WORDS BY YESSENIA FUNES
photograph by will warasila
After decades of living alongside coal pollution, the Navajo Nation is celebrating a mighty victory. In April, the Environmental Protection Agency updated its rules around coal ash, a waste byproduct created by coal-fired power plants that contain toxins like mercury and arsenic. Utilities often dispose of dirty coal ash in wastewater ponds or landfills, but if companies don’t store it properly, they risk polluting groundwater sources and sacred waterways.
The updated policy will provide much-needed standards to some landfills and ponds previously excluded from the 2015 EPA rule, the first federal coal ash regulation. This includes the Four Corners Power Plant in New Mexico, the last coal plant standing in the state. Though the facility is still operating, it’s being slowly decommissioned ahead of its scheduled closure in 2031.
The 173,000 Navajo people who call the reservation home have long had a contentious relationship with the coal industry. On the one hand, the mines and energy facilities have provided jobs and economic opportunities to the community. On the other, the pollution has inflicted deep wounds on a people—and their land.
“The population’s health had very much been burdened, and there were high rates of different forms of cancer and lung diseases,” said Robyn Jackson, executive director of Diné C.A.R.E., an environmental nonprofit on the Navajo Nation.
At the Four Corners, environmental law group Earthjustice confirmed evidence of contamination in at least one landfill that remained unregulated before the rule update. To the north at the San Juan Generating Station, a now-shuttered coal plant, a coal ash pond was also without regulation—until now. Indigenous advocates have been pushing for such changes for years, concerned for the health and well-being of each other and their homelands. The San Juan River runs between both plants; it’s a valuable source of water in an otherwise arid landscape. The coal industry has long threatened to ruin the river, which many Navajo farmers rely on.
“For us, as Indigenous people, this is our ancestral land,” Jackson said. “This is our home that we’ve had a connection to, as we say, since time immemorial. For us, the health of the land is really important and integral for us and our health as a people.”
The EPA first began outlining regulations for coal pollution in 1976. Coal ash, however, avoided much scrutiny until a tragic 2008 spill by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) released 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash into nearby communities. Remediation took six years and cost taxpayers nearly $1.2 billion. The people hired to clean up the toxic waste weren’t afforded personal protective equipment. Over 60 died as a result, and many more became sick.
“Everybody kicked the can down the road,” said Nancy LaPlaca, a climate and energy consultant who has researched coal ash and now works with Third Act, an environmental nonprofit that taps into the political power of people over 60. “The industry succeeded in the ’80s and the ’90s—really, up until pretty recently—as not recognizing that coal ash was a hazardous waste.”
“The health of the land is really important and integral for us and our health as a people.”
The regulations that followed the tragedy in Tennessee forced utilities to take better care of their coal ash waste by lining ponds to prevent groundwater contamination, requiring unlined and unsafe ponds to close, covering landfills to keep them from polluting the air, or moving the coal ash altogether. The rules also required utilities to publish public records of their waste ponds and landfills, monitor groundwater to detect contamination, and clean up contaminated groundwater when it’s found.
However, the rule exempted critical sites that stopped receiving waste before the new regulations went into effect, so environmental groups sued in 2022. Now, thanks to their initiative, the new rules have closed that loophole, offering populations like the Navajo new opportunities to hold polluters accountable and protect their air and water.
“The legacy ponds need the same kind of groundwater monitoring, need the same kind of structural determination, and need the same kind of closure rules,” said Megan Wachspress, a staff attorney with the Sierra Club. “Groundwater contamination is not always visible in the way that a big dirty plume in a river is.”
The updates also cover an entirely new pollution source to regulate: coal ash that’s placed on power plant sites, technically known as CCRMUs, coal combustion residuals management units. A coal plant may have piles of coal ash just lying around, so this addition targets the waste that may be more informally stored outside a landfill or pond.
However, the rule isn’t perfect. For example, if a facility has less than 1,000 tons of this specific solid waste, it is exempt from the rule for now. Coal ash that’s used as a soil alternative—as fill on yards and playgrounds, for instance—was also left out of the rule. Utilities will have about four years until they have to begin closing their legacy ponds, leaving communities exposed to the pollution until then. Then, it’s on the EPA to enforce the regulation and ensure polluters listen.
In 2023, the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance identified coal ash as a priority area, funneling more federal funds toward ensuring companies take action until 2027 at least. “The rule isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on unless it’s actually enforced,” said Lisa Evans, senior counsel at Earthjustice.
But these changes have been a long time coming. The coal industry has been on a decline since about 2010. Now, the U.S. is focused on building out clean energy infrastructure, but leaders can’t forget about what remains of the nation’s fossil fuel history. They must still contend with the contamination the coal industry left behind, especially as floods and storms made worse by climate change threaten to spread the pollution.
Indeed, some environmental advocates see the closure and remediation of coal facilities as integral to the clean energy transition. These sites are already connected to the grid, so they offer strong potential for the future of new clean energy projects, explained Eric Dixon, a senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, a research group focused on sustainable economic development in Appalachia, where coal has reigned over and then abandoned communities.
Now, the U.S. is focused on building out clean energy infrastructure, but leaders can’t forget about what remains of the nation’s fossil fuel history.
“As the country transitions away from coal power, we have a lot of coal mining and coal plant communities that are feeling a lot of economic pain as those plants and mines close,” Dixon said. “Responsibly cleaning up coal ash at plants can provide a good transition opportunity for workers and residents in the area, especially if you do it in a way that provides a pathway to union work.”
This idea was a foundational tenant of the Green New Deal framework popularized by the youth-led Sunrise Movement and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019. Many environmentalists have not lost sight of that dream—that communities and workers whose health the fossil fuel industry has long sacrificed can find new sources of prosperity as the dirty polluters breathe their last breaths. Cleaning up old coal plants would be a solid place to start.
The more ambitious and thorough the clean-up, the greater the contribution to the local economy, according to a 2021 report by the Ohio River Valley Institute. Afterward, solar or wind can be built on site. However, the arrival of a clean energy alternative shouldn’t eliminate utilities’ responsibility to continue monitoring the coal ash they’ve buried or stored nearby to ensure the environment remains safe, exclaimed Dixon.
“That continues to be important even if you reuse the site for renewable energy,” he urged.
TVA, for instance, is planning to develop a solar project atop a defunct coal ash site in Kentucky, but much of the public, including the Sierra Club, raised concern during the project’s public comment period over the coal ash that will remain on site. They’re especially worried about how TVA will remediate potential contamination in the future if solar panels and infrastructure are built atop the current impoundment.
There’s no easy path when it comes to such toxic waste. If utilities keep coal ash in ponds or landfills, there will always be fears of contamination—to the air or water. If they decide to move the waste and close the site, the coal ash may become another community’s problem. Back in the Navajo Nation, Jackson sees many parallels between coal ash and another toxic pollution source with which her people must contend: radioactive uranium mine waste from the U.S.’s nuclear weapons manufacturing.
She hopes that the country’s policymakers have learned from the mistakes of years past as they begin to build out our clean energy future. What pollutants will communities like the Navajo have to contend with next? Are any so-called clean energy projects continuing fossil fuel development? How will communities feel the impacts of their representatives’ decisions? Will their water or air be compromised? Jackson is feeling optimistic about the new coal ash rules—“It’s a win,” she said—but she knows the path ahead will be long and rugged.
“There is still a lot of cleanup from those facilities,” she said. “We shouldn’t forget the impact that those forms of extraction have had.”
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‘A Win’: New EPA Coal Ash Rules Signal a New Chapter for Polluted Communities
