2 Billion Tons Of Toxic Coal Ash Across The US In 1400 Sites; Shitstain Removing Feds From Regulating These Toxins
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Due to Environmental Protection Agency regulations set by the Obama administration in 2015, and by the Biden administration in 2024, the coal ash disposal site at the Cayuga station was closed, and the ash removed. Yet across Indiana several other ash disposal sites remain operational, including F.B. Culley and Rockport on the Ohio River as well as Gibson and Merom near the Wabash. Most were scheduled to close or shift away from burning coal under the Biden-era rules that shut down Cayuga. But the Trump administration’s plan to keep old coal plants from closing and limit the reach of Clean Air restrictions to encourage new coal-fired plants to be built are compelling power companies to reconsider.
The president’s allegiance to coal-fired electricity and its potential effect on coal ash cleanups represent a towering reversal of federal policy on managing one of the country’s most serious water pollution challenges. About 10 percent of the more than 45 billion tons of coal burned in the United States since 1970, most of it for electricity, ends up as coal ash, one of the nation’s largest waste streams. Billions of tons of ash have been scrubbed from air, flushed from the bottom of furnaces and washed and dried from pollution control equipment. The waste, an estimated 2 billion tons, has been spread, piled and poured into more than 1,400 big dump sites across the nation and used as fill to build roads, reclaim mines and construct subdivisions and golf courses.
With coal declining as a fuel for electricity, so is the amount of ash, which fell to 70 million tons in 2024, down from a peak of more than 130 million tons in 2008, according to the American Coal Ash Association. In recent years, about half has been directed to “beneficial uses,” including the making of concrete and wall board. Largely due to heavy lobbying in Washington, coal and utility industry executives — and their allies in Congress — held off for nearly half a century the government’s effort to issue rules for safely handling and disposing of the ash waste stream. Left to their own devices, utilities produced a national health and environmental menace in plain view.
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President Trump’s opposition to the government’s effort to clean up coal ash piles is well-recognized. During his first term the president proposed extending the deadline for utilities to cleaning up their ash piles. Now, as part of his second term plan to revitalize the coal-fired sector, the EPA announced on March 12 that it “will work with state partners to place implementation of the coal ash regulations more fully into state hands.” The agency’s proposal to make it a state responsibility for coal ash cleanup, the EPA said, will allow governments to customize disposal programs to their specific needs without endangering the environment or human health. What’s happening in response in Indiana is a microcosm of what could occur in other states where large coal-ash piles are located. On the same day as the EPA announcement, Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed an executive order ensuring that his state’s environmental policies, including those on coal ash disposal, would be no more stringent than mandated by national standards established in 2015 by the Obama administration. It is unclear what will happen if those federal regulations are rolled back, but historical precedent gives reason for concern.
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https://www.circleofblue.org/2025/water-policy-politics/president-trump-wants-coal-ash-in-state-hands/