On July 19, the Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump announced a significant delay in enforcing Biden-era rules designed to monitor and clean up toxic coal ash pollution. The decision, which pushes compliance deadlines for utility companies by at least one year, marks another in a series of sweeping rollbacks by Trump’s second-term EPA—this time affecting regulations tied to public health, climate, and pesticide oversight. Environmental advocates warn the consequences will be severe, particularly for low-income and majority-Black communities already bearing the brunt of pollution from the coal industry.
The rollback of coal ash cleanup regulations is just one facet of the Trump administration’s broader deregulatory agenda. In recent weeks, the EPA has taken steps to undermine or reverse foundational environmental safeguards, including a proposal to repeal the agency’s landmark 2009 Endangerment Finding on greenhouse gases, and a move to re-approve dicamba, a controversial herbicide twice banned by federal courts due to its extensive crop and ecosystem damage.
Coal ash crisis: Delayed action with lasting harm
Coal ash, a byproduct of coal combustion at power plants, contains at least 17 toxic substances—including arsenic, mercury, lead, and selenium—that can contaminate groundwater and surface water. Despite these dangers, coal ash is not regulated as hazardous waste in the United States.
In February 2014, one of the worst coal ash disasters in U.S. history occurred when a leak at a retired Duke Energy power plant in Eden, North Carolina, released nearly 40,000 tons of coal ash and 27 million gallons of toxic wastewater into the Dan River. The spill coated riverbanks with gray sludge and contaminated the water supply for thousands of residents in North Carolina and Virginia.
The Obama administration responded by finalizing the first federal coal ash disposal rules in 2015. These guidelines aimed to prevent contamination by requiring utilities to line coal ash ponds and monitor groundwater. However, the rule failed to cover inactive facilities, and enforcement under Trump’s first term was lax. The Biden administration expanded the rule in 2023 to apply to all coal ash landfills and required utilities to report contamination by February 2026, install groundwater monitoring systems by May 2028, and begin drafting remediation plans where necessary.
Those requirements are now on hold. With the new extension, utilities have another year before needing to comply with even the most basic reporting and monitoring measures. “One more year of hazardous contaminants getting into the groundwater, and the more chemicals that get into the groundwater, the more difficult and expensive it is to remediate,” said Lisa Evans, senior counsel at Earthjustice.
The burden of this contamination falls disproportionately on communities of color and low-income residents. According to a 2019 NAACP report, while Black people make up only 15 percent of the national population, 78 percent live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant. In Kentucky—one of the top coal ash-producing states—86 percent of coal ash sites are located in low-income communities, communities of color, or both. During Trump’s first term, the state’s utility companies failed to comply with EPA rules, and state authorities did not enforce them.
On March 12, Trump’s EPA announced plans to “work with state partners to place implementation of the coal ash regulations more fully into state hands,” a move critics say will further weaken oversight and allow states with poor enforcement records to sidestep federal cleanup obligations.
Undermining climate law: The endangerment finding under threat
Just three days after the coal ash delay was announced, news emerged that the EPA is planning to revoke or rewrite the Endangerment Finding—a foundational 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” This scientific and legal determination underpins the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide, methane, and other heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act.
“They’re trying to completely defang the Clean Air Act by saying, ‘Well, this stuff’s just not dangerous.’ That claim is just mind-bogglingly contrary to the evidence,” said David Doniger, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, appointed by Trump in January, has signaled his intent to dismantle the finding. In March, he described the move as “the most consequential day of deregulation in American history.”
Environmental law professor Vicki Arroyo told The New York Times, “The White House is trying to turn back the clock and re-litigate both the science and the law.”
The attempt to reverse the Endangerment Finding comes amid worsening climate indicators. A report from the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record since measurements began in 1850. Each of the past ten years ranks among the ten warmest years observed. The connection between greenhouse gas emissions and extreme weather—floods, wildfires, heatwaves—is well-established.
Moreover, the health risks are not limited to climate. A 2021 study estimated that fossil fuel pollution was responsible for nearly one in five deaths worldwide, highlighting the urgency of emissions regulation from both an environmental and public health perspective.
Dicamba re-approval: Courts defied, lobbyists empowered
In another controversial decision, the Trump EPA announced its intention to re-approve dicamba for use on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans, despite two prior federal court rulings against its registration due to widespread crop damage from drift.
Bill Freese, science director at the Center for Food Safety, stated, “EPA has had seven long years of massive drift damage to learn that dicamba cannot be used safely with GE dicamba-resistant crops. If we allow these proposed decisions to go through, farmers and residents throughout rural America will again see their crops, trees, and home gardens decimated by dicamba drift, and natural areas like wildlife refuges will also suffer.”
The EPA claims proposed mitigation steps—including temperature restrictions and drift reduction agents—will minimize environmental harm. But critics say the agency is ignoring clear legal and scientific precedent in favor of industry interests.
“Trump’s EPA is hitting new heights of absurdity by planning to greenlight a pesticide that’s caused the most extensive drift damage in U.S. agricultural history and twice been thrown out by federal courts,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This is what happens when pesticide oversight is controlled by industry lobbyists. Corporate fat cats get their payday and everyone else suffers the consequences.”
The timing of the re-approval also raises questions. Less than a month before the decision, Kyle Kunkler—a former lobbyist for the American Soybean Association (ASA), a vocal dicamba supporter—was appointed Deputy Assistant Administrator for pesticides in the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Kunkler previously lobbied against restrictions on farm chemicals like glyphosate and atrazine.
“The appointment of Kyle Kunkler sends a loud, clear message: Industry influence is back in charge at the EPA,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group. “It’s a stunning reversal of the campaign promises Trump and RFK Jr. made to their MAHA followers—that they’d stand up to chemical giants and protect children from dangerous pesticides.”
A coordinated rollback with deep industry ties
Evidence suggests that the Trump administration’s recent actions are part of a coordinated response to utility and energy company lobbying. In January 2025, just before Trump’s inauguration, a coalition of power companies sent a letter to incoming EPA Administrator Zeldin calling for the reversal of coal ash and greenhouse gas emissions rules.
“The new Administration should decline to defend these unlawful rules and should seek their immediate rescission,” the letter read. “Swift action by the incoming Trump Administration is needed to reverse EPA’s regulatory overreach and to support critical energy production and development at U.S. power plants.” A senior vice president at Duke Energy—linked to the Dan River disaster—was among the signatories.
Since taking office, the administration has delivered on those requests. In addition to delaying coal ash cleanup, the EPA extended deadlines for reducing toxic emissions from nearly 70 coal-fired power plants and fast-tracked the development of new coal mines, including mining on federal lands, under the justification of an “energy emergency.”
Despite the aggressive rollback, environmental advocates believe that Trump’s efforts to revive the coal industry are unlikely to succeed long-term. “Trump tried and failed to bail out the coal industry during his first term in office,” wrote Christy Walsh, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Given the realities of the market, whatever he tries to do this time should fail as well.… Instead of trying to prop up the fuels of the last century, this administration should be working to build the grid needed for the 21st century.”
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