Concerned citizens will have a chance this week to tell President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not to let coal power plants dump toxins into our waters.

Just last month, the EPA released its proposal to let these plants get away with not installing critical water pollution control equipment. The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) called the proposed rule change “a dangerous and misguided rollback of decades-overdue protections against toxic wastewater pollution of our rivers and lakes from coal-fired power plants. With this proposed rule, EPA bends over backward to let polluting power plants drag their feet on installing long-available pollution controls — or get out of doing so entirely. At industry’s request, this proposal will allow polluters to dump more arsenic, mercury, and selenium into our lakes and rivers — even though available technologies to control this pollution have been demonstrated at power plants across the South and the nation.”

The EPA is holding a virtual public hearing on the proposed rule changes, this Thursday, December 19, from 1 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Sign up to participate here! If you can’t participate then, the public comment period for written comments extends until January 21. Submit written comments here.

In either case, the message is the same: Don’t let coal power plants dump toxins in our water!

Some important talking points:

• Weakening important wastewater treatment requirements at coal plants would give utilities like Duke Energy a free pass to dump toxic pollution into rivers and lakes.
  
• In North Carolina, Duke Energy already has installed the more protective technologies at many sites, so it should be required to use it. There’s no reason for EPA to weaken those protections when utilities are already implementing the required technology.
  
• Coal-fired power plants produce at least 30% of all toxic water pollution from all the industries in America.
  
• Communities across North Carolina have suffered from pollution from coal plants for decades. Wastewater introduced carcinogens into drinking water supplies and contaminated fish with selenium. Minority and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by this pollution.