Environmental advocates warn that the Trump administration’s rollback of the Environmental Protection Agency's mercury and clean-air standards will let coal companies put more pollutants in the air and hurt the health of Marylanders.

In 2024, the Biden administration moved to enhance the Obama-era standards after many coal power plants met them at low cost. According to the Sierra Club, reversing these 2024 changes would pump 50% more mercury pollution into the air.

Patrick Drupp, the organization's director of climate policy, said the rollback would hurt vulnerable populations – and puts the profits of coal companies over people.

"Increasing dangerous pollution like mercury, lead, arsenic, causes brain damage in babies, infants, fetuses. They cause cancer," he said. "Then you’ve got these acid gases that cause cardiovascular and lung diseases, so really, this action doesn’t benefit anyone – except the coal companies that are trying to cut corners while everyone else is suffering."

The Trump administration argues the repeal helps create more affordable energy and builds on America’s energy dominance. In a statement, the EPA claims the 2024 standards were costly for taxpayers, but would continue to enforce the original standards.

One study from 2020 found nearly half of all gamefish in lakes, rivers and streams in Chesapeake Bay contained unsafe levels of mercury, but levels were on a downward trend.

While Marylanders don’t have a plant that has refused to meet requirements, Drupp said, pollution from plants in other states also ends up in Maryland.

"A lot of that comes from rivers farther upstream in other states, like Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where there’s a lot of mercury emissions from coal plants,": he said. "And that mercury gets absorbed into the rivers, the Potomac, the Susquehanna, and ultimately ends up in the Chesapeake Bay, where it builds up in seafood, in crabs, in fish, in oysters, and impacts the health and livelihoods of thousands of people."

Even if the regulations were kept in place, the Trump administration has still exempted nearly 70 power plants from the standards.

Source: Public News Service