Clean Air Pueblo, a project of Mothers Out Front Colorado, recently received a two-year $50,000 grant from the Windward Fund to gather data on air quality in Pueblo County, make available existing data, and empower local communities to take action for clean air.
According to Jamie Valdez, Colorado Community Organizer for Mothers Out Front, “Pueblo has a history of being used as a sacrifice zone for bottom-of-the-barrel polluting industries, but a lot of people here don’t know how dangerous the air is, because the information is obscured.”
The project has three teams. Ken Danti heads a team that is selecting and purchasing air monitors to be placed around the County. Velma Campbell’s team is locating and making publicly accessible existing data. Jordan Mecham and her team are designing surveys and outreach activities to increase involvement in the project.
Jane Fraser, who coordinates the project, stressed the importance of data. “There is so much we don’t know about air quality in Pueblo and often the data collected by public agencies isn’t readily available to the public. We plan to make all our data available in real time. We want people to be able to see the
health trade-offs Pueblo may have made by accepting polluting industries in return for jobs and tax revenues.”
For more information, contact cleanairpueblomof@gmail.com