The final rule essentially resets the clock for certain portions of the agency's effluent guidelines for power plants. EPA administrator Scott Pruitt says the postponement provides relief from the "existing regulatory deadlines while the agency revisits some of the rule’s requirements."
Power plants now have until Nov. 1, 2020, to comply with the rules, rather than by Nov. of 2018.
Power plant owners and other energy companies had said that purchasing the required “best available technology economically achievable” (BAT) would have a negative effect on jobs, and that the costs had been “grossly underestimated” by the EPA; the agency had pegged annual compliance costs at $480m. In fact, the groups argued, such a regulatory burden could force plant closures, writes ThinkProgress.
The article says that the clean water protections implemented in 2015 “would have kept heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury, and boron from being dumped into local waterways…”
