Amy Kelly
As a seventh-generation Tennessean, I am proud to call the Appalachian Mountain region home. My roots are in the town of Kingsport, but toxic air pollution from power plants keeps me from living in my hometown. Today, I call Maryville, Tennessee home, but I still haven’t escaped all the impacts of harmful pollution. Much like me, my daughter struggles with asthma, and we’ve both spent sleepless nights struggling to breathe.
This is the reality of living under the cloud of air pollution. As an organizer and community advocate, I’m used to pushing polluters in Tennessee to clean up their act, but some of the toxic air my family and I breathe doesn’t even come from sources in the state–it’s coming from other states, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles before reaching my community.
That’s why the Environmental Protection Agency created the Good Neighbor Plan, which protects the health of communities like mine by helping states reduce harmful air pollution through the deployment of readily available technologies that are already in use at many coal plants across the country. By reducing dangerous pollution emitted by power plants, the plan protects residents in dozens of states who are unknowingly subjected to toxic emissions from plants often hundreds of miles away.
For many coal plant operators, complying with this plan is as simple as turning on an air pollution control already installed on a unit, but some states and industry groups are fighting these measures to improve air quality tooth and nail. For them, saving a dollar seems to be more important than saving a child from experiencing asthma, or even saving a life.
That’s why I was relieved to see EPA isn’t backing down from the Good Neighbor Plan, but instead recently proposed to expand it to include my home state of Tennessee as well as Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, New Mexico.
Last week, I testified at EPA’s public hearing on the proposed expansion of the Good Neighbor Plan to help demonstrate why including my state is so important to ensuring my family and I have safe air to breathe. At the hearing, I was moved by several others who shared similar stories from communities across the country, a moving testament to how air pollution impacts us all.
Here’s what I told EPA:
I speak today as someone who has been personally and severely affected by uncontrolled pollution. I grew up next to Eastman Chemical Company, which is currently recognized as the chief emitting source for Tennessee’s only county that is in non-attainment for air quality standards.
How has this pollution affected me?
I had chronic asthma as a child and underwent many trips to the hospital for breathing treatments. Many of my neighborhood playmates also suffered the same illness.
What I came to learn later is that my inability to breathe as a child was caused by the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution released into the air from uncontrolled facilities -- much of which is due to the burning of coal.
I am currently not able to live in my hometown because of the air quality problems.
EPA rules like the Good Neighbor plan for ozone provide opportunities for states to address the pollution from uncontrolled facilities that affects millions of people like me.
I appreciate that EPA has decided to include Tennessee. Any reduction of pollution is good for the people living here and those from other states nearby. This is an equity issue as well. It’s not fair that power plants in my state have been avoiding reducing pollution because the costs of that pollution are borne by people in downwind states.
Updating the rules to cut down cross state air pollution will have a dramatic impact on reducing smog, resulting in saved lives and avoided adverse health impacts, especially in communities already suffering from poor health outcomes.
Today is a special day not only because of this hearing to protect lives but because it’s my daughter’s 12th birthday. I am here speaking for her today as well. She was diagnosed with asthma and suffers when she gets sick and most recently when the smoke from wildfires in Canada drifted down. We endured sleepless nights trying to make her comfortable and worrying she wouldn’t be able to breathe. This is how I know how important this rule is. We need the EPA to do the right thing and finalize this rule as quickly as possible. It will help people like me living near polluting facilities, and the millions more that live downwind.
Thank you again for the opportunity to comment in support of the EPA’s Good Neighbor plan.