WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – Families and workers from across the country traveled to Washington D.C. to push the EPA to keep coal ash regulations in place.
North Carolina resident Susan Wind stood in front of the EPA Wednesday on behalf of her daughter.
In 2017, Wind’s daughter was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. However, Wind’s daughter wasn’t the only one in the neighborhood that faced the disease.
“Mom’s I was friends with started reaching out to me and they were like, telling me about all of these other young girls with thyroid cancer,” Susan Wind said.
After raising more than $100,000 for a study, Wind found there was a thyroid cancer cluster in Mooresvillefor 20 years.
The cause of the cancer is still being studied, but Wind believes coal ash used as fill at a nearby construction site is to blame.
Wind came to Washington to protest the rolling back of coal ash safety standards that the Trump administration proposed earlier this year.
Betty Johnson and Cathi Murray are two more women from different states both with lives they say were changed by coal ash.
Johnson’s husband was an employee during the 2008 coal ash spill in Kingston, Tennessee and Murray has been dealing with coal ash issues since 2001 when a Superfund site was contaminated by a coal ash pile in Pines, Indiana.
“It’s a little disheartening that it keeps happening,” Murray said.
These women plan to keep fighting against the proposed rollbacks while the agency works towards finalizing their plans.
