Sierra Club
On Monday I had the honor of testifying at the Environmental Protection Agency’s only hearing about EPA head Andrew Wheeler’s plan to roll back the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard. This standard provides tens of billions of dollars in public health benefits to our country, yet Andrew Wheeler -- a former coal lobbyist -- wants to help his coal buddies by getting rid of it.
Here’s my testimony to the EPA:
Good afternoon. My name is Loren Blackford.
I am the president of the Sierra Club, America’s oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization, with 3.5 million members and supporters across every state in the union. I am also a member of the President’s Council of Ceres, a nonprofit that works with the most influential investors and companies to drive sustainable solutions that work for the economy, the planet, and our communities.
First and foremost, however, I am here as a wife, a mother, and a proud New Yorker. My husband has had asthma since he was a young child. A few years ago, we learned that his heart was stopping (for up to 7 seconds) when he was in deep sleep. I have traveled in ambulances and waited in hospitals, helpless, as my husband struggled to breathe and underwent two heart surgeries.
I strongly oppose the EPA’s proposed withdrawal of its determination that it is appropriate to regulate mercury and other air toxics from coal-fired power plants because of all the facts and figures you have been hearing all day… but also because my own husband’s life hangs in the balance.
He is in his mid-fifties but fears he may not live more than another couple of years. One of his greatest hopes is to meet his grandchildren. As our children approach child-bearing age, however, we worry about the effects mercury and other pollutants may have during their pregnancies and on those hoped-for grandchildren.
Our experiences and fears are not unique. New York City is on the top 10 list of cities with the worst air quality in the country. Many of my fellow New Yorkers lack the access to quality healthcare that my family enjoys and live in more polluted neighborhoods. Too many young, old, and otherwise vulnerable New Yorkers are dying or suffering severe health impacts due to exposure to toxic pollutants.
The Mercury and Air Toxics standards work! They protect the public from air pollutants that are especially harmful to infants, mothers and people with asthma and heart issues like my husband’s.
The EPA’s own estimates show that the MATS protections prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths and well over 100,000 asthma attacks and heart attacks each year. MATS also provides massive benefits that the EPA has yet to fully quantify, including protecting children from lifelong neurological damage.
The proposed new EPA analysis would ignore many of these public health benefits. It would tilt EPA’s cost-benefit analyses in favor of a few polluters, and against public health. This development would allow coal-industry lawyers to argue that the MATS should be wholly eliminated in court. This has huge implications for the health benefits already realized due to MATS but also potentially altering the EPA’s administration of other Clean Air Act provisions.
Array
These changes would not only be a disaster for families and communities like mine … they would also be bad for business. A few coal executives -- former employers of Administrator Andrew Wheeler and his air policy chief, William Wehrum -- favor these changes. Many more business leaders do not.
The electric utility industry has already invested in meeting the existing standards and virtually every coal power plant in the United States has already installed pollution control equipment. As a result, mercury pollution from power plants has dropped by 90% over the past decade. In a letter to the EPA, representatives of the electric utility industry stated that, “Given this investment and these emissions reductions, regulatory and business certainty regarding regulation under CAA section 112 is critical” and requested that the EPA “ leave the underlying MATS rule in place and effective”.
A friend of mine works with a company that produces tuna, another industry profoundly impacted by these standards. She noted that many studies have confirmed that most human exposure to methyl mercury is through seafood consumption. The current FDA recommendation is that women aged 16-49, children and pregnant women not eat more than 1 serving of fish per week for a fish containing in excess of 0.23 parts per million. Consumer Reports has issued a “Mercury in Fish Recommendations Methodology”, based on its analysis of FDA data “to assure the safety of women of childbearing age and young children.”
The EPA and the Clean Air Act were created under a Republican Administration to protect the health and well-being of American communities and to provide consistent and reasonable guidance for businesses. The EPA needs to do its job and not undermine MATS and clean air protections.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify!