EPA's Coal Ash Permit Program Reopens for Comment: The Procedural Deadline Utilities Are Missing
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EPA's Coal Ash Permit Program Reopens for Comment: The Procedural Deadline Utilities Are Missing

EPA reopened the 2020 federal coal ash permit program for a 30-day comment window — June 29, 2026 deadline. The permitting rail behind the April 2026 amendments.

by iSi Environmental

On May 28, 2026, EPA published a Federal Register notice (91 FR 31684) reopening the public comment period on the proposed 2020 federal coal ash permit program. The original comment window closed in August 2020, five and a half years ago, and the rule was never finalized. Most utility regulatory coverage in May was focused on the substantive April 9 CCR amendments — easier CCRMU identification, eased beneficial-use demonstration, performance-based dewatering. Those amendments grabbed the headlines. The permitting program — the procedural rail through which any of those amendments will actually be implemented — got reopened quietly, with its own June 29, 2026 deadline.

If your utility operates coal combustion residuals (CCR) units in any state that has not received EPA approval for a state CCR program, this is the rule that determines who issues your permit, on what timeline, and under what application burden. The substantive amendments tell you what the standards are. The federal permit program tells you whether you will be submitting applications to EPA staff in Washington or to a state agency you already know — and how fast you will need to assemble the documentation.

This post is the practitioner-grade reframe of the procedural deadline that most utility EHS teams either did not see or filed under “comment-period noise.”

What Did EPA Actually Reopen on May 28?

The 2020 proposal would establish a federal permit program under RCRA Section 4005(d), the authority added by the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act of 2016. WIIN authorized EPA to issue CCR permits directly in any state that has not adopted an EPA-approved state CCR program. As of May 2026, only four states have approved programs: Oklahoma (2018), Georgia (2019), Texas (2024), and Virginia (2026). Every other state in the country defaults to EPA as the permitting authority once the federal program finalizes.

EPA is specifically soliciting comment on four areas, and each one has operational consequences worth tracking:

  1. The estimated timeframes utilities need to compile complete permit application materials.
  2. Whether to shorten the first-tier permit application deadline to six months after the effective date of the final permitting rule (six months after Federal Register publication of the final rule).
  3. Implementing an electronic permitting process that would apply to both EPA-issued and state-approved CCR permits.
  4. All other aspects of the 2020 proposal as it reads against the 2026 substantive amendments.

The comment deadline is June 29, 2026. That gives utility EHS teams roughly four weeks from publication to develop and submit a position. Item 2 — the proposed six-month acceleration of the first-tier application deadline — is the operational threat that should be driving the conversation.

Why “Six Months After Final Rule” Is the Number That Matters

EPA’s 2020 proposal originally contemplated a tiered application schedule with longer lead times for the first wave of facilities. The reopened comment notice asks whether that should be compressed: first-tier applications due six months after the final rule’s effective date, with no extension contemplated.

A federal CCR permit application is not a short document. Under the 2020 proposal, the application must include, at minimum:

  • Facility description and CCR unit inventory
  • CCR unit specifications and design documentation
  • Groundwater monitoring data history
  • Location restrictions documentation (including the five location restrictions under 40 CFR 257.60-64)
  • Structural integrity certifications
  • Operating criteria documentation
  • Closure plan
  • Post-closure care plan
  • Financial assurance instrument

Most utilities operating multi-unit CCR fleets do not have that documentation assembled in submission-ready form on any given Tuesday. The groundwater history alone can run thousands of pages depending on monitoring well count and program age. Structural integrity certifications require licensed PE sign-off. Financial assurance instruments — surety bonds, trust funds, letters of credit — take weeks to put in place if a facility has not previously carried them.

Six months from final rule effective date to submitted application is not an accident. It is a planning horizon. And it does not start when the rule is final — it has to start now, because the volume of document assembly required cannot be accomplished after the gun goes off.

Which States Default to Federal CCR Permitting?

The state-program approval map matters more than the substantive amendments for most utilities. Here is the operational picture as of May 2026:

StateCCR Program StatusPermit Authority
OklahomaApproved (2018)State
GeorgiaApproved (2019)State
TexasApproved (2024)State
VirginiaApproved (2026)State
KansasNot approvedFederal (EPA)
MissouriNot approvedFederal (EPA)
NebraskaNot approvedFederal (EPA)
All other statesNot approvedFederal (EPA)

In iSi’s primary service region, three of the five core states — Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska — default to federal CCR permitting once the program is finalized. Utility EHS directors in those three states are about to start interacting with EPA Region 7 staff on permit applications, not with KDHE, MDNR, or NDEE staff they have known for years. That changes the practitioner relationship, the document standard, and the response-time expectations.

Oklahoma utilities continue under the OK Department of Environmental Quality program. Texas utilities continue under the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality program. Virginia utilities just received state-program approval and continue under DEQ. Everyone else faces direct EPA permitting.

How Does the Federal Permit Program Interact With the April 2026 Substantive Amendments?

This is where the two comment periods diverge and why utility comment positions need to be internally consistent.

EPA’s April 9, 2026 substantive amendments — the amendments that drew the regulatory press coverage — change what the substantive standards are: CCRMU identification thresholds, beneficial-use demonstration requirements, dewatering performance standards. The comment deadline on those amendments is June 12, 2026.

The federal permit program — reopened May 28 — changes how those standards get enforced and what gets submitted to EPA. The comment deadline on the permit program is June 29, 2026.

Utilities submitting comments on both rules should make sure the comments are consistent. A utility that argues in the June 12 comment for the substantive amendments’ eased CCRMU identification but argues in the June 29 comment for procedural delay on permit applications is sending mixed signals. The two comment positions need to be coordinated by the same internal team and reviewed against each other before either is filed.

What Changes Operationally Once the Permit Program Takes Effect?

CCR enforcement under RCRA Subtitle D historically operated through self-implementing rules and citizen suits under RCRA Section 7002, not through direct EPA enforcement. Once the federal permit program is in force, that changes fundamentally. EPA gains direct permit-based enforcement authority over CCR units in non-approved states.

The practitioner read: utilities should expect a phase-shift from “comply with the federal floor and report to nobody” to “comply with permit conditions reviewed annually by EPA staff.” The substantive standards do not have to change for the operational reality to change. Permit conditions create discrete enforcement triggers that the self-implementing rule structure did not produce. A missed annual report under the current self-implementing structure rarely creates a federal enforcement event. A missed condition under an EPA-issued permit can.

Citizen suit exposure does not go away. Section 7002 actions remain a parallel enforcement track regardless of permit program status. A utility with a clean permit can still face a citizen suit if groundwater monitoring data shows exceedances. “We have a permit” does not insulate a facility from a Section 7002 action. The 2024 Legacy CCR Rule’s groundwater corrective action requirements remain enforceable in either scenario.

What Are the Penalty Numbers?

Civil penalties under RCRA reach up to $93,058 per day per violation under the 40 CFR 19.4 civil monetary penalty table — the 2024-adjusted level, carried into 2026 with no inflation adjustment per OMB. Multiple violations at multiple units at multiple facilities multiply quickly. A multi-unit utility with even a single unresolved compliance issue across a fleet of five units across three states can reach material exposure inside a single quarter of accumulated daily penalties.

That is the financial backdrop against which the comment period and the permit application timeline should be evaluated. The first-tier permit application is not a low-stakes filing.

What Is the Counter-Signal Most Utility Coverage Is Missing?

The headline framing is “EPA reopens comment period” — procedural, neutral, easy to ignore. The counter-signal is louder than the headline suggests.

Environmental groups including Earthjustice have argued that the proposed federal permit program would create what they call “forever permits” — permits that never expire, with minimal oversight and reduced public participation compared to typical RCRA permits. Whether the practitioner agrees with that framing is beside the point. The underlying signal matters: the permit program structure is contested, the comment period is reopened, and the final rule is unlikely to look exactly like the 2020 proposal. EPA may incorporate public participation enhancements — longer permit terms paired with reopener clauses, scheduled public meetings, electronic petition mechanisms — that were not in the original 2020 framework.

Utilities planning permitting on the assumption that the 2020 framework will finalize unchanged are likely planning against the wrong document. The final rule will probably include procedural surface area — public participation triggers, reopener events, petition mechanisms — that the 2020 proposal did not. Planning at the back of the envelope should assume more procedural complexity, not less.

A second counter-signal sits behind the substantive amendments. The April 2026 substantive amendments are already drawing active litigation pressure from environmental groups and several state attorneys general. The permit program will inherit whatever substantive standards survive that litigation, not whatever standards EPA finalizes in the rule text. Utility planners treating the substantive amendments as locked are working off an unstable foundation. Permit application content requirements may continue to shift even after the procedural rule finalizes.

A third counter-signal that practitioners should track: state-level CCR enforcement in Illinois, North Carolina, and Michigan has been measurably more aggressive than federal enforcement over the past three years, with state-issued enforcement orders compelling closure of legacy units where federal action did not move. The Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program’s Coal Ash Rule tracker documents the state-level docket. The federal permit program does not preempt state authority. Multi-state utilities should expect state enforcement to continue as the dominant short-term enforcement risk even after the federal permit program activates.

Why Should Beneficial-Use Operators Pay Attention?

The permit program is structured around CCR unit owners and operators, but it pulls in the operators they work with. Beneficial-use program documentation — concrete suppliers receiving CCR, structural fill operators above the 12,400-ton threshold, mine reclamation contractors — will likely need to be referenced in the utility’s permit file.

If you are a beneficial-use operator receiving CCR from a utility in Kansas, Missouri, or Nebraska, your utility customer will be assembling federal permit documentation in the next 12 to 24 months. The documentation they need from you — material certifications, end-use specifications, volume records — should be in submission-ready form before they ask for it. Beneficial-use operators who slow down the utility’s application timeline are the operators the utility looks at first when consolidating supplier relationships.

What Should Your Utility Be Doing Between Now and June 29?

A practitioner-grade action list for the next four weeks:

  1. Confirm permit authority for every facility location. If a facility is in OK, GA, TX, or VA, you operate under the approved state CCR program and the federal program does not change your direct permitting authority. Every other state defaults to EPA.
  2. Identify every CCR unit subject to the permit obligation. Active surface impoundments, active landfills, inactive surface impoundments, lateral expansions, and CCR Management Units (CCRMUs) under the 2024 Legacy CCR rule all fall under the permit obligation.
  3. Inventory existing documentation against permit application requirements. Groundwater monitoring history, structural integrity certifications, operating criteria documentation, closure plans, post-closure care plans, financial assurance instruments. Identify which units have submission-ready files and which do not.
  4. Plan for the aggressive scenario. Engineering and document-assembly capacity should support a six-month-from-final-rule submission timeline, not the longer original 2020 proposal timeline. If the final rule adopts the aggressive schedule and you planned for the conservative one, the gap is unrecoverable.
  5. Coordinate comments across both rulemakings. A single internal team should own both the June 12 substantive comment and the June 29 procedural comment. Comments that contradict each other across the two filings weaken both submissions.
  6. Decide whether to submit a comment at all. Comment-period silence is read as concurrence with the proposed framework. If the six-month application timeline is operationally unworkable for your facility, that needs to be on the record before June 29, with specific reasoning grounded in your documentation status.

How iSi Helps Utilities Get Permit-Ready

iSi works with utility-side EHS teams on the document assembly that federal CCR permit applications require — groundwater data compilation, structural integrity coordination, closure plan documentation, financial assurance language review, and the cross-walk between state-program requirements and federal-program requirements for utilities operating across both state and federal permitting jurisdictions. For utilities in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and other states defaulting to EPA, we provide permit application support as a project-bound engagement scoped to the units in the application.

For multi-site utilities already operating on an iSi EHS COOP retainer, the CCR permit application workload is a discrete project — it does not absorb into existing retainer hours without a scope conversation. We position it as a project-bound CCR permitting engagement layered on top of the retainer, not as a retainer expansion.

To talk through what a federal CCR permit application looks like at your facility and what document gaps need to close before the rule finalizes, contact iSi at (316) 264-7050 or use the Compliance Gap Checker to scope where your readiness stands today.

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