Republican senators on Wednesday aired concerns with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rule on coal ash disposal, saying they might try to revise it.
While they are glad the EPA in December did not classify coal ash as hazardous waste, Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said the agency wrote a one-size-fits-all rule that reduces the role of states and opens utilities that operate coal-fired power plants to lawsuits.
“The EPA rule finalized last December correctly determined that coal ash should continue to be regulated as a nonhazardous waste,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the chairman of the committee, said at a Wednesday hearing. “It also established minimum one-size-fits all standards for the management and disposal of coal ash in landfills and surface impoundments.”