Environmental groups, racing to keep up with a White House brand of deregulatory hopscotch, are again challenging the Trump administration’s quest to delay stricter hazardous pollutant requirements for the coke industry.
A White House proclamation issued in November “violates the Clean Air Act and exceeds the President’s lawful authority,” the Greater-Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution and seven other organizations said in a lawsuit brought before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The decision tapped rarely used Clean Air Act authority to give 11 plants that make the distilled coal product until mid-2027 to begin monitoring for airborne benzene around their operations, a rule intended to better protect nearby communities from the cancer-causing compound. That and other requirements were mostly supposed to take effect last July.
Coke serves as a crucial blast furnace fuel in one type of steelmaking.
