Trump offers regulatory relief for coal, iron ore and chemical industries

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is granting two years of regulatory relief to coal-fired power plants, chemical manufacturers and other polluting industries as he seeks to reverse Biden-era regulations he considers overly burdensome.

Trump issued a series of proclamations late Thursday exempting a range of industries that he calls vital to national security.

The proclamations cover coal-fired power plants, taconite iron ore processing facilities used to make steel, and chemical manufacturers that help produce semiconductors and medical device sterilizers.

The proclamations allow the facilities to comply with Environmental Protection Agency standards that were in place before rules imposed in recent years by President Joe Biden’s administration, the White House said.

Trump called the Biden-era rules expensive and, in some cases, unattainable. His actions will ensure that “critical industries can continue to operate uninterrupted to support national security without incurring substantial costs,” the White House said in a fact sheet.

Trump’s EPA had earlier exempted dozens of coal-fired plants from air-pollution rules for the same reasons. The EPA also offered other industrial polluters a chance for exemptions from requirements to reduce emissions of toxic chemicals such as mercury, arsenic and benzene. An electronic mailbox set up by the EPA allowed regulated companies to request a presidential exemption under the Clean Air Act to a host of Biden-era rules.

Environmental groups denounced the offer to grant exemptions, calling the new email address a “polluters’ portal” that could allow hundreds of companies to evade laws meant to protect the environment and public health. Mercury exposure can cause brain damage, especially in children. Fetuses are vulnerable to birth defects via exposure in a mother’s womb.

Within weeks of the EPA’s offer, industry groups representing hundreds of chemical and petrochemical manufacturers began seeking the blanket exemptions from federal pollution requirements.

The Clean Air Act enables the president to temporarily exempt industrial sites from new rules if the technology required to meet them is not widely available and if the continued activity is in the interest of national security.

In April, the EPA granted nearly 70 coal-fired power plants a two-year exemption from federal requirements to reduce emissions of toxic chemicals. A list posted on the agency’s website lists 47 power providers — which operate at least 66 coal-fired plants — that are receiving exemptions from the Biden-era rules.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced plans in March to roll back dozens of key environmental rules on everything from clean air to clean water and climate change. Zeldin called the planned rollbacks the “most consequential day of deregulation in American history.”

An Associated Press examination of the proposed rollbacks concluded that rules targeted by the EPA could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year they are in effect. The AP review included the agency’s own prior assessments as well as a wide range of other research.