Before leaving her East Texas home, Paulette Goree checks her air monitor. If the hue is green on the connected phone app, she steps outside to tend to her backyard garden where she grows tomatoes, squash and peppers. If it is red, she stays inside.
Over the years, she has watched respiratory illnesses strike her family one by one. Her sister died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Her father battled a lung disease. Her husband has it now. Goree has asthma herself.
Goree, 72, lives in Beckville, a town of fewer than 800 people, just miles from the Martin Lake coal plant, a 2.4-gigawatt facility that has loomed over the region since the late 1970s.
“We all know how harmful the Martin Lake pollution can be,” Goree told USA TODAY, sitting inside her mustard-colored house. “The majority of the people in our little community suffer with some kind of respiratory ailment.”
Luminant Generation Company, which owns the facility, did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding Goree’s account and steps taken by it to reduce emissions.
Last year, the EPA said the surrounding counties, Rusk and Panola, had failed to meet air quality standards, blaming Martin Lake as the major source. Luminant disagreed, calling the EPA’s finding “unsupported.” The agency stood by its analysis, reaffirming that not enough steps were taken to clean up the surrounding areas.
But new federal actions could stall or even erase efforts to reduce air pollution. In April, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation that delays a key pollution rule, related to mercury and fine particles, for 68 power plants by two years, pushing the deadline to 2029. The Environmental Protection Agency has also proposed repealing those updated standards entirely, meaning plants may never have to meet them at all.
The rules, updated by the Joe Biden administration last year, would have required continuous monitoring and tighter pollution limits, especially for plants that burn lignite coal, a particularly dirty form of fuel. Operators decried the rule as too costly. Governors from several states sued.