Health is activists' priority -
[Cached Version]
Published on: 11/6/2004
Last Visited: 11/6/2004
From left, Jon Trout of the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District, the Rev. Louis Coleman and the Rev. Charles Kirby took part in a phone call with an attorney yesterday at the Justice Resource Center.
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Jon Trout, the air district's assistant director, responded to the comments by reminding people that the district is not a public health department."We don't have authority to get a remedy because somebody feels they were impacted by emissions," he said.
But he said the district's proposed program will begin to "deal with the overall issue of toxic air."
After the meeting, Arnita Gadson, executive director of the West Jefferson County Community Task Force, said her group had recently been awarded a $25,000 grant to begin a health survey in Louisville.
In a telephone interview, Gadson said the EPA has yet to give its final approval on how the study would be conducted, which is why she said she had not previously announced it.
But she said the task force plans to work with the Louisville Metro Health Department to build a database of residents' medical problems.And she hopes that they'll be able to chart and compare health problems in the city's Rubbertown industrial area and nonindustrial neighborhoods.
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For its part, the air district is taking all the comments on the proposed toxic air program under consideration, Trout said, and it will make revisions if officials deem them appropriate.