By: Shaina Oliver, Colorado Field Organizer
Date: July 22, 2026
About: Docket No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-1212-0001
To: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Thank you for taking the time to hear my comments. I’m Shaina Oliver, Indigenous Peoples Rights Advocate, Field Organizer with Moms Clean Air Force Colorado, and EcoMadres outreach coordinator. We are a national organization of parents united against harmful air pollution and climate change in protection for our children’s health and future.
Colorado Moms and EcoMadres parents urge you to consider the health of our children and strongly oppose this proposal to eliminate the minimum public participation requirements for "minor" New Source Review programs. This proposal could allow polluters to move forward with permitting new pollution sources without even notifying communities about the new or expanded AI data centers, petrochemical facilities, or other toxic enterprises moving into their neighborhoods. It's a proposal that's dangerous for children's health and communities like mine.
Importantly, I’m a mother of four children, and we are federally recognized Tribal members of the Navajo Nation, living, learning, and working in northeast Denver, Colorado. I’ve seen the environmental deterioration of my ancestral lands and its impacts on public health on and off the Navajo Reservation due to the environmental racism in U.S. laws, regulations, and policies. Our communities have been on a path of cleaning up toxic contaminants in our communities and addressing our ground-level ozone pollution, or smog, which is at a level that is unhealthy to breathe. At Moms, we know these toxic environments are detrimental to our children’s health and their future. Communities have been facing these environmental assaults and can transform communities to be resilient only if we don't overlook community voices.
For far too long our communities have been battling premature deaths, adverse birth outcomes, mental illness, cancer, respiratory illness, and autoimmune disease. And it’s common for our children to have one or many of these health impacts. Our communities need leadership to include community voices and protect our children’s health.
As a parent with asthma, I am vulnerable to environmental impacts from polluting facilities and developments, like the new pollution sources that would be covered by this proposed rule. Communities like mine have long waited for environmental protections that best protect our children from harmful contaminants that have the potential to alter genes, disrupt development of internal organs, and harm baby’s health before they even take their first breath. According to the American Lung Associations’ 2026 State of the Air Report, Denver-Greeley-Aurora are among the top 10 worst cities for ozone pollution.
Parents and Colorado Moms Clean Air Force strongly oppose this proposal to take away communities’ ability to weigh in on new pollution sources before they’re locked into decades of added health risk. Just because a pollution source is categorized as “minor” doesn’t mean the impacts of its pollution will be minor. Parents’ and communities’ voices are just as important as the voices of industry and must remain central to the New Source Review process.
Importantly, the rights of Tribal sovereignty must be respected. We have a right to exist as a Sovereign Nations and reserve the right to exist in future generations.