Concerned about toxic air pollution from a coal-fired power plant in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, the Sierra Club recently
asked Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray to file a special EPA petition to force the Potomac River Generating Station to either clean up or shut down. The Club has discovered that sulfur dioxide emissions from the 62-year-old plant travel downwind to the District's Ward 8 neighborhoods, causing residents to suffer asthma attacks and other respiratory ailments.
"We're concerned about people's health,” Sierra Club’s Irv Sheffey told
The Washington Examiner, “This is a tangible indicator that there's something going on in the air we need to be concerned about.”
Not only did the mayor support our proposal, but his increasing questions about the plant have helped focus tremendous attention to the plant’s health dangers.
Television,
radio, and
online media are all spreading the news about our work to clean up our nation’s capital.