August 31, 2020
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced final revisions to specific effluent guidelines and standards for “steam electric” power plants. The final rule revises a 2015 Obama-era regulation by leveraging newer, more affordable pollution control technologies and taking a flexible, phased-in implementation approach. As a result, the new rule will save the U.S. power sector approximately $140 million annually while reducing pollution by nearly a million pounds per year over the 2015 rule.
Under the 2015 Obama-era regulation, beginning in 2018, power plants would have had to begin showing that they were using the most up-to-date technology to remove heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury from their wastewater and finalize these updates by 2023. But President Trump’s flexible, phased-in implementation pushes the final deadline for compliance to 2025, and it exempts several dozen plants from stricter water pollution limits entirely, on the grounds that they will be retired between now and 2028.
Power plant discharge ranks as the largest source of toxic water pollution in the United States.
Fossil Fuel Coal Burning Electrical Power Plant 
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