Date: October 16, 2025
To: Ohio EPA
Subject: Reconsider Draft Permit No. P0137785 for Nutrien Lima
Dear Mr. Butler:
My name is Amanda Rowoldt and I live in Franklin County in Dublin, Ohio with my two young boys. I am a Field Organizer for Moms Clean Air Force, with over 90,000 members in Ohio. As a mother, as someone concerned about healthy living, and as an advocate for children, it's important for me to express my strong concern about hazardous air pollution and to ask the Ohio EPA to reconsider the draft Title V permit for Nutrien Lima.
Situated amidst dozens of schools and daycare centers, the Nutrien facility is part of a gigantic, heavily polluting petrochemical complex that spews massive amounts of hazardous air pollutants into the surrounding neighborhoods. There is not even a buffer zone separating the factories from the homes and Little League playing fields.
As a mother of two young boys, I’m particularly concerned about highly polluting sources like the Lima complex because children are especially vulnerable to the negative health impacts of air pollution. Children’s bodies and brains are growing and developing until their early twenties, so pollution exposure can negatively impact their normal growth and development. Children also breathe in more air pound-for-pound than adults – in other words, they breathe in more air pollution for their size. For pregnant mothers, exposure to air pollution can lead to adverse birth outcomes like miscarriage, preterm birth, low birth weight, or stillbirth.
It is imperative that the Ohio EPA abides by its mandate to protect the environment and public health. I am urging Ohio EPA to reconsider the Nutrien permit in Lima and to protect the air that Ohio families breathe and the health of children and pregnant mothers.
Nutrien is part of a giant complex of heavy polluters that have repeatedly violated our nation’s air, water, and solid waste laws. Alongside Nutrien are its business partner Ineos, maker of plastics-chemicals and hydrogen cyanide, and the heavily polluting Husky-Cenovus Refinery, which has been operating since 1886—a source of benzene, dioxins, 1,3-butadiene and other hazardous air pollutants. Much of the pollution wafts into low-income historically marginalized neighborhoods situated downwind of the site.
Despite the dense concentration of intertwined serial polluters sharing this site, there are not any air pollution monitors within 5 kilometers. People deserve to know what they are breathing! Nor is there any buffer land to separate the homes, schools, and playing fields from the factory complex.
The draft permit itself raises a number of red flags including the use of very questionable accounting strategies that underestimate the emissions (and thus the need for stricter pollution controls). And there is no mention of the aggregate and cumulative impacts from the multitude of toxic substances released by the five petrochemical companies that all share the same site—the permit is written as if each pollutant from each piece of equipment at each facility is the only one that people are exposed to. This is absurd.
The state of Ohio must protect Ohioans from unnecessary toxic exposure. All children have the right to breathe clean air, and parents deserve to send their children outside to play without fear, or anxiety about the air their children are breathing. Playing outdoors is essential for children’s health. As a mother and a resident of Ohio, I strongly urge you to modify the draft renewal permit for the Nutrien Lima facility to require more stringent monitoring and control technologies for the sake of Ohio’s children.