The Natural Resources Council of Maine has joined a national coalition of public health, environmental and community advocates, challenging the Trump administration’s repeal of standards that limit hazardous air pollutants from coal-fired power plants.

The lawsuit claims the repeal violates the Clean Air Act, ignores the scientific record and abandons safeguards that protect communities living near and downwind of coal plants.

Mercury levels in Maine fish, loons and eagles are among the highest in North America. While there are no coal-fired power plants in the state, Maine’s waters, lands and wildlife face higher-than-average rates of mercury contamination because prevailing winds carry the pollution here from coal plants in other states, the lawsuit contends.

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention has warned Mainers — especially pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under eight — to avoid eating freshwater fish. Mercury does not break down in the environment.

“The EPA’s repeal of these common-sense pollution standards threatens our health, dirties our air, and harms Maine’s iconic wildlife like loons and freshwater fish,” said Anya Fetcher, federal policy advocate for the environmental group.

The Natural Resources Council of Maine contended in a statement that since the EPA’s mercury and air toxics standards went into effect in 2015, mercury pollution from power plants has been reduced by more than 90%. The standards have also, the NRCM asserts, lowered the risk of cancer, heart and lung disease, and premature death.

Prior to the repeal, the Trump administration granted a two-year exemption to many coal plants from the 2024 air quality standards, despite 93% of coal-fired capacity already meeting or on track to meet those standards. Since then, neurotoxic mercury emissions have risen 9% nationally, and sulfur dioxide emissions have increased 18%.

In 2019, under the first Trump administration, the EPA proposed a similar rollback. In response, the Maine legislature unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution urging the president to direct the agency to drop its planned rollbacks of mercury pollution protections. Maine’s Congressional delegation has consistently supported the mercury pollution standards.

The lawsuit also challenges EPA’s rollback of emissions monitoring at power plants, which would have given communities real-time data on the pollutants in their air along with a stronger tool for enforcing compliance.

Natural Resources Council of Maine will be represented in the lawsuit by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization headquartered in Boston, with offices in Arizona and the Netherlands.

The Natural Resources Council of Maine, based in Augusta, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization founded in 1959 to protect, restore and conserve Maine’s environment.