"Don't Gut Coal Ash Rules, Communities Beg EPA at Hearing"

"‘We’re talking about poisoning groundwater,’ one mayor told the agency at the only public hearing planned on Pruitt’s coal ash rule change, proposed by industry. "

"It took decades for the Environmental Protection Agency to craft public safeguards for the disposal of coal ash, the toxic byproduct that coal-burning power plants generate more than 100 million tons of every year.

Scott Pruitt's EPA is aiming to unravel those standards in a matter of months.

On Tuesday, in a hotel conference room outside Washington, dozens of people spoke at the EPA's only planned public hearing on Pruitt's proposed changes to the coal ash standards. They represented their communities, many of them poor, seemingly powerless and hundreds of miles away from the capital."

Georgina Gustin reports for InsideClimate News April 25, 2018.