long been denied the justice they deserve. I joined the Biden-Harris administration with the belief that my voice and diverse perspective would lend a hand in the pursuit of that justice," Special Assistant and Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Maryam Hassanein, 24, said in a statement.
"However, over the past nine months of Israel's genocide in Gaza, this administration has chosen to uphold the status quo instead of listening to the diverse voices of staff urgently demanding freedom and justice for Palestinians," she added. "I am resigning today from my position as a Biden administration appointee in the Department of the Interior."
Hassanein toldHuffPost that she decided to resign because "I came to understand that even if the agency I'm working at is not producing foreign policy, serving in the administration in any capacity does essentially make you complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians."
Palestine defenders applauded Hassanein's resignation—which made her at least the 11th American official to step down over U.S. support for Israel's war on Gaza, according to HuffPost.
"We welcome this principled resignation by another Biden administration official who took up their post believing they could help the nation, but instead realized they were becoming complicit in the administration's enabling of the far-right Israeli government's genocide in Gaza," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"President Biden, whose administration has lost all credibility on the issue of human rights, must reverse course and end our nation's complicity in genocide, forced starvation, and ethnic cleansing," Awad added. "He must demand an immediate and permanent cease-fire, an end to the occupation, and justice for the Palestinian people."
The Biden administration has been Israel's staunchest supporter, even after 270 days of what United Nations officials, human rights experts, and countries led by South Africa in an International Court of Justice case all call a genocidal assault on Gaza's 2.3 million people. Despite this, Biden has approved billions of dollars in military assistance and provided diplomatic support for Israel.
According to Palestinian and international agencies, at least 37,925 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed by Israeli forces, while upward of 87,000 others have been wounded and at least 11,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of destroyed or damaged buildings.
Israel has also been accused of deliberately starving Gazans—dozens of whom have died of malnutrition—via a crippling siege and blockade of the coastal enclave.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Jared Golden Op-Ed on Trump Called 'Unconscionable Surrender to Fascism'
A political science professor described the Maine congressman's op-ed as "one of the most irresponsible things a Democratic member of Congress has written in recent memory."
Jul 02, 2024
Breaking with many of his fellow Democrats, Maine Congressman Jared Golden suggested Tuesday that former Republican President Donald Trump's return to the White House wouldn't threaten U.S. democracy—and was sharply ridiculed for that take.
"After the first presidential debate, lots of Democrats are panicking about whether President Joe Biden should step down as the party's nominee," Golden wrote in a Bangor Daily News op-ed. "Biden's poor performance in the debate was not a surprise. It also didn't rattle me as it has others, because the outcome of this election has been clear to me for months: While I don't plan to vote for him, Donald Trump is going to win. And I'm OK with that."
"Democrats' post-debate hand-wringing is based on the idea that a Trump victory is not just a political loss, but a unique threat to our democracy. I reject the premise," he continued. "Unlike Biden and many others, I refuse to participate in a campaign to scare voters with the idea that Trump will end our democratic system."
Golden—who represents the "Trump-friendly" 2nd District, a priority for Republicans this cycle—also referenced the insurrection incited by the presumptive Republican nominee after his 2020 loss to Biden, writing that "pearl-clutching about a Trump victory ignores the strength of our democracy. January 6, 2021, was a dark day. But Americans stood strong."
The backlash to Golden's op-ed was swift and strong, with Fordham University assistant political science professor Jacob Smith calling it "one of the most irresponsible things a Democratic member of Congress has written in recent memory."
Veteran journalist Mark Jacob said on social media that "Congressman Jared Golden, an alleged Democrat from Maine, waves the white flag against Trump in an unconscionable surrender to fascism. Maybe he thinks he can cut a deal. The cowards and quislings are making themselves known."
Some critics highlighted that the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority—which includes three Trump appointees—ruled Monday that Trump, and anyone else who occupies the Oval Office, has absolute immunity for "official acts." In her dissent, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that "the president is now a king above the law."
Trump celebrated the ruling and reportedly is prepared to embrace his expanded powers if he wins in November. The high court decision also jeopardizes Trump's recent felony conviction and three pending cases against him, including two that stem from his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
"Jared Golden's op-ed today may be one of the worst takes we've seen so far, particularly in light of the Supreme Court's decision yesterday," declared Young Democrats of America president Quentin Wathum-Ocama. "I'm astounded that the congressman has such an absurdly bad take and is apparently ready to give up on an election five months out."
Some journalists and Republicans suggested that Golden's op-ed may be politically motivated, considering the makeup of his district. His GOP challenger, former NASCAR driver Austin Theriault, said: "This is a very phony attempt to avoid accountability. Simple questions for Jared Golden: Does he support Joe Biden for president or not? Does Golden believe Biden is mentally competent or not? He won't say, because he puts politics ahead of Mainers."
Golden, who co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition, has a history of voting with Republicans on various climate, military, and student debt relief policies. His new opinion piece provoked calls for members of his own party to identify and rally around a write-in candidate "so Maine Democrats have an actual Democratic option in November."
Other Democrats in Congress have contributed to mounting warnings of the threat posed by Trump, who has said on the campaign trail that he would be a dictator on "day one" and "root out" those he called "radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country."
If elected this year, Trump is also expected to pursue the policy agenda of the Heritage Foundation-led 2025 Presidential Transition Project—or Project 2025—which the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism has described as a "far-right playbook for American authoritarianism."
Congressman Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that "Project 2025 is a threat to our nation. The conservative radical plan rolls back rights for everyone and allows blatant discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community. It's sickening, and we must do everything to prevent this destructive plan and Donald Trump at all costs."
Biden's poor performance in the debate with Trump last week has prompted some supporters to reaffirm the importance of his reelection, given the alternative, and others to suggest that he should be replaced ahead of the Democratic convention next month.
On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first Democrat in Congress to suggest that Biden should step aside.
"Too much is at stake to risk a Trump victory—too great a risk to assume that what could not be turned around in a year, what could not be turned around in the debate, can be turned around now," Doggett said. "President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2021. He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular