ATLANTA, GA.—The Coosa River Basin Initiative’s executive director will be in the nation’s capital on Monday to give formal testimony against the EPA’s push to delay making polluters comply with federal water protection rules.
CRBI’s Jesse Demonbreun-Chapman, along with dozens of other concerned community members from across the country, will speak at a public hearing in Washington D.C., against EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s move to roll back a 2015 rule that establishes limits for toxic water pollution from coal-fired power plants—America’s #1 source of toxic water pollution.
Before the EPA tries to dismantle the rule, the agency must suspend fast-approaching compliance deadlines. Under the rule, every coal-fired power plant in the country was given until November 2018 to clean up their discharges of toxic heavy metals like mercury, arsenic and lead into local water supplies. These toxic heavy metals can cause a host of developmental issues in children and provide serious health risks to pregnant women.
These clean water protections, known as Effluent Limitations Guidelines (ELG), had previously not been updated in three decades. Before the new protections went into effect, previous standards allowed coal-fired power plants to release billions of pounds of contaminated wastewater directly into waterways every year. Nearly 40 percent of all coal plants discharge toxic pollution within five miles of a downstream community’s drinking water intake.
Demonbreun-Chapman and the staff, board and volunteers at CRBI, work to protect the natural resources of the Upper Coosa River basin, which stretches from southeastern Tennessee and north central Georgia to Weiss Dam in Northeast Alabama. This includes the Coosa River, the Etowah and Oostanaula rivers and the tributaries of these waterways as well as the land drained by these streams and the air that surrounds this land area.
The Coosa River, where the coal-burning Plant Hammond discharges, was named again this year to the Georgia Water Coalition’s Dirty Dozen list, a report that spotlights ongoing threats to Georgia’s water and communities.
Pruitt’s decision to delay these new clean water protections could have grave consequences for communities living near coal plants like Hammond.
Hundreds are also expected to rally outside Monday’s hearing, demanding safeguards for the regulations that protect people’s lives, livelihoods and communities, as well as public health and the environment.
In response to the EPA’s rollbacks of bedrock environmental protections, Demonbreun-Chapman released the following statement:
"We just had a hearing on updating Plant Hammond's discharge permit earlier this year. While we do not always see eye to eye with Georgia Power, they made it clear that they could reach compliance with these new imitations within the schedule set by the EPA.
“No one ever tried to make the claim that these new guidelines were unnecessary or unachievable —even for a plant as old as Hammond. If the EPA does in fact delay and overturn this rule, they will only succeed in wasting millions of dollars already spent on compliance while making our rivers and drinking water supplies that much less safe."
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