EPA’s hobnob with coal lobbyists will cost lives

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in an admirable display of enthusiasm, flushed the 2015 regulation that barred coal plants from discharging toxic wastewater into America’s waterways.

The move, following a series of deregulations by Trump’s EPA, hands down a “tangible relief” to a dying coal industry but at the cost of public health, the environment and potentially many lives, writes E&E News.

The consequences of diluting the wastewater standards are readily visible in how aging coal plants are able to circumvent expensive environmental upgrades and in turn add a few more years of life to their operations, reports Scientific American.

The rollbacks might give a momentary fillip to the coal industry, which approaches an inevitable death in the face of rising competition from renewables and low natural gas prices, but not without exposing nearly 2.7 million Americans to waters laced with lead, selenium and arsenic.