The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed two rules that would ease Obama-era requirements for disposal of two streams of waste that result from burning coal to produce electricity—the storage of coal ash and the discharge of contaminated water into waterways.
The Obama administration published regulations in 2015 after an unlined surface impoundment at a Tennessee Valley Authority coal-fired plant in Harriman, Tenn., ruptured in 2008 and released more than 1 billion gallons of coal ash. In 2014, a Duke Energy impoundment spilled 39,000 gallons of coal ash and 27,000 gallons of wastewater into the Dan River in North Carolina. The coal waste is known to contain arsenic, lead, mercury, chromium and other toxic substances.