EDF Strongly Opposes Trump Administration Proposals to Eliminate Protections for Air Pollution from Power Plants

(Washington, D.C. – August 13, 2025) Environmental Defense Fund filed comments strongly objecting to two unlawful and dangerous proposed actions by the Trump EPA – part of a suite of recent administration actions attacking safeguards against pollution that, if successful, would make life in America less safe, less healthy and less affordable.

This week, EDF joined 16 other public health and environmental groups in opposing EPA's proposal to repeal the 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. The standards protect against mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel, and other dangerous types of pollution emitted by coal-fired power plants – pollution that can cause brain damage in babies, cancer, and heart and lung diseases. 

EPA updated the standards last year to strengthen protections against cancer-causing toxics, provide for more rigorous and transparent monitoring of power plant pollution, and close a loophole that allowed power plants that burned one type of especially dirty coal – lignite coal – to emit three times more mercury than other plants. Then last month EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a proposal to undo those updates. 

EDF and Air Alliance Houston, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, Clean Air Council, Clean Air Task Force, Clean Wisconsin, Dakota Resource Council, Downwinders at Risk, Earthjustice, Environmental Law & Policy Center, Natural Resources Council of Maine, Natural Resources Defense Council, Montana Environmental Information Center (MEIC), Sierra Club, and Southern Environmental Law Center filed joint comments calling on EPA to withdraw the proposed repeal of the 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, stating:

“EPA proposes to return to the outdated standards finalized in 2012, thereby allowing the highest-polluting plants in the country to continue to operate without state-of-the-art controls and subjecting nearby communities to significant, and wholly unnecessary, harm,” the groups say in their comments. “The Proposal is a baseless attack on reasonable, common-sense safeguards on toxic air pollution from coal-fired power plants that will save and improve lives.”

The coalition’s comments cite expert analysis that demonstrates the 2024 standards are achievable and cost-reasonable, and that the significant benefits associated with reducing mercury exposures outweigh any compliance costs required by the standards.

Last week, EDF filed four sets of comments with EPA that strongly opposed its proposed rule to weaken the carbon pollution standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants, which would allow much more harmful climate and health-harming pollution into our air. EDF filed two sets of comments with the Center for Biological Diversity, Clean Air Task Force, Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club that underscore the extensive legal flaws and lack of factual support in the agency’s two alternative proposals for rolling back these safeguards. EDF also joined comments written by the Institute for Policy Integrity that highlight EPA’s failure to consider the cost of climate change damages resulting from increased power plant pollution under the proposal.

A fourth comment letter, submitted by EDF, states:

“EPA’s [proposed repeal] will result in increased pollution that will cause massive harms to public health and welfare, and will harm electric power reliability and energy affordability. EPA’s primary and alternative proposals fail to consider the appropriate factors set forth in the Clean Air Act and lack the reasoning required by both the Clean Air Act and Administrative Procedure Act … The [proposed repeal] represents an abdication of EPA’s legal obligations under the Clean Air Act …

“EPA does not — and cannot — dispute the risk to human health and the environment posed by climate change. The [proposed repeal] comes at a time when communities across the United States are experiencing the devastating impacts caused by hurricanes, extreme heat waves, wildfires, drought, and other hazards linked to climate change … EPA must abandon its [proposed repeal].”