Editor's note (May 29, 2026): This article has been corrected. The original version stated EPA withdrew its proposal to list nine PFAS as RCRA hazardous constituents. EPA's May 8, 2026 withdrawal was of a separate proposal — to clarify corrective-action authority at hazardous-waste facilities. The nine-PFAS hazardous-constituent listing proposal (February 2024) remains pending but has not been finalized. The article has been revised to accurately distinguish between these two proposals.
There are weeks where environmental policy moves in increments — a comment period here, a compliance extension there. And then there are weeks like this one, where the scope of federal regulatory retreat becomes impossible to ignore.
Between May 1 and May 14, 2026, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took four major deregulatory actions that, taken together, represent the most significant rollback of environmental and public health protections in a single stretch since the agency's founding. Each one deserves its own analysis. Together, they tell a story about who the federal government is choosing to protect — and who it isn't.
PFAS and the RCRA Retreat
On May 8, EPA published a Federal Register notice withdrawing its proposed rule to clarify RCRA corrective-action authority for releases at hazardous-waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities. This was a separate proposal from the February 2024 rule to list nine PFAS compounds as hazardous constituents — that listing proposal remains pending but has not been finalized.
The distinction matters. The withdrawn proposal would have clarified EPA's authority to compel cleanups at RCRA-permitted facilities. The still-pending hazardous-constituent listing would add nine specific PFAS to the list of chemicals that trigger corrective-action requirements. Together, they represented a two-pronged approach to PFAS accountability under RCRA. One prong is now gone; the other's fate is uncertain.
EPA's stated reason for the withdrawal: existing regulations already "provide the tools to develop protective permit conditions, when necessary, without the need to modify the hazardous waste definition." Translation: the agency decided it was simpler not to act than to clarify. PFAS contamination at landfills, industrial sites, and military bases doesn't go away because a rule gets withdrawn. The contamination stays. The liability questions stay. What leaves is one of the clearest paths to regulatory clarity.
The Drinking Water Rule Gets Gutted — From the Inside
On May 1, the Office of Management and Budget completed interagency review of two EPA proposals that would fundamentally alter the 2024 National Primary Drinking Water Regulation for PFAS — the first enforceable federal limits on forever chemicals in tap water.
The first proposal would extend compliance deadlines for PFOA and PFOS maximum contaminant levels by two years, pushing them to 2031. The second would rescind the standards entirely for four other PFAS compounds — PFHxS, PFNA, and GenX (HFPO-DA) — along with the hazard index approach for evaluating PFAS mixtures.
This is not a minor adjustment. The hazard index was the mechanism designed to address what scientists have been saying for years: PFAS don't contaminate water one compound at a time. They travel as mixtures. Eliminating the mixture standard guts the rule's ability to address real-world exposure.
Meanwhile, the rule itself remains in effect. Water systems are caught in limbo — required to prepare for compliance with standards the agency intends to weaken but hasn't yet formally changed. The DC Circuit has denied EPA's requests to vacate or sever portions of the rule, so the full regulation stands even as the agency works to undermine it.
An estimated 3.5 million people in North Carolina's Cape Fear River Basin alone drink tap water with PFAS above EPA standards. NC State professor Detlef Knappe, who helped expose Chemours' GenX dumping into the Cape Fear nearly a decade ago, told WUNC this week he feels "some combination of disappointment and disgust" at the state's proposed monitoring-only approach. If the federal standard for GenX disappears, the floor drops out from under state efforts too.
Coal Plant Wastewater: 240 Million Gallons of Toxic Metals
On May 14, EPA proposed to repeal a Biden-era rule that prevented coal-burning power plants from releasing hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater laced with toxic metals — including arsenic, mercury, and selenium — into rivers and streams. The original rule was a straightforward application of Clean Water Act authority: if your industrial process generates toxic wastewater, you treat it before it enters public waterways.
The repeal would leave communities downstream of aging coal plants exposed to contaminants that bioaccumulate in fish tissue and persist in sediment. Many of these communities are rural, low-income, and already overburdened by legacy pollution — exactly the populations that environmental regulations exist to protect.
Ethylene Oxide: Rewriting the Rules on Cancer Science
Perhaps the most consequential of this week's actions isn't about PFAS or water at all. On May 12, reporting revealed that EPA's proposed rescission of 2024 ethylene oxide (EtO) emission standards would do more than roll back one rule — it would limit the agency's authority to strengthen protections for any hazardous air pollutant when new science shows it's more dangerous than previously thought.
Recent research shows EtO is approximately 60 times more carcinogenic than the science behind the 2006 regulations assumed. The 2024 rule required the 89 facilities that emit the chemical to collectively cut emissions by about 90 percent. Rolling it back leaves 2.3 million people exposed to a known carcinogen, saves industry $50 million per year, and — critically — establishes the precedent that EPA cannot conduct discretionary reviews of toxic pollutants even when the science demands it.
A Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program analysis put it plainly: if this legal theory prevails, it permanently weakens EPA's ability to update protections when we learn chemicals are more dangerous than we thought. Given that chemicals are generally approved with minimal independent review of industry safety claims, that's a devastating outcome.
What We're Watching
At EPR Foundation, we don't track these developments to score political points. We track them because they directly affect the people and places we work to protect — communities on private wells near contaminated sites, families downstream of aging infrastructure, workers and residents near industrial facilities.
The pattern this week is clear: federal environmental protection is being systematically narrowed. PFAS removed from hazardous waste classification. Drinking water standards weakened. Coal wastewater rules repealed. Cancer-prevention regulations reversed.
None of these actions make the contamination go away. The PFAS is still in the groundwater. The metals are still in the wastewater. The ethylene oxide is still in the air. What changes is whether the government requires anyone to do something about it.
States are stepping into the gap — 16 have now enacted PFAS consumer product laws, Michigan just introduced nine new PFAS bills, Maryland passed biosolids limits, Florida is mandating PFAS testing at wastewater plants, and Delaware released a comprehensive implementation plan. But state action, however commendable, cannot substitute for a functioning federal floor.
We'll continue watching. More importantly, we'll continue working — documenting what's happening, explaining why it matters, and building the case for the restoration and protection these communities deserve.