Dirty Air, Dirty Power

In the early 2000s, the policy fight over America’s oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants became a confusing morass of competing claims and counter-claims. Though clean air advocates had plant-by-plant and city-by-city health data about asthma attacks and deaths caused by emissions, this solid epidemiology was complex and could never break through into the debate. Worse, the Bush administration was pushing a plan called the “Clear Skies Initiative,” which sounded good but in fact was weaker than simply enforcing the current law on the books.

Breaking through on the health impacts of dirty power, and setting the record straight about the dangerous Bush plan, required creating a new tool and an aggressive outreach strategy.

In this pre-Google-Maps era, I conceived and had built an interactive flash map, with zoomable data to the state, city and plant level. In addition, we created a “slider” that showed how the health impacts of enforcing current law were better than the Bush plan.

I conducted pre-briefings with all top environmental and energy media, in which we walked through the site. Our field team conducted outreach in dozens of markets around the country. The eventual launch received hundreds of hits, including proactive coverage in all target major outlets – the only proactive environmental story to do so that year.