Coal ash is what is left after coal is burned for electricity. It contains arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, lead, radium and selenium, and much of it sits in unlined ponds and landfills where it can reach groundwater. A 2024 rule set deadlines for identifying older disposal sites, monitoring the groundwater around them, and cleaning them up.
The Trump EPA has not repealed that rule. It has moved the deadlines, repeatedly, and has now proposed weakening the underlying standards.
On July 17, 2025 the EPA issued a direct final rule extending the groundwater monitoring deadline to August 8, 2029. It withdrew that rule on September 4, 2025 after receiving adverse comments, and continued through the ordinary proposal route instead. On November 25, 2025 it proposed granting 11 coal-fired plants an additional three years to dispose of coal ash in unlined ponds larger than 40 acres, allowing those facilities to operate past their scheduled retirement dates.
In February 2026 the EPA finalized a rule delaying the deadlines for legacy coal ash sites. Groundwater monitoring moved from May 2028 to February 2031, and the cleanup deadline was extended to February 2032, a delay of 33 months. The rule covers roughly 110 coal-fired generating units and 189 disposal sites. The agency said the new dates reflect “the Agency's assessment of the time required to complete the groundwater monitoring requirements and to provide time for unforeseen and facility-specific delay.”
On April 9, 2026 the EPA proposed going further: weakening the 2024 standards for legacy surface impoundments and landfills, altering the definition of beneficial use, allowing groundwater monitoring wells to sit 150 meters or more from a dump's edge, and removing cleanup deadlines for more than 100 legacy sites. Administrator Lee Zeldin framed the proposal in terms of restoring American energy dominance. As of this writing it is a proposal, not a final rule.
Lisa Evans of Earthjustice put the objection in practical terms: “The longer industry delays, the more toxic waste enters our water, and the more difficult cleanup becomes.” Becky Hammer of the NRDC said the proposal would “turn back the clock on basic protections that have helped keep toxic coal ash pollution out of our groundwater and drinking water supplies,” adding that “stopping the monitoring just continues to keep the problem hidden as it impacts communities across the country.”
The 2008 Kingston, Tennessee spill, which released 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash into the Emory River, is the reason the federal rules exist. Communities near coal ash sites are disproportionately low-income (see EPA Revokes the 2009 Endangerment Finding That Underpins Federal Greenhouse Gas Rules and The EPA Falls to a 40-Year Staffing Low After Losing More Than 4,000 Employees, With Outsized Losses Among Ph.D.s and Health Staff).