EVANSVILLE — Evansville has long been called a “sacrifice zone” due to nearby pollution hazards, and the current attitude of federal leaders toward environmental safeguards has local advocates concerned.
Nicole Chandler, Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign organizer for Southwest Indiana, said there isn’t one specific regulation the Environmental Protection Agency’s could roll back that would be bad for the area. Instead, she said, rolling back any of them would be detrimental.
“These environmental protections are put into place to protect us,” Chandler said. “So when the administration is signaling they want to roll them back, that shows to us that they don’t care about clean air and clean water.”
In March, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the “greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen.” He said the regulations of administrations under former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden had “suffocated” the economy.
“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” he said.
His announcement included plans to change regulations around power plants, the oil and gas industry, mercury and air toxics standards, the Regional Haze Rule and the Good Neighbor Plan.
The Good Neighbor Plan aims to make sure 23 states, including Indiana, meet the Clean Air Act’s “Good Neighbor” requirements by reducing pollution. The Regional Haze Rule calls for state and federal agencies to work together to improve visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas. The closest location included in the rule is Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky.
The Good Neighbor Plan is not currently in effect; it was put on hold by the Supreme Court in 2024.
“Even one rule or regulation getting rolled back will have a harmful impact on our community,” Chandler said. “You know it’s just not coal plants around us, it’s the coal plants that are across the river too. Pollution doesn’t stay in one place. It travels, so that’s the concern we have.”
Neighboring coal plants a concern for Sierra Club
Chandler said the three coal plants of concern are Duke Energy’s Gibson coal plant in Gibson County; CenterPoint’s Energy F.B. Culley Plant; and the Warrick Aluminum Smelting Plant.
CenterPoint’s Culley Plant is a current concern for Sierra Club organizers because it was the utility said it would be coal-free by 2027, but in its current 20-year planning process, that is being potentially pushed back to 2030.
F.B. Culley Unit 3 was set to convert to natural gas by 2027, but meeting minutes from the most recent planning session state CenterPoint is considering other options.
These include a conversion to natural gas by 2030, retirement by 2032, or co-fire by 2030 and retirement by 2039.
While these three are the main focuses of concern, Chandler argues that any coal plant near in the area is bad.
“A lot of these are really old and uneconomic plants and they just have such detrimental health impacts,” she said.
In January, Duke Energy officials, along with other power companies, sent a letter to Zeldin asking incoming President Donald Trump’s administration to rollback regulations on areas of their work.
In the letter, Duke Energy states it wants “swift and sustained” action by the Trump Administration, and that recent changes by the EPA have resulted “in significant burdens on the nation’s power sector without tangible benefits.”
“These regulations, individually and collectively, threaten the reliability of the power grid, jeopardize national security, are a drag on economic growth, increase inflation, and hinder the expansion of electric power generation to support the critical development and deployment of Artificial Intelligence and related technologies,” the letter states.
In particular, Duke called for attention to the regulations on greenhouse gas emissions and coal combustion residuals.
“The new administration should decline to defend these unlawful rules and should seek their immediate recission,” the letter states.
Additionally, the letter states issue with the Good Neighbor Plan and Effluent Limitations Guidelines for power plants. Effluent limitation guidelines are national regulatory standards for wastewater discharged to surface waters and municipal sewage treatment plants.
“These other recent rules, like the GHG and CCR rules, do not further EPA’s statutory mission to protect human health and the environment” the letter states, “and instead will result in unnecessary costs on the power sector, impacting the affordability and reliability of electricity.”
Concerns are in both the air and water
Chandler said the health impacts from potential rule changes are not just focused on air quality or water pollution. Both are concerns in this area of the state.
“We just have really poor air quality here,” Chandler said. “And you know, I think it’s kind of telling that there are lots of restrictions around how much fish you can even eat out of the Ohio River.”
In May, Sierra Club rolled out a new dashboard that it states show the impact rollbacks to EPA standards on coal pollution would have on the U.S.
The dashboard estimates if effluent limitation guidelines were upheld, the F.B. Culley plant would release more than 14,000 tons less in wastewater pollution than if they are rolled back.
If the Regional Haze Act stays intact, the release of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides from the Warrick County plant would be reduced by 75% and 47% respectively, as estimated by the Sierra Club.
Nitrogen oxides are the mixture of gases composed of nitrogen and oxygen. Most significant are nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide. Nitrogen oxides are released from motor vehicle exhaust, burning coal, oil, or natural gas, and during processes such as arc welding and electroplating. Sulfur dioxide is a gas composed of sulfur and oxygen. Sulfur dioxide forms when sulfur-containing fuel such as coal, petroleum oil or diesel is burned.
According to the American Lung Association, long-term exposure to high levels of sulfur dioxide increases respiratory symptoms and reduces the ability of the lungs to function. Short-term exposure can make it difficult for those with asthma to breathe outdoors.
State leaders signal desire to roll back environmental regulations
On July 1, Gov. Mike Braun and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management announced a plan that identified regulations to be changed.
“Government naturally drifts toward over-regulation, and it’s important to go through these regulations to make sure they aren’t stifling innovation an raising the cost of living for no benefit,” Braun stated in a news release. “My agencies have been directed to identify regulations that are raising the cost of living without benefiting our environment so they can be changed or rescinded; we can grow our economy while also safeguarding Hoosiers’ health and preserving our natural resources.”
In March, Braun signed an executive order that Indiana would not make rules on environmental regulations that surpassed those at the federal level. It directed agencies to identify state regulations that were “unduly burdensome, significantly raise the cost of living for Hoosiers, are not supported by current law and the best available science, or do not benefit Indiana’s environment.”
In the July 1 report, IDEM and Braun recommended 10 regulations to be changed or rescinded. The report also contained examples of the how IDEM will work with the federal government in an effort to pursue reforms that enact Braun’s executive order supporting extensions for using coal to generate power.
“For example, EPA took a recent action to ensure that Indiana energy producers were not unnecessary penalized under federal air quality requirements for keeping coal-fired power plants open,” the report states. “Additionally, Duke Energy Indiana recently announced a settlement, aligned with Governor Braun’s energy-related executive orders, to evaluate the continued operation of coal units at its Cayuga Generating Station in Vermillion County.”
The IndyStar recently reported on that Duke settlement.
High utility costs plague Evansville residents
In Evansville, high utility costs are top of mind for residents.
In a January executive order, Trump blamed environmental regulations for those high costs.
“America is blessed with an abundance of energy and natural resources that have historically powered our nation’s economic prosperity. In recent years, burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations have impeded the development of these resources, limited the generation of reliable and affordable electricity, reduced job creation, and inflicted high energy costs upon our citizens,” the order states. “These high energy costs devastate American consumers by driving up the cost of transportation, heating, utilities, farming, and manufacturing, while weakening our national security.”
Others, like the Sierra Club, argue that putting money into aging coal plants ends up costing consumers.
“We need to understand, too, that the environmental impacts of coal have a cost,” Chandler said. “There are cleanup costs associated with that, there are health costs associated with that.”
At the end of the day, it’s not the regulations making costs “so incredibly high” in the area, Chandler argues.
“It’s because these monopoly utilities keep throwing money into this aging, uneconomic, polluting source of energy generation that is harming out health and wealth down here,” Chandler said.