By: Shaina Oliver, Colorado state coordinator, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: January 11, 2023
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2021-0317
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 the Colorado chapter sits directly on the ancestral lands of over 48 Tribal nations of the Arapahoe, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, Apache, Shoshone, Lakota Sioux, Ute, Puebloan, Hopi, and the Dine aka Navajo.
My name is Shaina Oliver. I am a state coordinator for EcoMadres / Moms Clean Air Force Colorado and an Indigenous peoples’ rights advocate. We are working to advance environmental justice for communities disproportionately impacted by environmental harms while combating the climate crisis. Moms supports EPA’s updated rule to cut methane and other harmful pollutants from oil and gas operations across the country. This is an important step toward addressing the climate crisis and protecting the health and safety of children and families 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,” which is known to the Dine 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 descent, Hispanic/Latino Americans who may have 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 oil, gas, coal, uranium, helium, native knowledge, etc. All communities are impacted by policies that allow environmental harms.
Because of these harms, community members like myself and my family have been impacted by asthma. My youngest son struggles with asthma. Both of his grandfathers died prematurely due to health complications related to air quality. Currently, 334,000 Colorado community members are asthmatic in a state that continues to fail to address Colorado’s ozone nonattainment problem. Colorado is now the seventh worst state to breathe in because of ozone pollution, according to the American Lung Association. Living in 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).
Earthworks and FracTracker have recently released data showing that 17.3 million people live within half a mile from an oil and gas production operation, 3.9 being children under the age of 18. We fully support frequent inspections of all wells as this would greatly help reduce health harms and reduce leaks. However, workers and community members should have further protections like eliminating pollution from routine flaring and ensuring that the Super-Emitter Response Program involves and makes information accessible to frontline and environmental justice communities they are designed to protect. Again, we support EPA’s updated rule to cut methane and other harmful pollutants from oil and gas operations across the US and encourage you to strengthen protections for all 3.9 million children living near oil and gas operations.