How the AI boom derailed clean‑air efforts in one of America’s most polluted cities

Barbara Johnson has been fighting coal pollution for decades in her mostly Black neighborhood of North St. Louis as an organiser with ​Metropolitan Congregations United – one of many activist groups campaigning for cleaner air in a city that has some of the country’s dirtiest.

Until recently, Johnson had reason to believe things would improve: tougher federal soot standards adopted in 2024 under the Biden administration were scheduled to go into effect in 2027, requiring plants to slash emissions or shut down. That would have forced one of the area’s biggest polluters – Ameren’s Labadie Energy Center power plant – to cut its soot emissions in half to stay in business. Johnson’s hopes vanished in February,