The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been asked to find that the Memphis Metropolitan area has failed to meet national air quality standards for ozone, in a petition filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center on Thursday.
A ruling of “non attainment” would “force the Shelby County Health Department and other health officials to finally take meaningful action to address smog problems in the area,” the SELC said in an email.
Local health officials would have to impose stricter standards on future air permits and require “polluters to invest in better emissions controls that can limit the amount of smog-forming pollution they could pump into the air,” SELC senior attorney Caroline Cress told MLK50: Justice Through Journalism in an email.
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Ozone exposure can cause health effects that include coughing, difficulty breathing, increased susceptibility to lung infection, increased frequency of asthma attacks and can aggravate lung diseases such as asthma and chronic bronchitis, according to the EPA.
“Some of these effects have been found even in healthy people, but effects can be more serious in people with lung diseases such as asthma,” the EPA states. “They may lead to increased school absences, medication use, visits to doctors and emergency rooms, and hospital admissions. Some studies in locations with elevated concentrations also report associations of ozone with deaths from respiratory causes.”
Memphis has been named an “Asthma Capital” by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, and Shelby County has received an “F” grade from the American Lung Association due to its ozone pollution for the past two years. The county leads Tennessee in emergency room visits for asthma.
LaTricea Adams, founder of Young, Gifted and Green, told MLK50 that these designations show “a long history of legacy air pollution, such as smog, that simply has not improved.”
“We are calling on EPA to protect our air and lungs, and the health department needs to do their job and enact permitting policies that better protect children and families from smog and other air pollution,” she said. “It’s a matter of life and death.”
The SCHD told MLK50 in a written statement that there are numerous ongoing ozone reduction projects in Shelby County, including replacing some of the county’s gas vehicles with electric vehicles and promoting bicycle commuting. In fact, the EPA helped the health department’s air pollution control program with “devising ways to reduce the formation of ozone,” SCHD said.
“SCHD has had meetings with various industries in Shelby County and has engaged air program managers from Mississippi and Arkansas in ongoing discussions to address regional ozone pollution,” the department said. “The entire Mid-South region would be impacted by non-attainment status.”
The petition was filed on behalf of Memphis Community Against Pollution, the Sierra Club and Young, Gifted and Green, three organizations that have been at the forefront of fights against industrial pollutants in Memphis, including most recently Elon Musk’s xAI.
xAI has been running unpermitted methane gas turbines and is currently in the process of seeking air permits for the permanent installation of 15 of the 35 turbines reported on site. The Tennessee Valley Authority is also planning to install six new methane gas-fired turbines at the Allen Plant in South Memphis. Methane is a “key ingredient in ground-level ozone pollution,” according to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.
According to the SELC’s calculations, the xAI facility in South Memphis is “likely the largest industrial emitter of (nitrogen oxides) in Memphis.” Nitrogen oxides are a main component in the formation of ozone.
The Memphis Metropolitan area includes nine counties in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas, comprising about one million people, with the majority living in Shelby County.
The petition cites five air monitors in the Memphis Metropolitan area “showing clear violations of the 2015 Ozone” standard.
“And the problem is only getting worse with each passing year,” the petition states.
None of the monitors is located in South Memphis, the area that houses the first xAI facility and is known for having high industrial pollutants. The Shelby County Commission recently allocated $411,000 to the SCHD to establish an air monitoring station in South Memphis, but that remains a work in progress.
“The petition to the Environmental Protection Agency by the Southern Environmental Law Center is a flare into a dark abyss of corporate overreach that has sacrificed our health for far too long,” said KeShaun Pearson, head of MCAP. “Smog is known to complicate and contribute to respiratory illnesses and emergencies. The petition is an alarm-sounding because we are slowly being suffocated with poison by air pollution.”
The health department agreed to participate in a plan to address local ozone pollution alongside the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment in August 2023. However, a draft of the plan obtained by the SELC “contains no new control measures that will be effective in reducing ozone concentrations in the area,” the petition says.
The petition asks the health department to revise the plan to include measures to bring the Memphis Metropolitan area in compliance with national standards. In a written statement, the SCHD told MLK50 that it is working to update the Path Forward plan, which predates xAI’s arrival in Memphis.
“This petition is a last resort,” Cress said. “We’ve attempted to work with local health leaders, including SCHD, to get them to address local smog problems in the Memphis area, but they haven’t taken the necessary steps to fight smog pollution. …. Concerningly, local health officials recently missed an important deadline to submit a plan to reduce smog in the area. That’s why we’re asking federal officials to act.”
Katherine Burgess is the government accountability reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Contact her at katherine.burgess@mlk50.com
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