By: Vanessa Lynch, Pennsylvania Field Organizer, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: September 2, 2025
About: EPA Docket No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0162-0001, Compliance Extension on Section 111 Methane Rule
To: Environmental Protection Agency
My name is Vanessa Lynch and I am Pennsylvania Campaign Coordinator for Moms Clean Air Force, representing almost 105,000 caregivers in Pennsylvania. I live in a suburb of Pittsburgh with my husband and two children. Today I am asking the Office of Management and Budget not to approve any changes to the methane rulemaking’s timeline or allow EPA to roll back desperately needed protections.
The reason this rule is so important to me is that I have witnessed firsthand the impacts the oil and gas industry has had on my community, with a well pad having been fracked in a medium density residential area of my local township. The well pad is located near homes, a daycare center, an assisted living facility, and a park where my children spent many of their childhood days playing in the stream and participating in recreational sports.
As a frontline community member, opportunities like EPA’s Super-Emitter program, comprehensive leak detection and repair, and equipment standards such as zero-emitting pneumatic equipment requirements for pneumatic controllers and pumps, create a meaningful improvement for our families. EPA’s assessment of methane and co-pollutant impacts during the original methane rulemaking process was sound.
I’ve toured southwest Pennsylvania’s oil and gas infrastructure sites and met with other frontline impacted community members who shared stories of serious health and safety impacts they are experiencing as a result of living in close proximity to oil and gas infrastructure. Stories of unexplainable cancer cases ravaging entire neighborhoods, high numbers of oil and gas infrastructure being placed in close proximity to one another and to families, and Christmas day explosions rattling houses and forcing an evacuation. Stories that brought tears to the eyes of all present and reminded us of how imperative it is that we act with urgency, strength, and purpose, focused on creating durable protections for families.
According to our partners at Fractracker, as of 2022, over 100,000 children under the age of 18 live near a fracked well in Pennsylvania. A 2022 study from the Yale School of Public Health found Pennsylvania children between the ages of 2 and 7 were 2-3 times more likely to develop acute lymphoblastic leukemia if they lived near an unconventional or fracked well. A subsequent 2023 study from the University of Pittsburgh found further associations between proximity to oil and gas infrastructure and childhood lymphoma rates. Air pollution from the oil and gas industry has also been shown to cause respiratory diseases, asthma attacks, reproductive problems, neurological problems, and cancer.
Implementing these federal methane safeguards is urgently needed to create baseline protections for children like mine on the frontline of this industry, especially in states like Pennsylvania where enacting meaningful oil and gas methane protections is vital. Please do not delay the implementation timeline of the EPA methane rule and extend the exposure of families to climate and health harming pollution. Families have been fighting for these protections for a decade, and we should not have to wait any longer.