Input Stories

A group composed of utility companies, business organizations and almost two dozen states have filed a motion to temporarily stop an Environmental Protection Agency rule that sets new wastewater limits for coal-fired power plants (Law360, subscription).

What’s going on: In a stay motion last Friday, the power company and state petitioners told the 8th Circuit that a recently finalized EPA rule—the Supplemental Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for the Steam Electric Power Generating Point Source Category—uses “wildly off the mark” 2020 cost estimates for utilities’ implementation of certain technologies.

• The rule is one of four power plant regulations finalized by the EPA in April. It “requires coal-fired power plants to reduce pollutants discharged through wastewater by more than 660 million pounds per year,” according to another Law360 article.

Why it’s important: “The petitioners said the EPA ‘drastically underestimated’ the costs of its 2020 rule, by as much as an order of magnitude in some cases,” and it forces “utilities to choose between spending millions of dollars on soon-to-be-obsolete treatment systems or the premature retirement of reliable facilities, with the latest rule only adding to that dilemma.”

• The rule requires that utilities decide by Dec. 31, 2025, whether they will invest in the technologies “or retir[e] coal combustion.”