The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed revisions to its rules regulating coal ash, a byproduct of burning coal that contains heavy metals toxic to people. The federal regulator says it hopes to change the rules to allow for “site-specific determinations,” something environmental advocates say could open the door to relaxed oversight and potentially disastrous consequences.
Nick Torrey is a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, a non-partisan legal advocacy group focused on climate and the environment.
“It's taking the whole concept of why we needed these protections in the first place and undermining them,” Torrey said. “And that's short sighted, because these are very dangerous sites. They're vulnerable to big storms and structural failures.”
Coal ash is a term used to describe a variety of waste, from soot to slag, that coal-fired power plants leave behind after burning through their fuel. It’s toxic, so it requires careful disposal in a secure place away from people. Many sites dump their coal ash in holding ponds.
In 2008, a dike holding back a coal ash pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in East Tennessee failed. Over 4 million tons of ash was released into the nearby Clinch River, destroying three homes and overrunning about 20 others.
It was the largest industrial spill in U.S. history. The TVA spent over $1 billion across seven years to clean up the site. Nearly 1,000 workers were brought in through a contractor to clean up the ash.
One of those workers was Ernest Hickman, the father of Jessica Waller-Downs. She says the contractor never gave her dad personal protective equipment to keep the ash out of his eyes or mouth.
“He actually worked waist-deep in it,” Waller-Downs said. “So he would come home covered in it. My mom would do his laundry … and that is how she came in contact with the ash.”
By 2016, she had watched both her middle-aged parents wither and die from their exposure to the ash. The health impacts on workers and their families across the region inspired rules enacted by the EPA in 2015 to keep another spill from happening. In 2024, the Biden administration effectively strengthened those rules by eliminating some exceptions.
Now the EPA says it wants to relax those rules. That coupled with the TVA's announcement earlier this year that it would double-down on coal-fired power plants by scrapping plans to retire the aging Kingston plant has Waller-Downs worried a spill could happen again.
“It’s infuriating,” she said. “I don't trust anybody in the government anymore. I have no trust with them.”
The Southern Environmental Law Center has also condemned the TVA’s plans to keep the Kingston plant running, calling it a “reliability problem.” Torrey says the relaxed coal ash rules could make matters even worse.
“This is basically saying we're opening the door to more coal ash being left in these unsafe lagoons where it was originally dumped,” Torrey said. “More ongoing pollution will result from inadequate monitoring, from inadequate cleanup requirements, and then you have the threat of increasingly severe storms.”
The TVA said in a statement that it supports the “site-specifc” approach proposed by the EPA.
“TVA supports efforts to ensure that coal ash regulations are grounded in science,” spokesperson Scott Brooks wrote. “TVA is an industry leader in safe, innovative coal ash management, implementing best practices before they were required and continuing to pioneer new technology to ensure our coal ash sites are protective of the environment and human health.”
Waller-Downs disagrees with the TVA’s statement.
“If they cared about safety, then why aren’t my parents here?”
The EPA’s proposed rule changes aren’t final. They will be open to written comments from the public for 60 days. The federal regulator will hold two online information sessions about the rules in mid-April. A public hearing will also be held, though the agency has yet to provide a date for it.
