Credit: (Jakec, via Wikimedia Commons)Culm Mountain west of Treverton, Pennsylvania. The hill is a mixture of rock, gray shale, and anthracite, all discarded as waste products from coal mining. Some power plants burn the culms to generate electricity, but the process is highly polluting.
washington — The Trump administration has granted a waiver to a New Jersey energy company to allow it to operate two power plants that do not comply with federal rules limiting air pollutants, including highly toxic mercury.
The Environmental Protection Agency granted Morristown-based Olympus Power LLC these exemptions to the rule, which will be finalized in 2024. The rule, officially known as the Mercury Air Toxics Standard (MATS), remained in effect until it was repealed by the Trump administration in February. Previously, companies typically complied by installing pollution control equipment.
In March 2025, Olympus sought exemptions (exemptions not provided to the industry as a whole) for the Northampton Power Plant in Northampton, Pennsylvania, and a factory near Toledo, Ohio, according to emails obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund, a legal and environmental advocacy group, through a public records request.
“This waiver is an unusual form of relief that has never been granted in the history of this law before this administration,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, wrote to Olympus President and CEO Richard Vicens on May 14. “The American people must pay with their health and their wallets for these waivers and the added risks.”
According to White House, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over air pollution laws and regulations, Olympus is among 17 companies that have received exemptions from the president’s hazardous substance standards. The White House continues to investigate these 17 companies. A spokeswoman for the senator would not say whether Olympus had provided the records the senator requested.
Olympus did not respond to requests for comment from New Jersey Spotlight News. When Olympus sought the exemption, Vince Brisini, Olympus’ director of environmental affairs, said the company requested partial exemptions for both facilities.
In an email Tuesday, Brisini criticized changes in the latest version of the MATS rule, particularly the way EPA collected data to justify the regulation, how companies can comply, and the time it takes to “demonstrate compliance.”
Asked why his company requested the exemption, Brisini told New Jersey Spotlight News, “It gave us an opportunity to avoid a completely frivolous and unnecessary regulatory change.” “There is no basis for rule changes that require significant capital and operating and maintenance costs and do not result in non-monetizable benefits.”
Brisini said the company has not requested or received any other exemptions.
Main health benefits
When the Environmental Protection Agency under President Biden finalized the rule in April 2024, it projected that the change would result in $300 million in health benefits from 2028 to 2037.
The second Trump administration has made it clear it wants to gut regulations meant to protect air, water, climate and land, and Democratic state attorneys general are challenging the move.
“Today is the biggest day of deregulation our country has ever seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the religion of climate change: lowering the cost of living for American families, unlocking American energy, and bringing back auto jobs to America,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in March 2025, when he announced 31 moves to reduce regulations. One of those decisions was a “reconsideration” of the mercury and air toxicity regulations.
Many of these 31 decisions have met resistance in federal court. Pending litigation includes a challenge to the MATS rule, where environmental groups and the attorney general, including New Jersey’s Jennifer Davenport, are suing to reinstate the MATS rule.
Governments across agencies and departments have proposed or finalized 372 rules and guidelines to weaken or eliminate climate protections, according to a tally maintained by researchers at Columbia University Law School.
mercury, arsenic, chromium
Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin that can damage the brain in childhood and lead to lifelong health concerns. In repealing the MATS rule, the administration also repealed regulations on arsenic and chromium contamination, as well as other toxic metals linked to cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurological diseases.
“Mercury and other toxic air pollutants don’t just disappear; they accumulate in our communities, our food, and our children. Rolling back these protections puts the most vulnerable Americans, especially children, pregnant people, and overburdened communities, at grave risk and undoes decades of progress in cleaning the air we breathe,” said Ellen Kurlansky, a former aviation policy analyst in the EPA’s Office of Air Radiation.
Since MATS was introduced in 2012, coal-fired power plants across the country have released approximately 29 tons of mercury each year. That total fell by 90% in 2021, according to the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA appointees and politicians.
The Trump administration also exempted certain industrial facilities and industries from the regulations, including two chemical plants in New Jersey that use dangerous gases to clean medical equipment and sterilize food at dozens of contaminated sites in the state.
In spring 2025, EPA created an electronic system for companies to “request presidential exemptions under (the provisions of) the Clean Air Act.”
The provision in question, Section 112(i)(4) of the Clean Air Act, a landmark pollution law passed by Congress in the 1970s and subsequently amended, was cited by Olympus in its request to the EPA last year. The provision allows for waivers for up to two years if the president determines that “the technology to implement the standard is not available and is in the national security interests of the United States.”
EPA spokeswoman Bridget Hirsch said. He said the waiver request had been passed on to the White House.
“The EPA plays no role in decisions provided for in the statute and specifically given to the President,” Hirsch wrote in New Jersey Spotlight News on Tuesday. “All requests sent to the EPA email box will be forwarded to the White House, and any further questions regarding the process or decisions should be directed to the White House.”
“National Security”
The president and administration officials have argued that coal-fired power plants are critical to national security and should therefore be lightly regulated.
In a March 28, 2025 letter to the EPA, Brisini, the Olympus official who drafted the EPA request for the exemption, used similar language.
“Importantly, President Trump recognizes the undisputed importance of a reliable and cost-effective electric grid to America’s national security. Given the significant and unexpected increase in electricity demand, keeping power plants online will help achieve this national security goal,” Brisini wrote for the Pennsylvania site.
Until Trump took office, no president had invoked this section of the Clean Air Act, according to the White House.
During his second term, President Trump granted MATS exemptions to companies operating more than 30 power plants and more than 70 coal-fired power plants. The White House said in May that the exemptions “unilaterally and illegally exempted nearly a third of all U.S. coal-fired power plants, nearly a quarter of all chemical manufacturers, nearly half of all commercial medical sterilizers, one of America’s two copper smelters, and the entire coke oven industry from standards for toxic pollutants such as mercury, ethylene oxide, benzene, and acid gases.”
Olympus said the Northampton facility began operations in 1992 and runs on anthracite waste, also known as slag or culm. The Ohio site is also a coal-fired power plant and is newer. It started operating in 2002.
Both Olympus facilities are listed in the 2025 proclamation that President Trump issued in an effort to delay implementation of the Biden-era MATS rule.
Since 2008, Olympus employees have donated $44,010 to federal politicians and campaigns, including Republicans and Democrats in eastern Pennsylvania, according to Federal Election Commission records.
