By: Patrice Tomcik, Senior National Field Director
Date: October 1, 2026
About: Docket # EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124-2920
To: EPA
My name is Patrice Tomcik, and I am the Senior Field Director for Moms Clean Air Force, a community of 1.6 million moms and caregivers working to protect children’s health from air pollution, toxic chemicals, and climate change.
I live in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, in the Greater Pittsburgh region, with my husband and two children. I strongly oppose EPA’s proposal to rescind the greenhouse gas findings for fossil fuel-fired power plants and eliminate EPA’s authority under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act to limit their climate pollution.
I am outraged by EPA’s ongoing dismantling of protections against pollution from power plants. At a time when climate change is already harming our families and communities, EPA should be strengthening protections against climate pollution, not abandoning them.
For me, this is not an abstract policy debate. I have lived my entire life in Southwestern Pennsylvania, and decisions about how we produce enormous amounts of energy are being made all around us.
As data centers drive new electricity demand, my region is seeing major new investments in fossil fuels. The former Bruce Mansfield coal plant site is being redeveloped with plans for a massive new methane gas-fired power plant. At Homer City, another former coal plant site, plans call for a 4.5-gigawatt methane gas-fired power plant to serve a data center campus—expected to be the largest in the country. And the Keystone and Conemaugh coal plants are now expected to operate longer than previously planned.
We should be moving away from climate-warming fossil fuels, not creating new fossil fuel infrastructure that could operate for decades. Data centers should be powered with clean, renewable energy and storage—not become a reason to build more methane gas plants or keep aging coal plants running longer.
I know what it means to grow up in the shadow of a power plant. I lived just two miles downwind from the coal-fired Cheswick Generating Station. As a child, I watched plumes from its smokestacks drift across the Allegheny River toward the playground where I played. I missed a lot of school because of chronic bronchitis, and I continue to experience respiratory problems as an adult.
Today, I am also experiencing the effects of a changing climate personally. Tick checks are routine in my family. I have removed ticks from my children, my dogs, and myself, and I have been diagnosed with and treated for Lyme disease twice. Children ages 5 to 9 have historically had the highest rates of Lyme disease, and EPA has projected that continued warming will increase cases among children.
I am outraged that EPA is seeking to abandon its authority to address greenhouse gas pollution from power plants while new fossil fuel investments in Pennsylvania could increase climate pollution for decades to come.
EPA must protect our children’s health and future by maintaining strong limits on climate pollution from power plants.
Thank you.