WASHINGTON - Late yesterday, Donald Trump’s EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, proposed suspending deadlines for new clean water protections against coal plants dumping massive amounts of industrial sludge into America’s waterways. Known as the Effluent Limitations Guidelines, these new clean water protections were the first updates to America’s existing safeguards against this kind of dumping in over three decades, and they were finalized in September of 2015. Pruitt’s proposal to delay these compliance guidelines will be open for public comment, once published in the Federal Register.

In response, Mary Anne Hitt, Director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, released the following statement:

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“The toxic sludge scraped and drained out of America’s filthiest coal plants shouldn’t be anywhere near the water our kids drink or put into our morning cups of coffee, but that’s exactly what this appalling move by the Trump Administration would do. Scott Pruitt is so beholden to the uneconomical and failing coal industry that he is willing to put the water of millions of families across the country at risk so billionaire coal executives can save a few dollars. He is inviting a public health crisis with this reckless appeasement of one of America’s largest polluters, but American families will not stand for it - and neither will the Sierra Club. We will fight this with every means we have.”

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