By: Karin Stein, Iowa Organizer, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: July 10, 2025
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA–HQ–OAR–2018–0794
To: Environmental Protection Agency
My name is Karin Stein. I am Iowa organizer for Moms Clean Air Force and its EcoMadres program. Soy Karin Stein, coordinadora en Iowa para EcoMadres. We are a national organization of over a million and a half moms, dads, and other caretakers united against air pollution.
I strongly oppose EPA’s proposal to repeal recently finalized updates to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, because there is no safe level of mercury.
There is no scientific disagreement that mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin that harms the developing brains of babies and children, even fetuses. Iowa’s five largest, active coal plants are located along two of this nation’s main waterways: the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers, which carry any pollution and runoff through this country.
Iowa’s coal plants pump dangerous mercury into the air, along with other toxic heavy metals like arsenic, chromium, and lead. This has been measured and corroborated. In 2021, the Iowa Environmental Council calculated the total mercury emissions from Iowa coal plants to have been 75 pounds, which is alarming, considering the plants are near water, and mercury concentrates as methylmercury in the fatty tissue of fish.
Two of the oldest and most polluting coal plants in the nation, the Neal Plants, are located in northwest Iowa, in Woodbury County, right next to the Winnebago reservation. Fishing is part of the Winnebago cultural tradition. Neurological diseases, heart disease, and lung disease among the Winnebago are tragically rampant. Asthma rates in Woodbury County in general, are the highest in Iowa.
Utilities in Iowa enjoy a monopoly over their service territory, which means individual Iowans and businesses have no choice in their utility provider. With a captive market, coal plants in Iowa have no incentive to change their production practices, and our only hope for improving them is to ask EPA to hold them to the safest standards possible.
As recently as 2023, mercury was detected in all tested waterways in Iowa. Fish advisories were concentrated in northeastern Iowa, downstream from Minnesota coal plants, and also downstream from unlined coal ash storage ponds of retired coal plants within Iowa. Again, NO level of mercury is safe, especially not for fetuses and young children.
I live on the edge of a state park, 200 feet from a lake. Our lake has never been on a mercury advisory list, but I know it has other contaminants, and I observe who fishes here. On weekends I see many young families, most of them multigenerational Latino and Asian families for whom spending time fishing with the whole family is a cultural tradition. I am South American, and on my walks I always stop to chat with Latino families. I have found time and again that they never question the safety of the fish they eat, because I ask. They laugh and say, “Ay, no se preocupe, it’ll be ok, don’t worry.”
Many people don’t question the safety of the fish they eat and likely don’t know how to check for fish advisories. Fish advisories are difficult to find on the internet, and the ones that are available are not kept up in real time. Fish advisories can also be contradictory and confusing, because states vary in how they interpret health threats from the same data. If there are public warning signs at all, they are typically only in English, and many of the areas that have fish advisories in southeast Iowa, also have large Latino populations.
It is therefore essential that EPA protect recent updates to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which strengthen mercury limits for lignite coal plants and address many of the other harmful pollutants emitted from coal plants as well.
You and I know how bad mercury is. I am confident that none of us gathered here today want our children or grandchildren to come in touch with it.
In the name of all families with young children and pregnant moms, regardless of their cultural background or where they live, please do NOT repeal recently finalized updates to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards
Thank you for allowing me to testify. Thanks for enduring so many testimonies. It can’t be easy to stay focused on each one, but your job is very important, and your efforts are hugely appreciated.