Clean Water — News & Analysis

EPA delays coal plant wastewater rules; 660 million pounds of pollutants to continue flowing annually (September 29, 2025)

September 29, 2025 — The EPA announced it would delay by five years the implementation of updated Effluent Limitation Guidelines (ELGs) for coal-fired power plants — standards that would have required plants to substantially reduce the amount of arsenic, mercury, bromide, and other toxic heavy metals they discharge directly into U.S. rivers, lakes, and streams that serve as sources of drinking water for communities downstream. The delay was finalized in early 2026, after a public comment period.

By the EPA's own estimate, the delay meant 660 million pounds of pollutants would continue being discharged into U.S. waterways every year compared to what the updated standards would have required. Coal-fired power plants are among the largest sources of toxic pollutants in U.S. surface waters; before 2015, there were no national limits on toxic pollutants in their wastewater discharges at all. The 2024 update — the product of years of scientific review and Earthjustice litigation — would have required plants to either treat their wastewater to modern standards or cease burning coal by 2034. The Trump EPA proposed extending the compliance deadline and providing additional loopholes for plants claiming they would retire soon.

The American Water Works Association — which supplies roughly 80 percent of North America's drinking water — had filed joint comments with Clean Water Action and nursing organizations urging the EPA to maintain the protective standards, citing the direct relationship between coal plant discharges and the cost and difficulty of treating drinking water downstream. Municipal water utilities in coal-heavy states reported having spent millions on advanced treatment systems specifically to handle bromide and other coal plant pollutants that, under the original rule, the plants themselves would have been required to eliminate.