EPA energy rules get shellacking from both sides

DENVER - Hundreds of people across the country lined up Tuesday to tell the Environmental Protection Agency that its new rules for power-plant pollution either go too far or not far enough.

The agency is holding hearings this week in Atlanta, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Washington on President Obama's plan to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 30 percent by 2030, with 2005 levels as the starting point. The rules are intended to curb global warming.

Coal mines, electric utilities, labor unions, environmental groups, renewable energy companies, government agencies, and religious and civil-rights organizations sent representatives to the hearings.

John Kinkaid, a Moffat County, Colo., commissioner, told the EPA in Denver that the rules would devastate the economy in his area, home to a major power plant.

"Energy is the lifeblood of our economy," he said. "Moffat County deserves better than to be turned into another Detroit, Michigan."

Retired coal miner Stanley Sturgill of Harlan County, Ky., traveled to Denver to tell the EPA that coal-fired plants are crippling his health and the public's. He suffers from black lung and other respiratory diseases, Sturgill said.

"The rule does not do nearly enough to protect the health of the frontline communities," he said. "We're dying, literally dying, for you to help us."

In Atlanta, Jim Doyle, president of Business Forward and a former Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration, said the benefits of fighting climate change outweigh the potential costs of the proposal, pointing out that a severe storm that shuts down an auto manufacturer in the Southeast costs more than $1 million an hour.

"Over the past four years, American factories have been disrupted by typhoons in Thailand, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, droughts in Texas, tornadoes in Kentucky, falling water levels across the Great Lakes, and flooding in the Northeast," he said.

Meanwhile, elected regulators, business interests, and labor officials at the hearings said the proposed rules could raise electricity prices and cause job losses without significantly curtailing global carbon emissions at a time when utilities are already switching to natural gas as it has become cheaper. As a result, energy companies have been sending more coal than ever overseas to meet rising demand.

The EPA expects 1,600 people to speak in the four cities and has already received more than 300,000 written comments, which will be accepted until Oct. 16.