By: Shaina Oliver, Colorado Field Organizer, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: February 12, 2024
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0434
To: Environmental Protection Agency
First, I want to start with a land acknowledgment. Moms Clean Air Force acknowledges the ancestral lands of over 574 tribal nations. And our Colorado Chapter sits directly on the ancestral lands of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Nations and over 46 tribal nations of the Comanche, Kiowa, Apache, Shoshone, Lakota Sioux, Ute, Puebloan, Hopi, and Navajo.
My name is Shaina Oliver. I am a Colorado Field Organizer for Moms Clean Air Force and their Ecomadres program as well as an Indigenous Peoples’ Rights advocate working to advance environmental justice for communities disproportionately impacted by environmental harms while combating the climate crisis. I am here today as a mother and advocate who supports the Methane Emissions Reduction Program and the need to cut methane and other harmful pollutants from oil and gas operations across the country.
Importantly, I am an Indigenous Mother of four and we are the descendants of the genocide known as the “Indian Removal Act,” known to the Dineh as “The Long Walk of the Navajo.” These types of human rights violations have deeply impacted Indigenous peoples’, communities, health, wealth, and environmental well-being.
The federal government is responsible for aiding, acknowledging and ensuring the honoring of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights of Native Americans First Tribal Nations over ancestral lands. Importantly, upholding the Peace and Friendship Treaty and respecting Traditional Ecological Knowledge of all Tribal First Nations of Native American Indian Tribes. Because of the disregard for the Peace and Friendship Treaty, environmental harms continue to impact not only Native Americans but also Black Americans of African descendants, Hispanic/Latino Americans who lost their Indigenous Identity, and those economically challenged who have been vulnerable to exploitation. As an Indigenous tribal member of the Navajo Nation, I’ve seen the degradation of ancestral lands, water, and air quality from the exploitation of natural resources like oil, gas, coal, uranium, helium, and many more. All communities are impacted by policies that allow environmental harms.
Because of these harms community members like myself have been impacted by asthma, including my family, my youngest son and both his grandfathers on both myself and my husband's families who both died prematurely. Methane, the main ingredient in natural gas, is a powerful greenhouse gas pollutant that is fueling this climate crisis. In Colorado we have seen the impacts of climate change with increased temperatures, wildfires, and drastically reduced snowcaps; impacting the Colorado River, the bloodline of the southwest states and many tribal communities.
Living in northeast Denver my family has stayed indoors more because of climate impacts that are made worse by oil-and-gas-operations-associated pollutants known as VOCs, volatile organic compounds, such as benzene. Benzene can worsen asthma, affect lung development in children and increase the risk of cancer, immune system damage, and neurological, reproductive, and developmental problems. Scientists have known for decades that air pollution is harmful to health and this is especially true for vulnerable populations such as older adults, people with underlying health conditions, communities of color, pregnant women, and children. Methane pollution from the oil and gas industry is fueling the climate crisis, and endangering the health and safety of communities across the country and while we are thankful for the EPA methane rule finalized last year, our work is not done.
By ensuring oil and gas operators comply with federal methane standards and take action now to reduce emissions, the Methane Emission Reduction program is an important step towards addressing the climate crisis and protecting the health and safety of children and families across all communities.