It’s never socially acceptable to speak ill of someone or something in the immediate aftermath of their demise.
But every time we shush ourselves about the coal industry, which is dying but not quite dead, along comes another disastrous rule to “save” it and its servile supporters.
Fortunately, this maxim about the dead doesn’t hold sway for long or otherwise history would be a blank page.
So, we opted to wait about 48 hours before we felt it appropriate to respond to a news release from our state’s attorney general expressing support for two new EPA rules.
These new rules aim to bolster the coal industry by allowing less stringent regulation of coal-fired power plant’s wastewater pollutants and other waste, such as ash.
The Obama administration’s 2015 coal and wastewater rules initially sought to force coal-fired power plants to shut down unlined coal ash pits in 2019 and recycle 100% of their system’s wastewater.
What the latest proposal on wastewater does is give power plants until the end of 2028 to employ new wastewater disposal standards if they can show they are taking voluntary measures to reduce pollutants in their effluent, saving them $175 million in compliance costs yearly.
The other rule allows coal-fired power plants to take up until August 2020, to stop storing coal ash in unlined waste ponds. Though the difference in the former rule and the new one looks to be just a year, the new rule also lets companies seek extensions of up to eight years to close unlined ponds and allows states to create their own permit programs.
These proposals throw a financial lifeline to the coal industry while continuing to look the other way at certain utilities’ discharges and waste storage.
Our state’s attorney general support appears to simply be willing to further pollute our waterways to curry favor with the Trump administration.
It’s almost as if he and other supporters of such ill-conceived rules are in a bunker still trying to win a war when their adversaries are at the door.
However, there never was a war on coal, aside from the one in the marketplace, which coal lost years ago.
Though President Trump has promised to revitalize the coal industry he has failed miserably to do so. More coal-fired power plants closed in Trump’s first two years in office than in Obama’s entire first term.
These efforts to roll back environmental regulations are nothing more than a desperate administration trying to save a desperate industry one last time.
As for the attorney general’s efforts to gain a political advantage by applauding pollution, that speaks for itself.
Still, we won’t speak ill of him following the outcome of next year’s election … for about 48 hours.
