Health, Environmental Groups Sue US EPA Over Rollback of Mercury Standards for Power Plants

The lawsuit challenges the Trump administration’s recent repeal of the Biden-era amendments to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for power plants, which effectively allows coal-fired power plants to emit more brain-damaging mercury and other harmful heavy metals such as nickel, arsenic, and lead.

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A coalition of US-based health and environmental groups is taking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to court over its recent repeal of standards that limit brain-damaging mercury, lead, and other hazardous air pollution from coal-fired power plants.

The coalition, which includes ​Earthjustice, the American Lung Association, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the American Academy of Pediatrics, ​and the Environmental Law and Policy Center, filed the lawsuit ⁠in the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Monday. The suit addresses the EPA’s repeal of the Biden-era amendments to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which was finalized in February. The repeal effectively allows coal-fired power plants to emit more brain-damaging mercury and other harmful heavy metals such as nickel, arsenic, and lead.

The lawsuit also challenges the repeal of a requirement for power plants to have systems in place to monitor the amount of pollution they emit in accordance with air pollution standards.

The standards, first issued in 2012 by the Obama administration, were strengthened and updated by the Biden administration in April 2024 to reflect the latest advancements in pollution control technologies. Since 2015, the deadline for their implementation, the standards have delivered a 90% reduction in mercury emissions from power plants over pre-standard levels and other health benefits, including lowered risk of cancer, heart and lung disease, and premature death. According to EPA figures cited in the coalition’s press release announcing the lawsuit, 93% of US coal capacity had already met or were on track to meet those standards by last year.

Mercury and the other heavy metals targeted by the regulation are highly toxic and dangerous to human health, capable of causing severe damage to the nervous, digestive, and immune systems, as well as the lungs and kidneys. They are also responsible for extensive environmental damage, poisoning fish and wildlife as they deposit in soil and water.

In the press release, the coalition called the move “illegal” and said that the absence of standards would lead to “more asthma attacks, emergency room visits, and premature deaths.”

“This administration is not just rolling back rules, it is eliminating the monitoring infrastructure needed to know what is coming out of these smokestacks in the first place. It is allowing coal plants to spew out more neurotoxic mercury into our air and food supply, while simultaneously keeping the communities most at risk in the dark about how serious that threat is. This is a betrayal of the EPA’s core mission,” the press release read.

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Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.