SAN FRANCISCO— Community and conservation groups are suing the Trump administration over its recent decision to abandon protections that would have stopped millions of pounds of pollutants from being dumped by slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants into waterways across the U.S.

The groups filed a petition for legal review Monday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The legal challenge follows an Aug. 28 announcement from the Environmental Protection Agency that it would throw out rules prepared by the Biden administration.

“The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw these lifesaving pollution-reduction measures is not just unlawful, it’s incredibly nasty,” said Hannah Connor, environmental health deputy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The U.S. meat industry slaughters some 18,000 animals every minute, creating a waste stream full of blood, fecal bacteria and disease-causing pathogens that adds up to one of our country’s largest industrial sources of nutrient pollution. Now Trump’s EPA is killing a rule designed to curb discharges of that nasty wastewater into our rivers and streams and safeguard people and wildlife. This lawless administration is putting industry profits ahead of protecting kids from swimming in this gross pollution.”

Every year slaughterhouses and meat processing plants in the U.S. discharge about 112 million pounds of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, which feeds algal blooms that contribute to fish-killing low-oxygen zones. More than 60 million people, including disproportionate numbers of people with low incomes and people of color, live within 1 mile of rivers and streams degraded by slaughterhouse industry pollution.

If finalized, this rule would have imposed limits on phosphorus pollution from 126 meat industry plants across the U.S., eliminating at least 8 million pounds of this pollutant per year, plus 9 million pounds of nitrogen and other pollutants, including fecal bacteria and grease.

“In a shameful betrayal of communities across the U.S., the Trump administration is walking away from long-overdue, common-sense rules to control the slaughterhouse industry’s dumping of a grotesque amount of waste into American waterways,” said Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project. “The failure to require modern pollution controls is against the law and jeopardizes public health.”

The groups on this lawsuit previously sued the EPA in 2019 and again in 2022 demanding that the agency follow the requirements of the Clean Water Act and modernize badly outdated technology standards for water pollution-control systems for slaughterhouses and meat processing plants. Some facilities have not updated their standards in two decades and others have never established them.

“The slaughterhouse industry racks up hundreds of billions of dollars in sales each year, and it generates pollution that harms millions of Americans,” said Alexis Andiman, senior attorney at Earthjustice. “EPA knows it’s possible to reduce slaughterhouse pollution without raising prices but instead, it’s chosen to prioritize corporate profits over clean water and public health.”

Although the EPA said it was abandoning the protections because the meat-processing industry faces “multiple economic stressors,” the agency’s own records show that — even under the most stringent of the three standards — fewer than 1% of all the meat-processing facilities would face economic stress by upgrading their pollution-control systems.

The lawsuit was filed by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Cape Fear River Watch, Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help, Waterkeeper Alliance, Humane World for Animals, Food & Water Watch, Environment America and Animal Legal Defense Fund.