By Valerie Volcovici
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s administration has asked a federal court to strike down 2024 soot limits for power plants and factories and separately delayed by three years a deadline for coal plants to clean up coal waste.
Critics called the moves a blatant retreat from important public-health protections. Soot has been linked to asthma and cardiovascular illness.
Last year, President Joe Biden’s EPA said the tighter annual standard of 9 micrograms per cubic meter would avoid more than 800,000 cases of asthma symptoms, 2,000 hospital visits and 4,500 premature deaths. Trump has championed reviving the coal industry.
In a filing on Monday, the EPA sided with 24 states led by Kentucky and industry groups including the National Association of Manufacturers that had sued the regulator to reverse the 2024 standard on soot, or fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5. Nearly 91% of existing coal plants already meet the toughened standard.
On Tuesday, the EPA announced a proposal to extend by three years the deadline for a small number of large coal plants to cease operation of coal-fired boilers and close unlined coal ash impoundments. The new deadline would be October 2031 “to promote electric grid reliability.”
The EPA will seek comments on the extension until January 7.
The EPA said in a statement that the 2024 rule costs “hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars to American citizens if allowed to be implemented” and was not based on a full review of available science.
“EPA will conduct a thorough review as required by the Clean Air Act,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
The Trump administration in March targeted soot as one of dozens of regulations it planned to roll back. In total, the agency announced more than 30 deregulatory measures in a dizzying succession of press releases.
The country’s dirtiest coal plants would be among the biggest beneficiaries from a rollback of soot limits. They include the Colstrip Power Plant in Montana, which the EPA says is the country’s only coal plant without modern pollution controls for particulate matter.
Environmental groups blasted the move away from the tighter EPA soot standard.
“EPA’s motion is a blatant attempt to avoid legal requirements for a rollback, in this case for one of the most impactful actions the agency has taken in recent years to protect public health,” said Hayden Hashimoto, attorney at the Clean Air Task Force.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Howard Goller and David Gregorio)
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