EPA Proposes to Rescind the 2024 Coal Ash Rule's CCRMU Provisions, Exempt Dewatering Structures, and Drop the 12,400-Ton Beneficial-Use Threshold | Sourced Wire
EPA Proposes to Rescind the 2024 Coal Ash Rule's CCRMU Provisions, Exempt Dewatering Structures, and Drop the 12,400-Ton Beneficial-Use Threshold
A 189-page proposed rule scheduled for Monday publication walks back most of the 2024 Legacy CCR rule and multiple pieces of the 2015 Coal Combustion Residuals framework. EPA's own estimate of annualized cost savings to the utility industry is $174-$194 million at a 3% discount rate, rising to $232-$262 million at 7%. The rulemaking is explicitly framed as an Executive Order 14192 deregulation action.
Screenshot: Federal Register / EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a 189-page proposed rule that would substantially walk back the federal coal ash regulatory framework at 40 CFR Part 257, including a full rescission of the Coal Combustion Residuals Management Unit (CCRMU) provisions added by EPA's April 2024 Legacy Final Rule. The document was filed with the Federal Register on April 10 at 08:45 a.m. EDT and is scheduled for formal publication on April 13 as EPA-HQ-OLEM-2020-0107 (RIN 2050-AH39).
The proposed rule opens a 60-day public comment period and schedules an online public hearing 45 days after publication — approximately May 28, 2026 — before any changes take effect. EPA will also reopen the comment period on its separate February 2020 Federal CCR permit program proposed rule for 30 days in a future separate action.
Four categories of rollback
The proposed rule organizes the changes into four broad categories. EPA's Regulatory Impact Analysis estimates annualized cost savings for each:
Category
Change
Annualized cost savings (3% discount)
At 7% discount
1. Closure-by-removal
Broaden eligibility for closure-by-removal certifications and deferrals for Legacy CCR surface impoundments previously closed under state or federal oversight
Rescind all CCR Management Unit provisions from the 2024 Legacy Final Rule
$86–$100M/yr
$117–$139M/yr
3. Site-specific pathway
Allow state and federal permitting authorities to make site-specific determinations on groundwater monitoring points of compliance, protection standards, closure performance standards, closure timelines, and post-closure requirements
$74–$78M/yr
$96–$101M/yr
4. Beneficial use amendments
Remove the 12,400-ton environmental demonstration requirement, redefine "CCR storage pile," exclude three specific beneficial uses
(remaining balance)
(remaining balance)
Total annualized cost savings, net of disbenefits:
$169–$189 million per year at a 3% discount rate
$229–$260 million per year at a 7% discount rate
EPA's RIA frames those numbers as industry savings; it does not quantify the countervailing environmental or public-health disbenefits in the portions of the preamble released on public inspection, though EPA states the totals are computed "net of disbenefits."
What CCRMUs are, and what rescinding them does
Coal Combustion Residuals Management Units are a category of coal ash disposal site created by EPA in its 2024 Legacy Final Rule to bring historical, non-operating coal ash units under the 2015 CCR regulatory framework. Before the 2024 rule, the federal CCR regulations only covered operating or recently-closed coal ash impoundments and landfills — a large population of older, inactive, and closed sites was outside the federal program entirely. The 2024 rule added CCRMUs to close that gap.
Today's proposed rule would rescind those CCRMU provisions in full. If finalized, it would return the federal coal-ash program roughly to the scope it had under the 2015 rule — covering operating or recently-closed units but not the older legacy sites the 2024 rule brought in. EPA estimates $86–$100 million per year in industry cost savings from the CCRMU rescission alone, making it the single largest cost-savings bucket in the proposal.
The 12,400-ton beneficial-use threshold, 11 years in
One of the most contested provisions in the 2015 CCR rule was a beneficial-use definition requiring anyone placing 12,400 tons or more of unencapsulated CCR on land for non-roadway purposes to conduct and document an environmental demonstration — a showing that groundwater, surface water, soil, and air releases from the beneficial-use site would be comparable to or lower than analogous products made without CCR.
That threshold has been litigated and reconsidered since:
August 2018: The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals granted EPA's request to remand the 12,400-ton threshold and related "CCR pile" provisions back to the agency for reconsideration.
August 2019: EPA proposed to shift from the mass threshold to a location-based approach. That proposal was never finalized.
April 2026 (today's proposal): EPA proposes to eliminate the fourth beneficial-use criterion entirely — no more environmental demonstration for non-roadway use above 12,400 tons.
The proposed rule would also exclude three specific beneficial uses from federal CCR regulations altogether: (1) CCR used in cement manufacturing at cement kilns, (2) flue gas desulfurization (FGD) gypsum used in agriculture, and (3) FGD gypsum used in wallboard. Those are among the largest industrial applications for coal combustion byproducts.
Site-specific pathway
The third category of changes creates a new permitting mechanism allowing states and federal permitting authorities to set site-specific:
Groundwater monitoring points of compliance (where a contamination plume must be measured)
Groundwater protection standards (the concentrations that trigger cleanup)
Closure performance standards
Closure timeframes
Post-closure care requirements
Currently, the 2015 rule and its successors set these requirements on a largely uniform federal basis. The proposed pathway would let operators negotiate variances at the permit level, subject to the permitting authority's discretion.
The deregulation framework
The proposed rule is explicitly tied to Executive Order 14192, "Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation," which the Trump administration reissued as a framework for identifying regulatory burdens to remove. EPA lists EO 14192 in the Statutory and Executive Order Reviews section of the preamble, alongside the standard EO 12866 (Regulatory Planning and Review) and EO 13211 (Actions Concerning Regulations That Significantly Affect Energy Supply) designations. The coal-ash rollback is the latest in a series of April 2026 rulemakings — including the EPA PFAS reporting delay and the IRS remittance-tax rulemaking filed in the same April 10 public-inspection batch — that the administration is moving under the deregulation umbrella.
EPA contacts on the rule are Taylor Holt of the Waste Identification, Notice, and Generators Division (202-566-1439) for general inquiries and Tracy Atagi in the same division (202-566-0511) for questions specifically about the beneficial-use provisions.
