Environmental groups sue EPA over weakening water-pollution limits on coal plants
Conservation groups have sued the Trump administration to try to keep it from allowing coal-fired power plants to dump heavy metals that end up in drinking water, including in North Carolina.
The Southern Environmental Law Center filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on behalf of Appalachian Voices and the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League. The suit seeks to uphold requirements put in place in 2024 to stop many of the largest and most harmful wastewater discharges from coal-fired power plants, the SELC said.
“Arsenic and mercury from coal-fired power plants can be stopped by readily available water pollution controls, but this administration wants these dirty, outdated plants to keep dumping their toxic pollution into our rivers and lakes for many years to come,” Nick Torrey, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said. “Our communities can’t afford more cancer-causing pollution in our waterways.”
The White House announced in April 2025 it would invigorate “America’s beautiful clean coal industry.” Last fall Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced the agency planned to extend the deadlines for coal-fired plants to meet Biden-era rules on wastewater discharge. Those include limits on coal ash that can contain heavy metals.
Under the 2024 rules, nearly all coal plants would have to come into compliance by 2029; if the standards could not be met, the plants would be retired. The Trump EPA would extend the deadline to 2034 and, environmental groups say, would likely extend it again beyond that date.
Several other conservation groups across the country have filed similar suits and Torrey, based in Chapel Hill, said the suits will be consolidated.
Coal-fired power plants are prevalent in the Southeast, and North Carolina has a history with pollution from them. Conservationists say the plants can be made to operate more safely with existing technology and that it’s worth the expense to install the equipment.
In February 2014, a stormwater pipe underneath the primary coal ash basin at the Duke Energy Dan River Steam Station in Eden failed, resulting in about 27 million gallons of coal ash wastewater and between 30,000 and 39,000 tons of coal ash spilling into the Dan River. The ash co-mingled with native sediment as far as 70 miles downstream, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.
In 2015, the state Department of Environmental Quality reached a settlement with Duke Energy holding the utility accountable for groundwater pollution at all 14 of its coal-ash facilities and requiring accelerated cleanup at sites in Wilmington, Asheville, Goldsboro and Belews Creek in Stokes County, northwest of Greensboro. In 2020, DEQ reached a settlement with Duke in which the company agreed to excavate nearly 80 million tons of coal ash at six facilities in the state.
“The Clean Water Act requires eliminating harmful water pollution from dirty old plants like Duke Energy’s Belews Creek, where Duke Energy says it wants to burn coal until 2040,” Ridge Graham, North Carolina program manager at Appalachian Voices, said in the release about the suit. “Communities along the Dan River have already had to deal with coal ash pollution, air pollution, and decades of ongoing dumping of toxic water pollution from the power plant. Enough is enough.”
Duke Energy did not respond to a request for comment on the suit.
The SELC and other clean-energy advocates have criticized Duke for planning to increase its use of nuclear and natural gas-burning power plants and delaying the planned retirement of coal plants in order to supply increasing power demands. Solar power with battery storage is the cheapest form of energy generation.
Duke has said North Carolina’s electricity demands will soar over the next 15 years and that it will need the fossil-fuel-burning plants to meet the need reliably and affordably.
The EPA’s plan to weaken the pollution rules on coal plants fits with the Trump administration’s move last year to drop regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. It would do so by rescinding a 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases contribute to global warming and therefore pose a threat to public health and welfare. That declaration is the basis for the EPA’s carbon-emissions standards under the Clean Air Act.
Torrey, of the SELC, said the administration has shown that it values profits over human health and safety.
“It’s putting the polluters ahead of the people in every possible way,” Torrey said.
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This story was originally published January 27, 2026 at 5:45 AM.
