The Denver Post
The United Workers Union of America was out in full force Wednesday at the Denver hearing on EPA proposed rules to cut carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Miners and retired miners from Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota testified warning that the rule, which aims to reduce carbon from power plants by an average 30 percent by 2030, would cost jobs, jeopardize pensions and hurt mining communities.
Dressed in green T-shirt with a camouflage design and emblazoned with the slogan “We are One” on the front and “We are everywhere” on the back, more than a dozen miners testified.
“You expect us to go quietly, I assure you that won’t happen,” North Dakota miner Steve Deschaak, told the EPA hearing officers. held by the agency, but the only one west of the Mississippi River.
The proposed rule would let states development plans to reduce carbon emissions over 2012 levels and suggests four strategies: increased use of cleaner-burning natural gas, improve coal plant efficiency, using renewable energy and improving energy efficiency.
Deschaak criticize the plan. “It punishes workers in the United States and does little to protect the environment,” he said.
Louis Shelley, a miner from Price, Utah, said the rule would put the UMWA health and pension system at risk since it depends upon on-going contributions from mining companies. “We are facing a crisis you are creating,” Shelley said.
Phil Russell, who lives in Chinle, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, and has worked at the Peabody Energy Corp mine on the reservation since 1978, said the impact would be devastating. “We can’t go to extremes. The land I come from has Third World conditions.”
The impact of a close mine would spread from the reservation to the surrounding towns, Russell said.
“I am not here to argue the since,” Rusell said. “We all have an obligation to do all we can to ensure (our children) have a health and prosperous life.”
There were, however, many people and groups testifying at the hearing that faced with the risks of climate change from the build-up of man-made greenhouse gases, the EPA proposed rules were only a start.
“You current proposal is at best a minimum,” Diane Schrack, of Highlands Ranch told the hearing officers.
