Thursday, June 26, 2014

Help Protect our Air!


The Obama administration has recently won a string of very hard-fought court victories pushing back challenges to strengthening the Clean Air Act. For Pennsylvanians, this finally means an opportunity to breathe cleaner air. That is, if our state representatives don’t stand in the way. Every year, Philadelphia suffers many poor air quality days where we’re out of compliance with the Clean Air Act. A major contributing factor is pollution wafting over us coming from coal-fired power plants located in Western PA.
 
Yesterday, our rep in the PA General Assembly, Cherelle Parker, voted for House Resolution 815 petitioning the EPA to allow Pennsylvania to adopt “less stringent emissions standards or a longer compliance schedule” for coal-fired power plants than the new EPA guidelines call for. If this comes to pass, it will mean many more years of dirty air for Philadelphia families, with serious health consequences including more ER visits for children with asthma. To me, House Resolution 815 reads like it was drafted by the Coal Lobby, and I suspect it was.
 
This is very shortsighted thinking. I will be contacting Ms. Parker’s office to express my disappointment. If you also find this vote objectionable, please consider doing the same. You can use this web form to send an email  to Representative Parker: