By: Patrice Tomcik, National Field Director, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: June 13, 2023
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0072
To: Environmental Protection Agency
My name is Patrice Tomcik, and I am the National Field Director for Moms Clean Air Force, a community of 1.5 million moms united to equitably protect children’s health from air pollution and climate change.
I live in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, located within the Greater Pittsburgh region, with my husband and my two young children. I support the carbon rule because cutting climate pollution and other forms of air pollution will have profound benefits for the health of our children and everyone in our communities.
Power plants are responsible for roughly a quarter of climate pollution in the US. In Southwestern Pennsylvania where I live, two coal fired power plants—the Keystone and Conemaugh power generating stations—are still operating and emitting very large amounts of climate-warming air pollution.
Climate change has contributed to shorter, warmer winters providing ideal conditions for Lyme disease-carrying ticks to thrive and multiply faster, especially in the Northeast. Children aged five to nine have the highest historical rates of Lyme disease of any age group. Tick checks have become a standard routine in our house as I have repeatedly had to remove them from my family and dogs. More than 10 people I know have been treated for Lyme disease in the past five years, including my husband.
In addition to their climate benefits, the proposals would also result in cutting other pollution, such as particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide that are harmful to health. I have lived my whole life in Southwestern Pennsylvania and grew up living two miles downwind from the coal-fired Cheswick power generating station, which shuttered in 2022. As a child, I watched the plumes from the stacks of the Cheswick plant float over the river toward the playground where I played. I missed a lot of school due to chronic bronchitis, and now as an adult, I have respiratory problems. My mother has a chronic cough and respiratory problems. My father had COPD and a heart attack requiring quintuple bypass surgery before he passed two years ago. It is well-known that the Greater Pittsburgh Region has some of the worst air pollution in the nation, according to the American Lung Association.
I applaud EPA for offering power plants multiple pathways for cleaning up their carbon pollution in the proposed rule. However, I have serious concerns about using hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to attempt reductions in carbon emissions since the large-scale use has not been tested and thus could make climate pollution worse while harming the communities in which these technologies are sited. In Southwestern Pennsylvania, both CCS and hydrogen are being considered, and I have concerns about these technologies that may result in even greater harm for children like mine that have already borne the brunt of the industrial scale pollution from the fossil fuel industry. My home is located downwind from the polluting Shell petrochemical complex, and there are many fracked methane gas wells in my children’s school district with the closest one located a half a mile away from their campus.
The good news is that there are better alternatives to fossil fuels, such as clean, renewable, and sustainable wind and solar energy, and I support the acceleration of these healthy energy sources.
In summary, I support EPA’s proposal to limit carbon emissions from fossil fuel power plants. However, it is very important that EPA consider safeguards for communities overburdened by the fossil fuel buildout in the final version of this rule.