EPA Clean Power Plan- comments at the hearing in Pittsburgh on 8/1/2014 

Submit to Docket# EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0602 

Good evening. My name is Gwen Chute. I live at 904 Valleyview Road in Mount 

Lebanon. I am the Vice Chair of the Allegheny Group Sierra Club and Chair of their 

Endangered Species Action Team. I am a retired Registered Nurse with a Masters 

Degree in Maternal-Child Health Nursing. I worked for many years in my clinical 

specialty before serving for 13 years on the faculty of the University of North Dakota 

School of Nursing and then returning to my home state of Pennsylvania in 1991, 

where l worked in nursing Education at Magee Womens (sic) and later at 

Westmoreland Hospital until retiring in 2008. This work has left me with a deep 

and abiding interest in the health of women and children, but my focus has 

broadened, in light of the inexorable advances of climate change, to concern about 

the health of our one and only planet and all its inhabitants. 

Last October, my husband and l moved from Mount Pleasant in Westmoreland 

County to Mount Lebanon, one of the loveliest suburbs of Pittsburgh, in order to be 

closer to the activities and organizations in which we are involved. We rejoice in the 

cultural revival of the city, and enjoy the arts, sports, and community events that 

have made Pittsburgh one of America's most livable cities. The one great detractor 

we have found has been the poor quality of our air. l had never suffered respiratory 

difficulty in my life. l was dismayed, then, to begin experiencing difficulty breathing 

on many of our daily walks, to find a thick, ugly layer of black "particulate matter" 

coating our windowsills, and smell the telltale stink of a coal fired plant wafting over 

our beautiful neighborhood. Invisible but deadly, the pollutants that compromise 
our air quality are being sucked into the lungs of infants, children and residents of 

all ages. No wonder Pittsburgh has one of the highest asthma rates in the nation! 

Given the deplorable air quality that sickens the residents of this fair city, I feel! 

must support the EPA Clean Power Plan with its potential to positively affect the 

health of women, children, and indeed, all citizens. The urgency of our current 

situation vis-a-vis a rapidly warming planet demands support for the plan. To return 

to the alternative of doing nothing would clearly be folly. 

That said, I confess to being less than thrilled with the EPA's plan, not because it 

demands too much, but because it demands far too little and asks it far too late. It is 

not a bold plan, but a weak one. I would be eager to support a bolder, stronger plan 

that would: 

1. Cut emissions not only from power plants but all sources of green house gas. 

2. Target extraction processes, not only of coal, but also of natural gas, a 

process that emits huge amounts of methane, a gas which is as much as 

80 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. 

3. Greatly increase the emphasis on and incentivize the development and use of 

sustainable renewable energy sources: wind, solar, geothermal and 

others. 

4. Eliminate rewards for domestic extraction of fossil fuels to be shipped 

overseas and burned there. 

This would be a plan I would support without reservation. The planet requires 

nothing less.