FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 4, 2025
Contact: Ashley Sullivan, 1(917) 837-1183, Ashley.Sullivan@weact.org
WASHINGTON – Hello, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Yosef Robele, Federal Policy Manager with WE ACT for Environmental Justice overseeing Energy and Transportation Issues. We are an environmental justice non profit organization based out of Harlem that has fought for and continues to fight for environmental justice In New York City and State as well as at the federal level. Additionally we convene the Clean Air for the Long Haul, a national cohort of environmental justice organizations working together to embed environmental justice in EPA rulemakings in the power and transportation sectors.
I am speaking here today along with other member organizations in our cohort to raise our collective concerns regarding the delay of Light Duty Vehicle Criteria Pollutant standards. Unfortunately, this rule is the latest in a series of deregulatory actions by the EPA to eliminate important environmental safeguards in order to promote and further entrench a fossil fuel based economy, despite the known harms of this approach. In fact, this is personally my second time in just a week in which I’ve been compelled to testify against these deregulatory actions.
The criteria pollutants regulated under this rule such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and particulate matter (PM2.5) are of particular concern to our communities who are disproportionately exposed to them. As this disproportionate exposure results in higher rates and more severe forms medical conditions such as asthma, cardio vascular conditions and various cancers. For example in New York City residents suffer from, 2,000 deaths and over 5000 emergency visits and hospitalizations for respiratory and heart disease each year as a result of particulate matter alone
Our transportation system by way of how highways, distribution hubs and ports have been placed in our communities concentrates these dangerous pollutants in our homes, workplaces, and places of worship. Thus in 2024, the Clean Air for the Long Haul Cohort celebrated this rule as an important step in addressing this burden and redressing historical harms. Unfortunately, now the EPA in its campaign to put polluter profits over not only environmental justice communities, but also our climate and the public health, is proposing to delay this important rule from taking effect before this year’s fleet hits the road
With this I would like to underscore that this rule is a critical step in redressing the harms and burdens our transportation sector places on environmental justice communities and that more work is still needed to be done. A delay of this rule is unacceptable, and actually takes us in the opposite direction of where we should be going. With this I urge the EPA to withdraw this rule, and instead consider an approach that centers the environmental justice communities most harmed from transportation, power and other pollution. Thank you for your time.
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WE ACT for Environmental Justice is a Northern Manhattan membership-based organization whose mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and/or low-income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices. WE ACT has offices in New York and Washington, D.C. Visit us at weact.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter/X, andInstagram.