Every year, over 2 billion pounds of toxic wastewater is dumped into our waterways by power plants – the largest source of toxic water pollution in our country.
Approximately 23,000 miles of rivers and streams in the United States are contaminated because of this pollution, including many drinking water sources.
In 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally issued a regulation that addressed this massive source of unregulated pollution: the Effluent Limitation Guidelines and Standards for Steam Electric Power Plants, often referred to as the “ELG rule.” This rule requires power generators to stop discharging many of these toxics into our waterways.
We have provided a comment template below that you can use, but please consider personalizing it and explaining why getting toxic pollutants out of our waterways and drinking water sources is so important to you!
Postponing and rewriting this rule will delay long needed reductions in toxic pollution to drinking water sources for communities and waterways around the country.
This delay in creating meaningful limitations on toxic pollutants are the reason why coal-fired power plants are now the largest source of toxic water pollution in the country.
These toxic pollutants harm communities around the country and the ELG rule is a very feasible plan to drastically reduce this harm.
Rolling back the ELG rule will not make the costs associated with these pollutants disappear – it will just push costs from the power plant companies onto the public.
Communities will continue to have their sources of drinking water contaminated.
I urge you to reconsider this action and allow the long-awaited and very necessary ELG rule to be fully implemented under the schedule set forth in the ELG Rule.