Residents and pediatrician urge full funding for Allegheny County Health Department air-quality program

Three speakers during public comment at the Feb. 25 Allegheny County Council meeting urged council members to support a proposed plan to fully fund the Allegheny County Health Department’s air-quality program through a revised permit fee schedule.

Tom Bailey, a resident, told council that a February 2018 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency evaluation found the county health department understaffed and delayed 12 to 18 months on Title V permit work; he said that gap justifies higher fees for industrial permits so regulators can enforce emissions limits. “If you don't fully fund an enforcement agency, you have weakened its ability to enforce air quality laws,” Bailey said, adding that polluters should pay increased permit fees so the department can better enforce limits on facilities such as the Clarendon Coke Works.

Dr. Gabriel Cisneros, a pediatrician and medical director at Children’s Express Care at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, asked councilors to vote yes on the Health Department’s plan to fully fund its air program. “Toxic emissions like ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and particulate matter…affect the young from the prenatal period through infancy and into early, middle, and late childhood,” Cisneros said, referencing a 2021 policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics. He said those pollutants raise children’s risk of asthma, prematurity, cancer and other serious conditions and called expanded surveillance and enforcement “a way to clean the air we breathe here in Allegheny County.”

Nora Johnson, who said she lives in Squirrel Hill South, described frequent exposure to emissions from the Clarendon Coke Works and highway traffic near the Parkway East. She urged councilors to have polluters “bear their share of the cost” by supporting the Health Department’s revised permit-fee schedule so regulators can better enforce air-quality standards. “Polluters pass the cost of their operations along to all the people in the region. They need to step up and do their part to keep the air we breathe safe and healthy for everyone,” Johnson said.

Council did not vote on the funding proposal during the public-comment period. Speakers asked council to act on the Health Department’s pending permit-fee changes so the agency can expand air-quality surveillance and enforcement.