February 22, 2026 - Republican elected officials and advocates for the coal industry gathered at one of Kentucky’s largest coal-fired power plants to celebrate the Trump administration’s weakening of regulatory curbs on toxic air pollution, including the neurotoxin mercury. 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi told reporters Friday at the 54-year-old Mill Creek Generating Station in Jefferson County that the federal agency would roll back mercury and air toxics standards to 2012 levels set by the Obama administration. Both the Obama and Biden administrations had toughened the regulations on mercury and other pollutants. 

Speaking in a lobby next to towering, billowing smokestacks, Fotouhi promoted the move as benefiting ratepayers and something that “rights the wrongs” of the Biden administration. 

Among those on hand for the announcement were Republican Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman, Republican U.S. Rep. and U.S. Senate candidate Andy Barr, Kentucky coal magnate and Republican megadonor Joe Craft and executives of Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities, which operates the 1,465-megawatt capacity Mill Creek Generating Station. 

“We are proud to return to a common sense regulatory approach that provides certainty for American businesses to spark new investment and job creation across the country,’ Fotouhi said. “Both the Obama and Biden administrations tried to erect barriers that could thwart American energy. Those days are over.” 

The deregulation is the latest move by the Trump administration to deconstruct his predecessors’ efforts to curb emissions from power plants, including climate change-driving greenhouse gas emissions.

Coleman said we’re “finally putting to bed the dangerous, nonsensical green agenda of the Biden administration under the old rule.” Coleman was among Republican state attorneys general that challenged in court the Biden-era mercury pollution rules. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to halt the implementation of the Biden-era rules. 

When the Trump administration last year first proposed to roll back the standards, the American Lung Association called the move a “grave mistake that would expose people to toxic pollution proven to harm brain development, trigger asthma attacks, and cause cancer and premature death.” 

Mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants and other industries also settle into water and soil and accumulate in organisms including fish. All Kentucky waters are under an advisory for mercury, meaning women who are pregnant or might become pregnant, nursing mothers and children 6 years or younger are advised to limit their consumption of fish caught in Kentucky. 

Foutouhi said that the Obama-era standard has significantly reduced mercury pollution and non-mercury metals over the more than a decade it’s been in effect as coal-fired power plants upgraded pollution controls or closed. According to an EPA data portal, 1,563 pounds of mercury were emitted in Kentucky in 2010. In 2023, 163 pounds of mercury were emitted in Kentucky. 

Foutouhi said the Trump administration move would result in projected cost savings “for Americans” of $670 million from 2027 through 2038 because utilities would not have to add “unnecessary technology” to meet the Biden-era standards. He said the move was “one key element” of “one key element of an overall approach that this administration is taking to prioritize base load power.” 

The Biden administration updated the standards in 2024, predicting the strengthened rules would have cut emissions of mercury and additional air pollutants including arsenic, lead, soot, nickel, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and others. 

The Biden administration estimated that strengthening the standard would have resulted in $300 million in health benefits because of reduced exposure to carcinogens and avoided heart attacks, developmental delays in children and “adverse environmental impacts.” Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin. The Trump administration has stopped putting a dollar amount on the health benefits of air pollution regulations. 

The Biden-era rules would have also required the use of continuous monitoring systems to provide “real-time, accurate data to regulators, facility operators, and the public to ensure that plants are meeting these lower limits,” another provision the Trump administration is repealing. 

Environmental groups denounced the rollback as a detriment to public health. Byron Gary, an attorney for the environmental legal group Kentucky Resources Council, in an emailed statement said the move was “another blow, particularly to communities most heavily burdened by the legacy of coal pollution.” 

“Relaxation of the standard is a giveaway to coal companies and the utilities that continue to rely on the dated fuel at the cost of lives of Kentuckians,” Gary said in his statement. 

Gary said the Biden-era rules would have limited particulate matter released by coal-fired power plants to a standard that more than 90% of coal-fired power plants could already meet “but simply aren’t required to meet on a continuous basis.” He said a Biden administration analysis found the only coal-fired power plant that might not be able to meet the stronger standard was the D.B. Wilson Generating Station coal-fired power plant operated by the Big Rivers Electric Corp.

He said the Biden-era rule was projected to limit nationwide emissions of mercury, a “persistent bioaccumulative toxin that targets the nervous systems of the most vulnerable,” by 1000 pounds a year, along with limiting emissions of fine particulate matter by 770 tons a year by 2028. 

Gary said a previous study found that the adoption of the original mercury pollution standards contributed to as many as 165 avoided deaths in Louisville each year and millions of dollars in economic benefit from avoided hospitalizations and missed school and work days. 

A report last year from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting found that electric utilities East Kentucky Power Cooperative, Big Rivers Electric Corp. and the Tennessee Valley Authority had applied for an extension of the timeline to comply with the Biden-era mercury rule. Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities, the state’s largest utility in terms of customers served, did not apply for an extension, according to the public radio outlet. 

Lonnie Bellar, a PPL Corp. executive who oversees operations of the Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities’ power plants and electricity transmission, praised the Trump administration’s “pragmatic approach to environmental regulations.” 

“It’s imperative that environmental regulation is achievable with proven technologies, adequate time to demonstrate results and a reasonable pace,” Bellar said. 

Bellar told reporters that LG&E and KU would not have had to upgrade pollution controls at Mill Creek to comply with the stronger Biden rule because the power plant already was in compliance with it. He said the utility’s environmental surcharge — a fee added to utility bills to pass on the cost of environmental controls to ratepayers — wouldn’t change with the Trump administration announcement.  

“It wouldn’t change anything today in terms of incremental cost,” Bellar said. 

He said the utility had been concerned about the “operability” of the plant as it conducted increased maintenance to comply with the tougher standards. He said the utility did not have “any other investments” associated with meeting the Biden rules.