On May 1, under cover of darkness, the Albuquerque City Council voted to put thousands of Bernalillo County residents at risk for asthma, heart disease, cancer and other diseases associated with air pollution.

Albuquerque and Bernalillo County are becoming increasingly known for bad air quality – the American Lung Association recently gave Bernalillo County an “F” for air quality related to ozone – and the health effects associated with air pollution. But air pollution does not affect everyone in Albuquerque equally; air polluting industrial permits overwhelmingly impact low-income communities, and communities of color experience the adverse health impacts of air pollution disproportionately.

The Mountain View Coalition has stepped up and proposed a common-sense health, environment and equity impacts regulation that would, for the first time, meaningfully address the inequities of industrial air pollution permitting in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County and protect the health of the most overburdened communities like ours. The Mountain View Coalition proposed the regulation to the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Air Quality Control Board, which has jurisdiction over air quality in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County. …

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