We are on the front lines of a crucial battle to protect our nation's waters by defending the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new Clean Water Act rule—a long overdue update to the Effluent Limitation Guidelines (ELGs) for steam electric power plants which are the largest dischargers of toxic pollutants to U.S. waterways.
ELGs are national standards set by EPA to limit the discharge of pollutants into waterways, ensuring the best available technology is used to reduce pollution. Despite Congress' mandate, before Waterkeeper Alliance and our partners took EPA on over this issue, power plants had gone over 30 years without any updates to their ELGs.
In 2019, we won a major case that forced EPA to strengthen its standards for coal-fired power plants.
Now in place, it is urgent that we help defend the new ELG rule from fossil fuel industry attacks. We need your support now to cover the expenses of this new litigation, which will defend new requirements for steam electric power plants to eliminate pollutant discharges from their three largest waste streams.
Your donation today will help us:
Defend the Rule: Collaborate with partners like Earthjustice to counter imminent industry legal challenges and uphold the rule's strongest provisions.
Challenge the Rule’s Deficiencies: Address portions of the rule that fall short of the pollution reductions required by the Clean Water Act.
Protect the Rule from Future Rollbacks: A new administration is likely to seek to completely undo this essential new rulemaking, and even EPA might refuse to defend its own rule from attack, making our presence in the litigation even more essential.
This litigation is built on 15 years of legal and regulatory advocacy by Waterkeeper Alliance and our partners. These new standards are crucial to protecting communities and requiring utility companies to internalize the costs of their fossil fuel pollution. We must push for the strongest possible water pollution standards and accelerate the transition to cleaner energy.
