By: Shaina Oliver, Colorado field organizer, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: October 17, 2023
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2021-0317
To: Office of Management and Budget
First, I want to start with recognizing the lands we stand on. Moms Clean Air Force recognizes the ancestral lands of over 574 Tribal nations. I reside on the ancestral lands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Ute, and 46 Tribal Nations of Colorado.
My name is Shaina Oliver. As a field organizer for EcoMadres and Moms Clean Air Force Colorado and an Indigenous peoples’ rights advocate, I work to advance environmental justice for communities disproportionately impacted by environmental harms while combating the climate crisis.
Importantly, I am an Indigenous mother of four, and we are the descendants of the genocide known as the Indian Removal Act and 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.
Because of these harms, community members like myself have been impacted by asthma, including my family, my 11-year-old son, and both of his grandfathers, from both my own and my husband's families, who both died prematurely. Communities in the Denver Metro and Front Range have seen an increase in ground-level ozone pollution making Colorado the sixth worst state to breathe in, according to the American Lung Association’s “State of the Air Report.” These conditions make it hard for community members to simply be outside and breathe clean air.
Oil and gas operations are Colorado's leading source of methane pollution—a powerful climate change pollutant that is responsible for about a quarter of the climate change we’re experiencing today. Oil and gas operations are also responsible for 30-40% of ozone-forming volatile organic compounds produced on the Front Range.
Parents and community members have submitted comments to EPA in support of strong, comprehensive methane protections as this rule has been considered. We know oil and gas pollution impacts our health, as well as the climate impacts methane has caused, and we know the urgency to get a rule finalized quickly.
As an advocate for environmental justice, an impacted community member, and most importantly, as a mother of four kids, I am counting on your leadership to swiftly finalize methane rules to ensure zero-emitting equipment is put in place, communities are made aware of super-emitter events, and that we make the reductions necessary to meet global climate targets to sustain livable environments for our kids and the health and safety of our communities. Thank you for your time today.