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Christine Gonzalez worries that the grime from the Valley Power Plant that builds up on her car is from the same air pollution that makes it hard for her son to breathe.

New Bush Administration Rules Let Valley Power Plant Keep on Polluting

Christine Gonzalez's 7-year-old son, Michael Vallejo, has asthma. The Gonzalez family lives near the coal-fired Valley Power Plant in the heart of Milwaukee and Christine worries that the grime that builds up on her car is from the same air pollution that makes it hard for her son to breathe.

Even though air quality has improved in many regions of the country since the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970, coal-fired power plant pollution currently causes 448 premature deaths a year in Wisconsin and 163 deaths in the Milwaukee area from asthma and heart attacks.1 People of color in Milwaukee County are about twice as likely as whites to live near polluting facilities.2

For example, in one 28-block area within a mile of the Valley Plant, 70 percent of the population is Hispanic and about 40 percent of all residents are 19 years of age or younger. And now because the Bush administration is weakening clean air protections, Wisconsin's air pollution problems stand to get worse, especially for the Hispanic community.

"It's difficult to raise a child with asthma," says Christine Gonzalez. "Michael has to take his inhaler to school with him and he seems to have more trouble breathing when he is playing outside. Why don't they put modern pollution-control equipment on the Valley Power Plant?"

In fact, the Bush administration has created a huge exception to rules in the Clean Air Act. Under the current law, the oldest and dirtiest power plants and refineries must install modern pollution controls when they make changes that increase their output of pollution. The Bush administration is allowing utilities like the Valley Plant to avoid pollution reduction despite a recent study that shows, if installed on the Valley Plant, current technologies could reduce the plant's pollution dramatically.3 The need for this technology is urgent: the EPA has listed Milwaukee County and nine other counties in Wisconsin as violating health standards for smog.

Thirty years of progressively cleaner air shows that we have the know-how to reduce pollution. By consistently siding with the coal and utility industries, however, the Bush administration is putting polluters' profits ahead of people's health. There is a better way. The administration must enforce the law, hold polluters accountable, and require them to use today's technology to protect our health and safety.

"It scares his teachers when he has a bad asthma attack," says Christine. Michael says he gets more asthma attacks when he runs or is in a hot car. "It makes me sad when I have an attack." His mom agrees, saying: "This is what we breathe. I am not worried about myself, but about the children who are our future."

For more information contact:

Sierra Club
Wisconsin Chapter
414.453.3127
rosemary.wehnes@sierraclub.org
www.sierraclub.org/communities/wi

American Lung Association of Wisconsin
www.lungusa.org/wisconsin/

U.S.Environmental Protection Agency
Air Quality Forecast
www.epa.gov/airnow

1. Clean Air Task Force, "Death, Disease and Dirty Power," www.cleartheair.org.
2. http://www.scorecard.org/community/ej-report.tcl?fips_ county_code=55079#demographics.
3. "Lethal Legacy: A Comprehensive Look at America's Dirtiest Power Plants," U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, October 2003.