Mother to bring daughter's story to EPA hearing

Mother to bring daughter's story to EPA hearing

BY JEFF HAWS
hawsj@knews.com

While the other kids play outside on
a warm summer day, she stays shut in-
side her house.
Her mother keeps her stocked in the
two different kinds of medicine she must
take every day, and "if it gets bad," they
break out the breathing machine.
Stephanie Robinson, 15, of Knoxville
suffers from severe asthma, and her moth-
er is testifying before the Environmen-
tal Protection Agency on Monday in
Raleigh, N.C., with hopes that it won't
get worse.
"It feels like at least my voice will be
heard," said Stephanie's mother Vickie
Johnson. "I want them to know that this
affects people. She would get progres-
sively worse."
That's if the EPA changes the rules on
the Clean Air Act, she said, allowing old
and dirty power plants to maintain grand-
father status.
Many older plants that have had their
lives extended have not put the best avail-
able control technology into place, and
these rule changes would mean they
wouldn't have to.
Johnson wants to make sure the EPA
knows the potential consequences of
these proposed rule changes. Stephanie's
father, Darrell Robinson, died from con-
genital emphysema at 41 when Stephanie
was 7 – he also suffered from asthma.
These are the same problems John-
son is hoping her daughter doesn't have
to face.
"(Her doctor) has explained to me
in the past … she needs to be inside,"
Johnson said. "Air pollution can make
this worse. It's like your lungs getting a
sunburn when you're out and there's re-
ally bad ozone days.
"I've had to take her to the hospital
once this month. They said if she does-
n't take this (medicine) every day of her
life, she'll die young."
In her job as an accountant for the
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, John-
son heard people in the group talk about
the proposed changes and wanted to
speak up when they went to testify to
the EPA.
Her daughter's story touched them,
and they decided it should be told at the
hearing.
"We were amazed at how severe her
case was," said Stephen Smith, executive
director of the alliance. "She wanted to
let the folks at EPA know" – how her
daughter is suffering before they weak-
en the laws.
While Johnson and the group get ready
to tell why the new rules would be harm-
ful, the EPA continues to maintain that
this is an environmentally sound plan.
EPA administrator Christie Whitman
told the Associated Press they would
give utilities and refinery operators new
flexibility in order to encourage emis-
sion reductions.
He also added that the old regulations
"deterred companies from implement-
ing projects that would increase energy
efficiency and decrease air pollution."
These new proposed rules are part of
a series of changes under the new EPA
regulation, much of which was issued by
the agency last fall.