 |
||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
New Hampshire Citizens Alliance's Merrimack County Air Quality Awareness Project (MCAQAP), launched in 2000 with an Environmental Justice grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is producing unprecedented results in the fight to safeguard public health and to clean up NH's air and water. NHCA and community leaders have worked together to mobilize hundreds of residents in Pembroke and Allenstown, communities downwind of the Merrimack Station Power Plant - New England's dirtiest coal-burning facility - to survey and draw attention to the plant's negative health and environmental impacts. Residents' calls for the plant's clean up and for statewide policy that will reduce toxic emissions from NH's other fossil fuel-burning power plants have spurred NH lawmakers into action. Based on the MCAQAP's findings, NHCA also has successfully petitioned the NH Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Bureau of Health Risk Assessment and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to conduct a Public Health Assessment in the downwind communities. This first-in-the-nation assessment of a coal-burning power plant will examine the risks to residents in the two affected communities from exposure to the plant's chemical contaminants. The year-long assessment is slated to reach completion in early 2003. MCAQAP Results: What Pembroke and Allenstown Residents Say |
