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U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

PUBLIC HEARING:

Standards of Performance

for Greenhouse Gas Emissions

8:34 a.m. through 4:01 p.m.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Ralph H. Metcalf Federal Building

Lake Eerie Room, 12th Floor

77 West Jackson Boulevard

Chicago, Illinois 60604
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EPA PANEL:

Mike Koerbek, Hearing Chair

 Associate Director for Policy, Office of Air 

Quality, Policy, and Standards, EPA

Nick Hutson, Sector Policies and Program 

 Division, EPA

Richard Angelbeck, Region 5 Office, EPA

Alexis Cain, U.S. EPA (afternoon substitute for

 Richard Angelbeck)

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C O N T E N T S

 Page

Public Comments:

Jennifer L. Cassel, Environmental Law and 

 Policy Center ............................... 9

Brian Urbaszewski, Respiratory Health

 Association of Metropolitan Chicago .........13

Amber Ladeira, Union of Concerned Scientists ..22

Theresa Pugh, American Public Power ...........25

Blake Lenoir, Sierra Club and Greenpeace ......30

Grant Smith, Civil Society Institute ..........33

Dave Menzer, Concerned Citizen ................41

John McCauley, Operation Free .................46

Steve Frenkel, Union of Concerned Scientists ..48

Joseph Kowalis, Student, Western Michigan

 University ..................................57

Boise Jones, Green Water Energy, Sierra Club 

 North Star Chapter ..........................59

Eula C. McNeill, Commissioner of Red Springs,

 Robeson County, NC ..........................63

Richard Stuckey, Sierra Club ..................67

Jane G. Grable, Concerned Citizen .............72

Michael Olenger, Chimney Safety Institute .....73

Cindy Kitzmiller, Concerned Child .............79

Kathy Kieser, Concerned Citizen ...............83

Matthew Withers, Concerned Citizen ............85

Donna Hriljac, Concerned Citizen ..............87

Bill Davis, Concerned Citizen .................89

Toby Chow, SOUL, Southsiders Organized for

 Unity and Liberation ........................92

Martin Molowski, Student, University of 

 Illinois, Springfield .......................98

Sandy Carter, Student, University of Chicago .103

Anita Belodis, Family Physician ..............106

Tom Simar, NRDC, Natural Resources Defense

 Council ....................................108

Dennis Nelson, NEIS, Nuclear Energy, 

 Information Service ........................114

Alicia Klepfer, UCCAN, University of Chicago

 Climate Action Network .....................117
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C O N T E N T S

 Page

Public Comments:

Carla Eisenberg, Concerned Citizen ...........121

Meleah Geertsma, NRDC, Natural Resources

 Defense Council ............................123

Don Ferber, Sierra Club ......................131

Judy Skog, Harmony Valley Farm CSA ...........138

Maria Torres, Pilsen Alliance ................143

Howard Lee, Wirehead Technology ..............146

Roberto Carmona, Crimson Leadership Group ....152

Leanne Castin, CAPOW, Citizens Act to Protect

 Our Water ..................................156

Patricia Walter, .............................164

Carolyn Gerwin, Illinois Wind Watch ..........173

Lawrence T. Lemon, Ohio Conference of NAACP ..179

Gary Jones, Concerned Citizen ................185

Michael Ohlinger, Concerned High School

 Student ....................................190

Cory Jones, Concerned Citizen ................191

Jocelyn Travis, Concerned Citizen ............197

Lyman, Welch, Concerned Citizen ..............206

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1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 MR. KOERBER: Good morning, and thank you 

3 for attending this public hearing. My name is 

4 Mike Koerber, and I am the Associate Director for 

5 Policy in EPA's Office of Air Quality, Planning, 

6 and Standards. I will be chairing today's 

7 hearing.

8 Joining me on the panel are Nick Hutson 

9 with EPA's Sector Policies and Programs Division 

10 in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; and 

11 Rich Angelbeck with EPA's Region 5 office.

12 We are here today to listen to your 

13 comments on EPA's Proposed Carbon Pollution 

14 Standard for New Power Plants. EPA published a 

15 proposed -- EPA published the proposed standard 

16 in the Federal Register on April 13th. This 

17 common sense step under the Clean Air Act would, 

18 for the first time, set national limits on the 

19 amount of carbon pollution power plants built in 

20 the future can emit.

21 For future power plants EPA's proposing 

22 to set an output base standard of 1,000 pounds of 
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1 carbon dioxide per megawatt hour. The Agency's 

2 proposal does not apply to existing sources or to 

3 planned units that have already received permits 

4 and break ground within the next 12 months.

5 EPA's proposed standard reflects the 

6 ongoing trend in the power sector to build 

7 cleaner plants that take advantage of American8 made technologies. The proposal is flexible and 

9 would help minimize carbon pollution through the 

10 deployment of the same types of modern 

11 technologies that power companies are already 

12 using to build the next generation of power 

13 plants. EPA's proposal would ensure that this 

14 progress toward a cleaner, safer, and more modern 

15 power sector continues.

16 Today we will be accepting oral comments 

17 on all aspects of our proposal, and we will 

18 prepare a written transcript of the hearing. The 

19 transcript will be available as part of the 

20 official record for this rule. We are also 

21 accepting written comments on the proposed rule 

22 until June 25th.
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1 At the registration area, which is 

2 located in the hallway outside of this room, 

3 there are handouts with detailed information for 

4 submitting written comments by mail, fax, or 

5 electronically. EPA will consider your comments 

6 as we move forward to complete a final rule.

7 Let me describe the procedures for 

8 today's hearing. I will call the scheduled 

9 speakers to the table in pairs. When it is your 

10 turn to speak, please state your name and your 

11 affiliation before you begin your testimony. It 

12 would help our court reporter if you also spell 

13 your name.

14 To be fair to everyone, please limit your 

15 testimony to five minutes each, and remain at the 

16 table until both speakers in a pair have 

17 finished. After you finish your testimony, 

18 members of the panel may ask clarifying 

19 questions. If, in addition to the transcript of 

20 your testimony, you would also like us to put the 

21 full text of your written comments into the 

22 docket, please be sure to give a copy of any 
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1 written comments to our staff at the registration 

2 table.

3 We have a time-keeping system consisting 

4 of green, yellow, and red lights to help you 

5 track your five minutes to speak. When you begin 

6 speaking, the green light will come on. The 

7 yellow light will signal you have one minute left 

8 to speak. When the red light comes on, five 

9 minutes is past. I will ask you to please 

10 complete your testimony.

11 Today's hearing is scheduled from 8:30 

12 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. The hearing will go on 

13 recess during the scheduled lunch break from noon 

14 to 1:00 o'clock. We will reconvene promptly at 

15 1:00 p.m.

16 If you would like to testify but have not 

17 yet registered to do so, please sign up at the 

18 registration table in the hallway outside of this 

19 room. For those who have already registered to 

20 speak, we have tried to accommodate your request 

21 for specific time slots. We ask for your 

22 patience as we proceed through the list of 
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1 speakers. We may need to make some adjustments 

2 as the day progresses. 

3 If any questions arise throughout the 

4 day, please see a staff member at the 

5 registration table for assistance. Thank you all 

6 again for participating, and let's get started.

7 Our first two speakers this morning will 

8 be Brian Urbaszewski and Jennifer Cassel.

9 MS. CASSEL: Good morning, gentlemen. My 

10 name is Jennifer Cassel, and I am a staff 

11 attorney with the Environmental Law and Policy 

12 Center. I am appearing here today on behalf of 

13 the Environmental Law and Policy Center to 

14 support the EPA's proposed carbon pollution 

15 standards for new power plants.

16 These standards represent a critical 

17 milestone. They are the first ever national 

18 carbon pollution standards for power plants, our 

19 nation's largest emitters of carbon dioxide. 

20 These standards will protect public health and 

21 the environment, and they will give the great 

22 wheels of American innovation a big push, 
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1 spurring development of better, cleaner 

2 technologies to spark our economy and power our 

3 country for greater generations to come.

4 It comes as no surprise that over one 

5 million people have already submitted comments to 

6 EPA in support of these standards. With more 

7 than a month left to go in the comment period 

8 surely countless more Americans will make their 

9 voices heard in support of these essential new 

10 standards.

11 Scientists agree that greenhouse gases, 

12 including carbon dioxide, cause climate change. 

13 And the impacts of climate change are many, 

14 sometimes severe, and are already happening. The 

15 shifts in temperature associated with the change 

16 in climate can change the amount of water vapor 

17 in the atmosphere; and this can lead to major 

18 changes in the probability for extreme weather.

19 In 2008, 2010, and 2011, three years out 

20 of four, there were 100 or 500-year floods in 

21 Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin. As the Union of 

22 Concerned Scientists has explained, floods such 
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1 as those don't only damage property; they can 

2 also contaminate our water with chemicals, animal 

3 waste, and sewage, making people who drink or 

4 swim in that water sick. And they can fill our 

5 basements with -- our soggy basements with mold, 

6 creating and exacerbating respiratory problems. 

7 As a person that grew up with asthma, that's 

8 particularly relevant to me.

9 And floods are just one example of 

10 extreme weather events associated with climate 

11 change. Droughts have also been connected to 

12 climate change, and scientific models are 

13 starting to suggest that disasters like the 2010 

14 Russian heat wave, which resulted in the loss of 

15 50,000 human lives, and billions of dollars of 

16 wheat crops were likely related to human-induced 

17 climate change.

18 These EPA standards will limit the carbon 

19 emissions that lead to climate change and will 

20 set good things in motion. For example, they 

21 will create jobs. A March 2012 study by the 

22 Department of Labor found that the transition to 
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1 cleaner energy and technology already has created 

2 3.1 million jobs. As we move from carbon3 intensive electricity production to increased 

4 production of cleaner, renewable energy, even 

5 more jobs will be created.

6 These standards will also improve our 

7 nation's security. Further research and 

8 development into cleaner electricity generation 

9 spurred by these standards will help our country 

10 become more energy independent and help our 

11 military minimize the dangerous transport of fuel 

12 in combat zones which has claimed the lives of 

13 many of our troops.

14 Midwesterners have long recognized the 

15 harmful impacts of climate change and have begun 

16 implementing a diverse array of measures to keep 

17 these harmful impacts and climate change itself 

18 in check. Chicago Climate Action Plan, the Iowa 

19 Climate Report, and the Wisconsin Initiative on 

20 Climate Change Impacts are just a few of such 

21 programs. These standards will complement and 

22 bolster those critical efforts.
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1 Importantly, EPA is well within its legal 

2 authority in issuing these landmark standards. 

3 As EPA will further discuss in written comments, 

4 EPA's decision to set standards for power plants 

5 based on function rather than fuel type is a 

6 welcome and authorized manner to ensure that new 

7 power plants use the best system to minimize 

8 climate changing carbon emissions. Moreover, the 

9 law is clear that EPA may rely on reasonable 

10 forecasts of the types of plants that will power 

11 our future, and reasonable forecasts of the types 

12 of technologies available to control pollution 

13 from those plants in setting new source 

14 performance standards.

15 EPA has done that here. The market has 

16 spoken in favor of a lower carbon future. And 

17 EPA's proposed standards mark an important first 

18 step to ensuring that that future becomes 

19 reality.

20 Thank you.

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

22 MR. URBASZEWSKI: My name is Brian 
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1 Urbaszewski. I'm Director of Environmental 

2 Health Programs for Respiratory Health 

3 Association of Metropolitan Chicago. We're a 

4 hundred year old plus charity based here in 

5 Chicago that focuses on improving the lives of 

6 people with lung disease, preventing lung 

7 disease, and promoting clean air. So thank you 

8 for the opportunity to comment on the proposed 

9 EPA rule.

10 Lung disease is a threat to many people 

11 in the country. Millions now live with lung 

12 disease, and the impact of lung disease is 

13 growing. At the end of 2010 the CDC noted that 

14 chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, 

15 moved from the fourth to the third leading cause 

16 of death in America. The five-year survival rate 

17 for lung cancer is still only a shade over 15 

18 percent. And this month the CDC announced that 

19 the number of people living with asthma increased 

20 by more than 5 million in the previous decade, 

21 and the asthma prevalence rate is at the highest 

22 level ever recorded even as air quality by most 
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1 measures continues to improve.

2 We have, with the EPA's help, been making

3 progress in reducing air pollution, particularly 

4 ground level ozone, smog, and fine particulate 

5 soot. But at the same time research over the 

6 years has overwhelmingly shown that air pollution 

7 is more dangerous than we thought previously and 

8 at lower concentrations. There is still much 

9 work to be done. The Clean Air Act has driven 

10 the historic progress towards clean air, and that 

11 progress has saved 160,000 lives in 2010 alone 

12 and millions of lives since the act was passed 

13 into law. Yet despite this progress, today the 

14 Act is under continual threat in Congress, and 

15 its ability to protect us is under siege.

16 What we are here to talk about today is 

17 the impact of global warming and the effect it 

18 has on health. Simply put, EPA's charge is to 

19 protect our health and welfare. And it's clear 

20 that global warming is a threat to both. We face 

21 the prospect of rising seas, more violent 

22 weather, extreme flooding, and scorching heat 
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1 waves. This will have a devastating effect on 

2 our economy and on the health of our communities 

3 in coming decades. Expanding ranges for insects 

4 and rodents will likely mean the spread of 

5 infectious diseases not previously seen in most 

6 American communities, including things like 

7 dengue fever, Lyme disease, and malaria. Higher 

8 temperatures will mean more water-borne diseases 

9 in our rivers and lakes. Heat waves like the one 

10 that killed hundreds of people in Chicago back in 

11 1995 could, if no action is taken become a twice 

12 yearly occurrence. Some global warming driven 

13 conditions will inordinately affect people with 

14 lung disease. Air quality modeling is showing 

15 likely increases in ozone levels in many 

16 locations around the country due to higher heat, 

17 longer season, and changes in the air circulation 

18 patterns.

19 Likewise, respected studies have shown 

20 that people living with COPD die at significantly 

21 higher rates than the general public during 

22 periods of extreme heat. Climate change is 
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1 likely already increasing the production of 

2 ragweed pollen, which not only worsens allergies 

3 for several more weeks a year but increases a 

4 known trigger of asthma attacks. 

5 More flooding will also cause an increase 

6 in the number of people exposed to molds that can 

7 cause responses ranging from asthma attacks to 

8 hospitalization to even death. The economic 

9 impacts alone of all these global warming driven 

10 health damages should be reason for concern. A 

11 recent Union of Concerned Scientists report 

12 estimates that in 2020 states could pay an 

13 average of $5.4 billion in health related costs

14 just due to increases in surface-level ozone.

15 Many medical and public health 

16 organizations, including the American Medical 

17 Association, the American Public Health 

18 Association, and the American Academy of 

19 Pediatrics have expressed support for limits on 

20 the emissions of greenhouse gases because of the 

21 health problems that are both driven and made 

22 worse by climate change. Climate change will not 
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1 only -- will only accelerate and worsen if we 

2 don't take action to prevent additional 

3 greenhouse gases from new facilities. We're 

4 already seeing changes.

5 In 2011 there were a number of startling 

6 occurrences in northwest Arkansas. In February 

7 the area recorded two feet of snow in one 

8 snowfall. In May that area received 16 inches of 

9 rain in a week. And in August it hit 115 

10 degrees, an all-time record for the state. In 

11 fact, Fort Smith, Arkansas, saw 35 straight days 

12 where it got over 100 degrees last year.

13 So, why talk about northwest Arkansas and 

14 Chicago? Because that's what the government says 

15 our climate here in Chicago is going to look like 

16 later this century. That is what is coming here, 

17 and it will happen in the lifetime of a child 

18 born today. We will see increasingly violent and 

19 dangerous weather that puts our health and the 

20 health of our children and grandchildren at risk 

21 here in Chicago and elsewhere.

22 EPA needs to finalize this rule to ensure 
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1 we are not going to make a bad situation worse. 

2 And as the old saying goes, the first thing to do 

3 in trying to get out of a hole is to stop 

4 digging. The agency also needs to accelerate new 

5 source rules to obtain greenhouse gas reductions 

6 from other industrial categories as well, 

7 including oil refineries, chemical, metal, 

8 cement, and other carbon intensive industries.

9 The EPA also needs to propose rules to 

10 reduce greenhouse gas emissions from existing 

11 industrial facilities, including power plants 

12 which will continue to add to the warming threat 

13 for decades more unless action is taken. 

14 While we support the proposals put forth 

15 by the agency, we also urge that EPA move forward 

16 with both tracks immediately -- with both 

17 additional tracks immediately, given the grave 

18 threat faced by the country and the future 

19 generations that will inherit it.

20 Thank you.

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Do the panel 

22 members have any clarifying questions?
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1 MR. HUTSON: I have a question for Ms. 

2 Cassel.

3 You mentioned a Department of Labor study 

4 that --

5 MS. CASSEL: Yes.

6 MR. HUTSON: When was that?

7 MS. CASSEL: Sure. That was a -- just 

8 give me one second -- study from the Bureau of 

9 Labor Statistics. I believe it was released in 

10 March of this year.

11 MR. HUTSON: Okay.

12 MS. CASSEL: I can provide you the --

13 MR. HUTSON: I'm not familiar with that, 

14 so --

15 MS. CASSEL: -- link to it if you'd like 

16 that.

17 MR. HUTSON: If you have the site, that 

18 would be helpful.

19 MS. CASSEL: Sure, the website. I 

20 certainly do. Do you want me to read that to you 

21 or just -- it's a kind of a convoluted website.

22 MR. HUTSON: I think we can find it. 
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1 Good. Thank you.

2 MS. CASSEL: Okay. I'll provide a copy 

3 of my written comments as well, so --

4 MR. HUTSON: Thank you, yeah.

5 MS. CASSEL: Or my -- excuse me, my oral 

6 comment.

7 MR. KOERBER: Nick, anything else?

8 MR. HUTSON: No.

9 MR. KOERBER: Rich, any comments?

10 MR. ANBELBECK: No.

11 MR. KOERBER: Okay. Thank you very much.

12 MR. URBASZEWSKI: Thank you.

13 MR. KOERBER: I'd like to call to testify 

14 Amber Ladeira and Theresa Pugh. And we do have 

15 plenty of seats if people would like to come in 

16 and make themselves comfortable.

17 MS. LADEIRA: I think Ms. Pugh was ahead 

18 of me because I'm at 8:55, so --

19 MS. PUGH: You're welcome to go ahead of 

20 me.

21 MS. LADEIRA: Are you sure?

22 MS. PUGH: Sure.
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1 MR. KOERBER: You can start. Thank you.

2 MS. LADEIRA: Good morning. Amber 

3 Ladeira, L-A-D, as in David, E-I-R-A.

4 I'm here to support the EPA's standards 

5 to limit carbon pollution from new power plants. 

6 This issue is both personal and public for me. 

7 My daughter, son-in-law, and I suffer from 

8 allergies. He is an asthmatic. I vigorously 

9 oppose any weakening of the Clean Air Act which 

10 would result in more widespread adverse health 

11 and economic effects than is usually discussed 

12 and return us to bad old days I remember.

13 In 1960 Chicago I lived on Belmont Avenue 

14 near Lake Michigan. I had to step over the 

15 little metal conveyors that moved the coal boxes 

16 into the backs of these buildings every weekday 

17 on my way to high school. Skies were often dark 

18 gray, different from an ordinary cloudy day. 

19 Citywide statistics cited by the Chicago Lung 

20 Association and others regarding asthma sufferers 

21 showed higher numbers of negative respiratory 

22 health episodes than we see now.
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1 After the passage of the first Clean Air 

2 Act signed by President Nixon, it became visually 

3 plain in any major urban area that air quality 

4 had improved. Ask any long-term resident of L.A. 

5 if their previously pervasive brown smog 

6 inversions occurred quite so often after that. 

7 Why has Midwest Generation finally agreed 

8 to close its two coal-fired plants located right 

9 in Chicago? The residents in Pilsen and near-in 

10 areas were able to correlate high rates of 

11 incidents of asthmatic attacks and even deaths to 

12 those plants, and eventually, Chicago City Hall 

13 listened. 

14 These and many other plants have resisted 

15 for whatever reasons retrofitting, installing 

16 electrostatic precipitators, scrubbers, 

17 cogeneration -- Sweden has done this successfully 

18 for decades -- and all the other long available 

19 technologies to reduce emissions from their 

20 factories or plants.

21 If carbon capture is ever proven 

22 practicable or fluidized bed combustion promises 
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1 to clean coal while reducing sulfur emissions, 

2 I'll be pro coal but not before.

3 Lest anyone regard such concern as 

4 emanating exclusively from wild-eyed radicals, 

5 here's a tiny portion of an 1,100-plus strong 

6 list of organization which oppose any rollbacks 

7 to the Clean Air Act: The American Academy of 

8 Pediatrics, the American Lung Association, 

9 Conference of Mayors, the Episcopal Church, the 

10 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the 

11 League of Women Voters, the National Association 

12 of County and City Health Officials.

13 Global warming or climate change has been 

14 recognized as a serious worldwide current and 

15 future disaster for decades. Pumping more CO2

16 into the atmosphere traps more heat, which 

17 doesn't get radiated back into space, an ever18 increasing phenomenon since the 1700's industrial 

19 revolution. Just a few degrees higher on a 

20 consistent basis means polar ice melts, which 

21 eventually threatens coastal populations all over 

22 the earth, animal and plant life as well. Think 
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1 Bangladeshi monsoons all the time on every coast.

2 Since 1970 the EPA has listed the 

3 following as criteria pollutants: ozone, 

4 particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen 

5 oxide, sulfur dioxide, and lead, carbon dioxide 

6 more recently added, now has any list due to the 

7 worldwide eventually irreversible -- at least by 

8 human effects.

9 Let's all work together to support the 

10 EPA's proposed carbon pollution standard for new 

11 power plants and keep our current clean air 

12 standards in place. Our individual and 

13 collective lives and health are at stake.

14 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

15 MS. PUGH: Good morning, gentlemen.

16 MR. KOERBER: Good morning.

17 MS. PUGH: I'm Theresa Pugh, P-U-G-H, 

18 Director of Environmental Services for the 

19 American Public Power Association. APPA is the 

20 national trade association for 2,000 electric 

21 utilities owned by municipal and local 

22 government, including state government. They are 
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1 located in 49 states, all but Hawaii; and we 

2 serve about 46 million Americans. Ninety-five 

3 percent of our member utilities are SBREFA 

4 qualified. One hundred percent are UMBRA 

5 utilities, meaning they are not for profit 

6 utilities.

7 We represent currently 48 percent coal, 

8 17 percent natural gas, about 8 percent hydro, 6 

9 percent wind backed up by gas, 7 percent nuclear, 

10 and the remaining is mostly oil in offshore 

11 locations like Puerto Rico, Guam, and American 

12 Samoa.

13 APPA would like to comment that the 

14 proposed NSPS is unrealistic for the replacement 

15 of retiring coal plants and would require an all 

16 new natural gas standard. Incidentally, the 

17 1,000 pounds per megawatt hour cannot be met at 

18 high altitudes, and we're not sure that you might 

19 have realized that. We'll be providing technical 

20 comments on that. So, for example, in the Denver 

21 area even a new combined cycle gas plant, because 

22 of the lack of oxygen, can't meet that standard.
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1 This concerns us because we're worried 

2 about replacing all retiring coal plants or other 

3 plants with the combined cycle gas. Although we 

4 have 17 percent gas now. Each retirement of a 

5 coal plant would mean that you're replacing it 

6 with natural gas. And one 600 megawatt power 

7 plant now with gas is the equivalent of 890,000 

8 homes that already take gas, of course. So the 

9 industrial community and residential users would 

10 see an increase in price.

11 We expect about a 60 percent increase in 

12 the use of natural gas by the electric utility 

13 industry as these existing coal plants are 

14 replaced with new combined cycle units. And 

15 that's over about a 20 year -- we're estimating 

16 about a 20-year period. Obviously, I'm only 

17 discussing new plants. And that's about 14 Tcf 

18 natural gas. And while we realize there's an 

19 abundance of shale gas in the country right now, 

20 we think that the real issue is infrastructure. 

21 we don't have the adequate infrastructure to 

22 deliver the natural gas, and I'll very lightly --
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1 and we'll go into great detail in our comments, 

2 but just in the Midwest, for example, you would 

3 have to build the new infrastructure and existing 

4 -- in addition to the existing miles of pipeline. 

5 And it's a 20 percent increase nationally, and 

6 that will cost about $8 billion. 

7 And just to hit on the mid western 

8 states, you'd need 126 percent increase in 

9 Illinois, 116 percent increase Kentucky. All of 

10 these are increases. Michigan, 119; Wisconsin, 

11 109; Indiana, 120; Kansas, 118; Missouri, 104. 

12 All of the states, except New Mexico, Oklahoma, 

13 Texas, and I believe Mississippi do require an 

14 increase in builds of new pipeline capacity. In 

15 fact, 21 states would need to build subsurface 

16 storage in addition.

17 So, I'm sure you know that you can't have 

18 natural gas pipelines to actually pack enough gas 

19 in the pipes for a power plant so that you can 

20 have reliability within 10 or 15 minutes. So, 

21 storage is an absolute necessity to build.

22 Ironically, a lot of the existing storage 
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1 capacity in the U.S. -- especially in the Midwest

2 -- is currently aquifer capacity. So, you all 

3 will have to be seeing state agencies making very 

4 difficult decisions on do you store natural gas 

5 in an aquifer, or do you store water in an 

6 aquifer. These are tough choices ahead.

7 Storage is short in Missouri, Illinois, 

8 Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona where actually an 

9 aquifer for natural gas storage was declined four 

10 years ago by the state. Idaho -- all of the 

11 southeastern states and all of the northeastern 

12 states. Of course, there's abundant natural gas 

13 storage capacity in the salt domes in Texas and 

14 part of Mississippi, and I believe Louisiana.

15 CCS. CCS is not a demonstrated 

16 technology, not even remotely. In fact, there 

17 are some very significant legal questions that I 

18 would respectfully offer EPA ignored in the 

19 injection of an acid gas in the subsurface. And 

20 there are many statutes that the EPA did not 

21 address that don't -- do not affect the oil and 

22 gas industry's use of injection of CO2 into 
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1 subsurface for oil and gas recovery but, in fact, 

2 would affect power plants. These include RCRA, 

3 CERCLA, and all of the state drinking water laws. 

4 It is not yet clear that it is purely legal for a 

5 power plant to inject an acid gas into the 

6 subsurface under safe drinking water act 

7 equivalents in the state laws.

8 So, the CCS laws -- CCS concept is 

9 promising but not a promise. And the costs are 

10 completely unknown to us. We have absolutely no 

11 notion. So we also have no idea how you get 

12 financing.

13 Thank you very much. We will be 

14 submitting very detailed comments about on the 

15 25th. And thank you for the opportunity to speak 

16 and for the time extension for submitting 

17 comments.

18 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

19 Before you both leave, any clarifying 

20 questions?

21 MR. HUTSON: I don't.

22 MR. KOERBER: Rich, any clarifying 
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1 questions?

2 MR. ANGELBECK: No.

3 MR. KOERBER: No? Thank you very much.

4 MS. LADEIRA: One thing I neglected to 

5 say, I'm a member of the Union of Concerned 

6 Scientists, but I am a non-scientist. You asked 

7 for the affiliation, and I forgot to give it.

8 MR. KOERBER: Okay. Thank you for --

9 MS. LADEIRA: Sorry.

10 MR. KOERBER: -- clarifying that. Thank 

11 you.

12 Next I'd like to call Blake Lenoir and 

13 Grant Smith. Go ahead.

14 MR. LENOIR: Throughout the country and 

15 the entire world --

16 MR. KOERBER: Can you give your name and 

17 affiliation, please?

18 MR. LENOIR: I'm Blake Lenoir, member of 

19 the Sierra Club and Greenpeace.

20 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

21 MR. LENOIR: Throughout the country and 

22 the entire world many households, families, and 
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1 children are looking for relief from respiratory 

2 illnesses from carbon pollution. Having a stand 

3 for carbon emissions helps public health and 

4 combats climate change to keep the planet at its 

5 regular state. These carbon pollution standards 

6 are an instrumental tool to guide our world 

7 toward a golden age where a new renewable and 

8 cleaner world is possible. These standards will 

9 help move our industries in the right direction, 

10 towards a revolution of sustainability and 

11 affordable energy.

12 Regardless of income or need, every 

13 family, business, and other institution has a 

14 right to breathe clean air.

15 These standards will also vanquish toxic 

16 pollutants such as smoot, smog, and other forms 

17 of air pollution. This air pollution hurts the 

18 elderly and families, especially children. 

19 Children are extremely vulnerable to respiratory 

20 illness. These standards will help us realize a 

21 new era.

22 The Calumet Region is where I live. It's 
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1 an iconic landmark that not only excels in its 

2 legendary steel mills and refineries but harbors 

3 an ark of native flora and fauna that's only

4 found in southeast Chicago, south suburbs, and 

5 into northwest Indiana.

6 One of the corporate polluters is making 

7 inroads on Chicago's southeast side. Leucadia is 

8 a proposed coal gasification plant on 119 Street 

9 and South Avenue O where the old Republic Steel 

10 mill used to be. If Leucadia proceeds without 

11 the GYFO [phonetic] standards like this one, the 

12 once proud flora and fauna will face its demise.

13 Let's take a collective stand against the 

14 business elites and their allies who want to 

15 pollute for their benefit and pleasure today.

16 Thank you very much.

17 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

18 MR. LENOIR: Any questions?

19 [No response.]

20 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Mr. Smith?

21 MR. SMITH: My name is Grant Smith. I 

22 represent the Civil Society Institute. Thank you 
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1 for having the hearing today.

2 First of all, EPA is doing the right 

3 thing. It is critical that you and the 

4 administration do not succumb to the sea of cash 

5 that the coal industry is going to put into the 

6 effort to derail these regulations. The politics 

7 are very tough, but the consequences of not 

8 acting are grave. This is a critical point in 

9 history. We have a choice between utter human 

10 tragedy and the prospects or at least the hope of 

11 a more positive future.

12 The heyday of coal is over in this 

13 country. We all know that. The load of campaign 

14 contributions in Congress is inhibiting a 

15 sustainable energy revolution in the U.S., but 

16 the economics are clear. Wind, solar, and 

17 efficiency continue to drop in cost while the 

18 cost of coal-fired power increase.

19 Indeed, a study commissioned by the Civil 

20 Society Institute beyond business as usual 

21 demonstrates that it's cheaper to phase out coal 

22 than to sustain or expand it. Clean coal cannot 
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1 exist. The fuel cycle is devastating the human 

2 health, the global climate, and ecosystems in 

3 general, and releases CO2 or methane at every 

4 stage.

5 Mountaintop removal in West Virginia is a 

6 prime example. I bring this up because one of 

7 the most important carbon sinks in the world, the 

8 Appalachian Forest is being systematically 

9 annihilated. People are dying of a variety of 

10 diseases from the so-called mining method. And 

11 MTR is only one aspect of the fuel cycle that is 

12 killing and impairing tens of thousands of 

13 Americans each year, hardly a patriotic pursuit 

14 as spun by the industry.

15 We require public policies that create a 

16 sustainable economy, not those that enable 

17 continued speculation and destruction of our 

18 natural resources and the public -- and public 

19 health, but the coal and utility industries 

20 expect U.S. taxpayers or rate payers to pick up 

21 the tab. They expect carbon capture enhanced oil 

22 recovery sequestration seems to have been 
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1 abandoned by them, and pipeline construction to 

2 be fully subsidized and taxpayers to assume 

3 liability for pipeline failures. They expect 

4 rate payers to pick up costs of their power plant 

5 experiments before they are even built. They 

6 expect to be able to freely contaminate water 

7 supplies with questionable mining and waste 

8 disposal practices.

9 The idea is to shift financial 

10 environmental and liability risks to the taxpayer 

11 and rate payer to allow for continued speculation 

12 and power plant construction, carbon capture, and 

13 exploitation of coal resources. Indeed, coal14 fired power can only survive wholly on the backs 

15 of taxpayers and rate payers.

16 The coal industry is far too expensive to 

17 maintain. By some accounts externality costs 

18 range into the hundreds of billions of dollars 

19 each year despite decades of environmental 

20 protection laws. The pollution control system 

21 simply cannot handle the vast quantities of 

22 waste, emissions, and discharges from the coal 
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1 fuel cycle. And those costs are severe.

2 Attempting to save the industry through 

3 carbon capture and enhanced oil recovery or 

4 sequestration only serves to divert billions of 

5 dollars from efficiency and renewables.

6 Let the Chinese pay for developing carbon 

7 capture technology. They can snap their fingers 

8 and move a million people if they want. They 

9 clearly have the ability to move on carbon 

10 capture if they wish.

11 We have better things to do. We can 

12 systematically invest in the sustainable electric 

13 grid and eventually maintain reliability without 

14 base load power. Clamping down on CO2 emissions 

15 will go a long way to enabling that to happen. 

16 Coal-fired power is already obsolete in terms of 

17 efficiency, renewables, and grid operational 

18 advances. It will just take us time to replace 

19 it. We can systematically phase it out with what 

20 we have available to us now. Throwing good money 

21 after bad with the coal industry is a total waste 

22 of time and effort. We should seriously start 
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1 shifting investment to true clean technologies 

2 with the adoption and enforcement of the proposed 

3 regulations.

4 As for jobs -- because that's the mantra 

5 of the industry -- not all jobs are created 

6 equal. We should put a premium on sustainable 

7 efficiency renewable storage and distributed 

8 power jobs and work to assist those in non9 sustainable industries like coal, natural gas 

10 fracking, and nuclear to move to clean tech over 

11 time.

12 Also, the perception is that regional 

13 differences prohibit a national move to a 

14 sustainable grid. That simply is not the case. 

15 Efficiency measures are available on any region 

16 as are renewable storage and distributed power 

17 opportunities. Moreover, the grid is 

18 interconnected, and balancing areas for purposes 

19 of maintaining reliability cover multiple 

20 regions.

21 But I understand the politics are 

22 difficult. One Iowa Congressman working to 
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1 extend the production tax credit know that there 

2 is a war on renewables being waged in D.C. 

3 Others are working to throttle funding for DOD 

4 renewable and efficiency investments. The fossil 

5 fuel and nuclear industries appear to be working 

6 to eliminate all alternatives but their own. Of 

7 course these regulations should be broader and 

8 apply to existing power plants. And then we know 

9 that this is only a piece of the puzzle.

10 Fracking and our transportation system 

11 contributes substantially to global warming, for 

12 instance, and must be aggressively addressed. 

13 But please stay the course and adopt these 

14 regulations. This is a first step in the right 

15 direction.

16 That concludes my comments.

17 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

18 Do the panel have any clarifying 

19 questions? Nick?

20 MR. HUTSON: Yes. You mentioned a report 

21 --

22 MR. SMITH: Yes.
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1 MR. HUTSON: -- Beyond Business as Usual?

2 MR. SMITH: Yes, I have it right here if 

3 you'd like it.

4 MR. HUTSON: Is it available on your 

5 website?

6 MR. SMITH: Oh, yes, you can go to the 

7 Civil Society website.

8 MR. HUTSON: Are you going to submit 

9 that?

10 MR. SMITH: Yes, I am.

11 MR. HUTSON: Okay.

12 MR. KOERBER: You can leave that with the 

13 people at the registration table.

14 MR. SMITH: All right. I will do that.

15 MR. KOERBER: Any questions, Rich?

16 MR. ANGELBECK: No.

17 MR. KOERBER: No? Okay. Thank you very 

18 much.

19 MR. SMITH: Thank you.

20 MR. LENOIR: Any of you gentlemen have

21 any -- any questions to ask me?

22 MR. KOERBER: No, we're good. Thank you. 
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1 Thank you, sir. Thanks for coming. Appreciate 

2 your time today.

3 I'd like to call John Menzer -- excuse 

4 me, Dave Menzer and John McCauley.

5 MR. MENZER: Good morning. Members of 

6 the committee, I want to thank you for this 

7 opportunity to speak today. My name is Dave 

8 Menzer, M-E-N-Z-E-R. And I am here representing 

9 myself as a private citizen. I'm also a small 

10 business owner, an organic farmer. I have four 

11 rental properties. I'm also a taxpayer and a 

12 utility rate payer.

13 On my way up here today from Indianapolis 

14 -- we got up and going about 5:00 a.m., so I 

15 would encourage this body to hold more hearings 

16 around the country -- but we saw a beautiful 

17 thing headed up here, and that was the wind farms 

18 in northwest Indiana. Must have been at least a 

19 thousand wind turbines coming up here. Those 

20 wind turbines, no carbon emissions to speak of 

21 other than their manufacture. Those wind 

22 turbines, as I understand it, are now coming in 
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1 at about 9 cents a kilowatt hour.

2 By contrast, in Indiana we have what's --

3 quote, unquote -- called a clean coal 

4 gasification plant being built by Duke Energy in 

5 Edwardsport. That plant is now exceeding $3 

6 billion in cost and will come in in excess of 21 

7 cents a kilowatt hour.

8 And one of the main reasons I wanted to 

9 come speak here today was to contest the fact 

10 that carbon regulations are going to be too 

11 costly. I'm here to support the EPA's effort 

12 here. I would argue that we can't afford not to 

13 regulate carbon.

14 The Duke -- quote, unquote -- clean coal 

15 plant as it was originally foisted in Indiana 

16 does not intend to capture carbon and sequester 

17 it. In fact, they realized at some point in the

18 construction that with our parse topography you 

19 can't put carbon in the ground. And instead, as 

20 mentioned by others, they want to send it to 

21 Texas, Louisiana to extract more hydrocarbons and 

22 produce more CO2. So I would contest there is no 
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1 such thing as clean coal. 

2 There is also no such thing as carbon 

3 capture and sequestration at this point. We can 

4 capture it. We can put it in the ground, but at 

5 some point it's going to come back out. We have 

6 not -- it's a science project still.

7 And while I think that research is 

8 important, the best way to deal with carbon is to 

9 eliminate it. And that means phasing out coal10 fired power plants and transitioning to some of 

11 the clean energy that, again, I love to see 

12 coming up here.

13 I mentioned that I'm a small business 

14 owner, organic farmer. When I bought these 

15 properties seven years ago, about 2005, it was 

16 late that summer after I had purchased the first 

17 -- had a greenhouse on it that had been there for 

18 50 some years, probably longer. We experienced a 

19 hail storm in Indianapolis. It lasted for 45 

20 minutes, and it rained hail on the north side in 

21 the size of 1 to 2-inch size hailstones. Now, 

22 I'm a big believer in insurance -- and I'll tell 
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1 you why -- because I got three roofs out of it, 

2 two cars replaced, and my greenhouse; but the 

3 damage was very significant. Those costs for that 

4 kind of extreme weather are in my insurance 

5 rates. I guaranty you.

6 I also mentioned my organic farm. It 

7 sits in a floodplain, a 100-year floodplain or so 

8 I was told by the Realtor. That floodplain in 

9 the past seven years has flooded six times. So I

10 would think of it more as an annual floodplain 

11 now. And I also pay flood insurance, so again, a 

12 big believer in insurance now.

13 As far as all of this is being reflected 

14 in our insurance rates. It's being reflected in 

15 our property taxes. It's reflected in our 

16 federal taxes when we have to pay for disaster 

17 relief like Hurricane Katrina, or Henryville, 

18 Indiana, or some other place.

19 I believe it was two years ago that 92 or 

20 82 of Indiana's 92 counties were declared a 

21 disaster zone at some point because of extreme 

22 weather. So, this is clearly happening. It's 
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1 happening now.

2 I also have mentioned my organic farm. 

3 This winter we had no winter, so my small orchard 

4 began blossoming at the beginning of March. That 

5 orchard was -- or those trees were laden with

6 fruit by the end of March, early April. And then 

7 we actually saw a little bit of spring return 

8 from summer and winter. And that spring had a 

9 cold snap and has essentially destroyed that 

10 fruit crop. So I would argue that the costs or 

11 lack of regulation to date for carbon is costing 

12 us also in our food prices.

13 And I see that my time is concluding. So 

14 I just want to emphasize that the costs of not 

15 regulating carbon are measurable. We are seeing 

16 it, and I would argue they far exceed what we're 

17 going to see in terms of increases in utility 

18 rates. I would also argue that the impacts on 

19 public health, as the gentleman here and others 

20 have indicated, along with the long-term impacts 

21 on our planet are immeasurable.

22 And so, with that, I'll conclude it. I 
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1 thank the committee again for the opportunity to 

2 testify.

3 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

4 MR. McCAULEY: My name is John McCauley. 

5 I'm here on behalf of Operation Free. And 

6 Operation Free is a coalition of veterans and 

7 national security organizations dedicated to 

8 securing America with clean energy. And I'll try 

9 to keep this short and sweet.

10 Operation Free fully supports the 

11 implementation of the proposed carbon fuel 

12 standard, carbon pollution standard, excuse me. 

13 The Department of Defense, State Department, and 

14 the CIA all officially recognize climate change 

15 as a threat to America's security. 

16 Here, at home, the disruption of our 

17 climate jeopardizes our cities and threatens our 

18 coastal defense facilities. Around the world the 

19 changing climate causes widespread economic harm 

20 and allows anti-American organizations to take 

21 advantage of the despair and instability that 

22 results, gaining foothold to our local 
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1 governments are too weakened to dispel them.

2 For the sake of keeping America safe and 

3 making the world a more stable place, it is 

4 critical that the U.S. take steps to limit our 

5 carbon emissions. It is in our national security 

6 interest to ensure that we fight the root causes 

7 of climate change, which is why Operation Free 

8 applauds the EPA's efforts to reduce the carbon 

9 emissions of America's electricity generation.

10 Thanks, guys.

11 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Any of the 

12 panel have any clarifying questions?

13 MR. HUTSON: I just missed when you 

14 started when you were talking about Operation 

15 Free and its mission. Can you --

16 MR. McCAULEY: Yes, sure. So, we're a 

17 coalition of veterans across the country and of 

18 national security organizations. And we're 

19 dedicated to securing America with clean energy.

20 MR. HUTSON: Okay.

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Rich, any 

22 questions?
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1 MR. ANGELBEDK: No.

2 MR. KOERBER: No? Okay. Thank you both 

3 very much.

4 MR. MENZER: Thanks a lot.

5 MR. KOERBER: I'd now like to call Steve 

6 Frenkel and Dr. Theodore Steck.

7 Is Dr. Steck present?

8 [No response.]

9 MR. KOERBER: Okay. Good morning, Steve.

10 MR. FRENKEL: Hi, Mike. Good to see you.

11 Should I begin?

12 MR. KOERBER: Yes, let's begin.

13 MR. FRENKEL: Good morning. My name is 

14 Steve Frenkel. Thank you for the opportunity to 

15 testify. As part of the pollution -- recovering 

16 -- carbon standard, I am the Director of the 

17 Union of Concerned Scientists, Midwest Office, 

18 based here in Chicago. The Union of Concerned 

19 Scientists is the nation's leading science-based 

20 non-profit working for a healthy environment --

21 and I say for world. So on behalf of UCS's more 

22 than 350,000 supporters and more than 18,000 
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1 scientists, we strongly support EPA's efforts to 

2 regulate carbon emissions from coal and oil fired 

3 power plants under the Clean Air Act.

4 UCS works on advancing awareness of both 

5 the science of climate change and solutions to 

6 help lower emissions and mitigate the worst 

7 impacts of climate change. 

8 First of all, I'd like to strongly 

9 reaffirm that EPA's actions to regulate carbon 

10 pollution are firmly grounded in sound science. 

11 The threat posed by unchecked climate change has 

12 been clearly articulated by numerous national, 

13 international scientific organizations, including 

14 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

15 If we fail to make deep reductions in our 

16 greenhouse gas emissions, we'll greatly increase 

17 the risk of serious economic public health and 

18 environmental consequences.

19 In 1995 Chicago became ground zero for 

20 climate change; although, we really didn't think 

21 about it that way at that time. That summer the 

22 city experienced an extreme heat emergency that 
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1 killed 739 Chicagoans. I was a journalist then, 

2 and I covered that dramatic story. It was one of 

3 the city's greatest tragedies and among the first 

4 signs that something with the climate was going 

5 wrong.

6 Yet despite these signs, nothing was done 

7 to curb greenhouse gases in the United States. A 

8 few years later in 2000 I was a graduate student, 

9 and I studied the various ways policymakers could 

10 limit the harm to the environment and society 

11 from carbon pollution.

12 That year presidential candidate George 

13 Bush promised to work with Congress, 

14 environmental groups, and industry to require 

15 carbon emission reductions from power plants 

16 within what he called a reasonable period of 

17 time, but still, nothing was done.

18 Later I worked in the state government to 

19 help advance climate solutions and helped develop 

20 a plan to limit carbon pollution across the 

21 Midwest, and despite our best efforts the plan 

22 stalled and nothing was done.
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1 And just two years ago legislation that 

2 comprehensively addressed climate change failed 

3 in Congress despite the efforts of UCS and many 

4 other advocates, and nothing was done.

5 But here we are today, nearly 20 years 

6 later. We're here because finally something has 

7 been done. And with this historic first ever 

8 national pollution standard for power plants, you 

9 and your colleagues have accomplished what so 

10 many have waited for for so long. So, on behalf 

11 of UCS and all of our members and supporters I 

12 thank you.

13 EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse 

14 gases was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2007 

15 and again by the Agency's finding in 2009 that 

16 greenhouse gases threatened American's health and 

17 welfare by leading to long-lasting changes in our 

18 climate.

19 Fossil fuel power plants are the nation's 

20 largest source of carbon emissions. And that's 

21 why curbing carbon pollution from this sector is 

22 so crucial to our efforts to fight climate 
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1 change. And with this proposed standard for your 

2 power plants, you're taking the first big step. 

3 USC believes that EPA's proposed rule 

4 sets achievable output-based standards that 

5 appropriately apply uniformly to all fossil 

6 fueled power plants. This will spur continued 

7 innovation in clean energy technologies and will 

8 drive new investment to clean energy and create 

9 jobs.

10 USC has a few suggestions that we think 

11 would strengthen the standard. We ask that EPA 

12 consider adopting a slightly stronger standard by 

13 considering a lower emissions limit of 800 pounds 

14 of CO2 per megawatt hour, which is an emissions 

15 level that combined cycle natural gas plants can 

16 readily achieve notwithstanding the concerns 

17 about altitude raised earlier, which I cannot 

18 speak to.

19 I do want to respond to the earlier 

20 comments about the dangers of overly relying on 

21 natural gas and the cost of expanding the natural 

22 gas infrastructure. UCS has estimated that more 
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1 than twice the number of announced coal 

2 retirements could be retired without compromising 

3 reliability, safety, and affordability of the 

4 power grid simply by increasing the capacity 

5 factors of the existing natural gas fleet as well 

6 as meeting existing renewable energy and energy 

7 efficiency standards already on the books in 29 

8 states. So, not every coal plant that retires 

9 must be replaced.

10 While we recognize the potentially 

11 significant role carbon capturing storage can 

12 play in our energy future, UCS has some concerns 

13 about the 30-year averaging alternative 

14 compliance mechanism proposed by the agency.

15 As EPA has noted, there are virtually no 

16 plans to build new coal-fired power plants under 

17 current market conditions. The Energy 

18 Information Agency's most recent projections from 

19 2012 show that low natural gas prices combined 

20 with mounting production and pollution control 

21 costs are making coal-fired power plants 

22 increasingly uneconomic. The carbon standards 
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1 for new plants simply underscore a reality is 

2 already underway.

3 Of course, reducing emissions from the 

4 power sector requires that we also set standards 

5 for the existing fleet of coal plants. We 

6 encourage EPA's efforts to engage with and 

7 consult with states and appropriate stakeholders 

8 to ensure that standards for the existing fleet 

9 are well coordinated with state actions to reduce 

10 carbon emissions.

11 The work that EPA has begun to reduce 

12 global warming emissions is a crucial and 

13 important step to protecting public health and 

14 the well-being of Americans. We request that you 

15 move quickly to finalize these carbon standards 

16 for new power plants, and we urge you to issue 

17 strong carbon standards for existing power plants 

18 without delay.

19 Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

20 MR. KOERBER: Any clarifying questions?

21 MR. HUTSON: Not a question actually, 

22 just a comment. You mentioned that the Union of 
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1 Concerned Scientists was -- would be encouraging 

2 a stronger standard of 800 pounds of carbon 

3 dioxide per megawatt?

4 MR. FRENKEL: Yes.

5 MR. HUTSON: I hope that you'll be 

6 submitting comments.

7 MR. FRENKEL: We will be.

8 MR. HUTSON: And we always encourage when 

9 people submit comments to provide technical 

10 evidence or back-up for --

11 MR. FRENKEL: Sure

12 MR. HUTSON: -- that. Yes, so I would 

13 strongly encourage you do.

14 MR. FRENKEL: We'll do so.

15 MR. HUTSON: Yes.

16 MR. FRENKEL: Thank you for the time. 

17 Appreciate it.

18 MR. KOERBER: Let me ask the audience. 

19 Can you hear the questions and the responses that 

20 are being given clearly? I know we don't have a 

21 microphone in this room. I just want to make 

22 sure everybody could hear everything. Thank you.
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1 MR. FRENKEL: Thank you.

2 MR. KOERBER: Oh, I'm sorry.

3 MR. ANGELBECK: Yes, sir.

4 MR. KOERBER: One more question, Steve.

5 MR. ANGELBECK: You mentioned you had 

6 some suggestions, and you mentioned lowering the 

7 CO2 to 800 pounds per megawatt hour?

8 MR. FRENKEL: Yes.

9 MR. ANGELBECK: What were the other ones? 

10 I mean, that might have gotten lost.

11 MR. FRENKEL: Right.

12 MR. ANGELBECK: It seemed like you --

13 MR. FRENKEL: And we do have some other 

14 detailed concerns around some of the assumptions 

15 around the CCS alternative compliance 

16 methodology. And so around costs and around 

17 feasibility as -- and related to the emissions 

18 impacts of allowing that averaging over 30 years. 

19 So we'll be additionally supplying some comments 

20 regarding that issue.

21 MR. ANGELBECK: Okay. Thank you.

22 MR. KOERBER: Has Dr. Theodore Steck
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1 joined us?

2 [No response.]

3 MR. KOERBER: Okay. We'll move on to our 

4 next two speakers, Joseph Kowalis -- excuse me 

5 for any mispronunciation -- and David Shaffer.

6 [Pause.]

7 MR. KOERBER: Is David Shaffer in the 

8 room?

9 [No response.]

10 MR. KOERBER: Joseph?

11 MR. KOWALIS: Thank you for your time 

12 today. I appreciate the opportunity to testify. 

13 I sit before you today as a senior in my studies 

14 at Western Michigan University in American Public 

15 Law and Environmental Studies. I'm here today 

16 following the obvious signs of climate disruption 

17 happening.

18 2011 was the ninth warmest year on record 

19 across the globe, according to NASA's own 

20 scientists. And they've been warning for decades 

21 that emissions from carbon is linked to global 

22 climate disruption. And scientists like Bill 
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1 McKibben and James Hansen of NASA, along with 

2 thousands of others like you just heard from the 

3 Union of Concerned Scientists -- the impacts 

4 we're already seeing in species lost, migration, 

5 temperature, and NASA continues to find that ice 

6 caps are melting faster, and the effects become 

7 more and more irreversible every year.

8 That's is what happens when we leave it 

9 up to the industry to police themselves on these 

10 standards. Over 72 percent of American voters in 

11 an American Lung Association conducted poll 

12 support protections from carbon emissions like 

13 this one the EPA is proposing. My generation 

14 stands before our government to implore and 

15 demand that they lead our nation into the 21st 

16 century on these issues, protecting the health of 

17 our citizens and the planet.

18 We have had the science for decades. The 

19 time for debate has passed, and action must be 

20 taken now. Let's use this opportunity to add to 

21 the 3.1 million already existing clean energy 

22 transition jobs. An independent analysis showing 
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1 these carbon emission standards will not require 

2 rate hikes or kill jobs. It will do the exact 

3 opposite. I want my country to lead in the 21st 

4 century, not follow China like we currently are 

5 in carbon emissions standards. Let's move 

6 America forward into a clean and just energy 

7 future.

8 Thank you for your time.

9 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Any clarifying 

10 questions?

11 MR. HUTSON: No.

12 MR. KOERBER: No? Thank you.

13 Let me call again Dr. Theodore Steck or 

14 David Shaffer.

15 [No response.]

16 MR. KOERBER: Okay. We will move on to 

17 Boise Jones and Eula McNeill.

18 [Pause.]

19 MR. KOERBER: When you're ready.

20 MR. JONES: Okay.

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

22 MR. JONES: Good morning. My name is 
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1 Boise Jones. I'm trained as a geographer and 

2 urban planner and a renewable energy specialist. 

3 Today I'm here with the Minnesota Delegation 

4 representing Greenwater Energy, which is my 

5 consulting firm, the Northstar Chapter of the 

6 Sierra Club, and the Environmental Justice 

7 Community in the Twin Cities.

8 For seven years I served as Vice-Chair of 

9 Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota, 

10 advocating for health disparities in communities 

11 of color as well as appointed to the Minnesota 

12 Climate Change Advisory Group serving the Energy 

13 Supply and Transportation Committee.

14 This is the backdrop of which I'd like to 

15 state for the record my testimony. First, we 

16 would like to commend the EPA and Director Lisa 

17 Jackson and her staff for her leadership on 

18 protection of our air, water, and soil -- in 

19 other words, for doing her job.

20 When I first testified here before this 

21 August body, it was on mercury, and it was during 

22 the Bush administration, and I will state 
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1 anecdotally the difference between the EPA then 

2 and now is markedly different. The evidence of 

3 proposing new source performance standards for 

4 emissions of carbon dioxide, for new effective 

5 fossil fuel fire electric utility generating 

6 plants clearly reflect the mandates of the EPA. 

7 Moreover, the EPA's new proposed carbon 

8 pollution limits reflect the depth and breadth of 

9 the directives from both the Supreme Court and 

10 Congress in 2007 where the Court confirmed in its 

11 landmark decision, Massachusetts vs. EPA, the

12 courts held in that case that the Clean Air Act 

13 requires the EPA to protect our public health and 

14 welfare from air pollutants such as carbon 

15 pollution from power plants that cause climate 

16 change.

17 And in the 2011 decision the court 

18 restated that emissions of carbon dioxide qualify 

19 as pollution subject to regulations under the 

20 Act, and the Act speaks directly to emissions of 

21 carbon dioxide from power plants.

22 As the record reflects, the courts went 
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1 on to describe the process for issuing 

2 performance standards governing these delegated -

3 - to the EPA the decision whether and how to 

4 regulate carbon dioxide emissions for power 

5 plants. So, with EPA proposing these 

6 requirements because CO2 greenhouse gases and 

7 fossil fuel power plants are the country's 

8 largest stationary sources of emitters of GHGs.

9 The EPA in 2009 found that by causing or 

10 contributing to climate change GHGs endangered 

11 the public health and the public welfare of 

12 current and future generations. So, we agree 

13 that uncontrolled industrial carbon pollution 

14 from power plants is definitely harming our 

15 health. And, of course, the EPA reveals that 154 

16 million Americans already suffer from pollution 

17 levels that are too dangerous and that scientists 

18 warn that climate change caused by carbon 

19 pollution is creating conditions, including 

20 warmer temperatures, which increase the risk of 

21 unhealthful ozone levels for the air we breathe.

22 So, as a result, I'm here today talking 
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1 on behalf of my 19-year-old son who suffers from 

2 asthma as well as my mother who turned 73 today 

3 that the work that they're doing and that 

4 Director Jackson is doing at the EPA is basically 

5 doing her job; and we commend her.

6 Thank you.

7 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

8 MS. McNEILL: Good morning. Thank you 

9 for this opportunity. I am Eula C. McNeill,

10 Commissioner from the Town of Red Springs and 

11 Robeson County. I've traveled from North 

12 Carolina to Chicago, Illinois, for this meeting 

13 today to express some of the concerns that the 

14 citizens of Red Springs have and as well as the 

15 citizens of Robeson County.

16 We are appreciative of what is being done 

17 by EPA, but we're also very concerned about the 

18 economical jobs, energy prices that it is -- the 

19 new proposer is going to impact on the citizens 

20 of Red Springs as well as Robeson County.

21 The rules target coal fuel power plants. 

22 And that is important because coal is very 
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1 inexpensive. More than half of the electricity 

2 in North Carolina comes from coal. Comparatively 

3 speaking, the cost of electricity is relatively 

4 low; but the citizens are already struggling to

5 acquire basic needs for survival.

6 It is unthinkable about what may happen 

7 when additional financial burdens may be imposed 

8 upon us by the new proposed changes.

9 Utmost, coal fuel plants are most 

10 economical, as I've previously stated, for my 

11 citizens because now we're having to making 

12 decisions about whether or not to go into 

13 darkness, or stay in the cold, or do I buy my 

14 necessary medicine and other necessities that we 

15 must have to survive.

16 The proposed NSPS rule requires a 

17 technology that is yet still under study and for 

18 use on new coal plants. 

19 And I'd like to inject here, too, what 

20 would happen to the old plants? Will old plants 

21 still have an opportunity to upgrade, or will we 

22 be completely banned from an existence?
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1 EPA should not design policies to prevent 

2 the construction of new coal plants. Policies 

3 designed for that purpose could cause unnecessary 

4 impacts, including, as previously stated, higher 

5 electrical bills, higher natural gas prices, job 

6 losses, and potential electrical reliability 

7 problems.

8 Surely, I support clean air, but EPA 

9 needs to fix this proposed rule so that it is 

10 less expensive and does not cost jobs or cause 

11 other financial hardship upon my citizens. I'll 

12 go as far to say that it should be that the new 

13 regulation -- proposed regulation should be 

14 withdrawn until it is further studied and makes 

15 more sense to all and not put people on edge of 

16 how we are going to survive in coal-supported 

17 communities.

18 In saying that, I say that, as someone 

19 previously said, and I liked that statement, the 

20 CO2 is promising, but it isn't a promise. 

21 And I thank you for this opportunity. 

22 And we will submit this testimony in writing 
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1 along with supportive facts that I did have my 

2 town to pull up, and we will submit all of that 

3 to you. And we're glad to meet another North 

4 Carolinian from here.

5 MR. HUTSON: Nice to meet you, too. 

6 Thank you.

7 MS. McNEILL: Thank you.

8 MR. KOERBER: Any clarifying questions?

9 MR. HUTSON: I'm just curious as to where 

10 Red Springs is located in North Carolina.

11 MS. McNEILL: It is located right down 

12 below Fort Bragg, or we are about 18 miles south 

13 of -- no, west of Lumberton.

14 MR. HUTSON: Yes, okay. Red Springs and 

15 red soil also.

16 MS. McNEILL: Yes.

17 MR. HUTSON: Thank you.

18 MR. KOERBER: Any clarifying questions?

19 MR. ANGELBECK: No.

20 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

21 MS. McNEILL: Thank you.

22 MR. KOERBER: Let me as if Dr. Theodore 
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1 Steck or David Shaffer are present.

2 [No response.]

3 MR. KOERBER: I'd like to call Richard 

4 Stuckey and Jane Jesuit.

5 [Pause.]

6 MR. KOERBER: Ready?

7 MR. STUCKEY: Yes.

8 MR. KOERBER: Go ahead.

9 MR. STUCKEY: Good morning, and thank you 

10 for this opportunity to testify on the proposed 

11 New Source Pollution Standards.

12 My name is Richard Stuckey. That's S-T13 U-C-K-E-Y, a member of the Sierra Club and 

14 various other environmental organizations. I'm 

15 testifying on behalf of myself and my family.

16 First of all, strongly commend the EPA 

17 for its work in creating national standards for 

18 the control of pollution of all sorts, in 

19 particular, the proposed standards for control of 

20 carbon pollution from new power plants, an 

21 important step towards slowing down climate 

22 change, which is a huge threat to the well being 
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1 not only of the nation but the planet.

2 There's almost unanimous agreement among 

3 the climate scientists of the world -- at least 

4 those that are not on the payroll of the carbon 

5 industry -- that climate change is happening 

6 fast, and it is being caused largely by manmade 

7 pollution. And a large part of that comes from 

8 carbon dioxide from existing coal plants, coal9 fired power plants.

10 But before the EPA can tackle the carbon 

11 emissions from existing plants, I understand that 

12 you are required to, first of all, get standards 

13 in place for proposed plants. And so these 

14 standards are a critical step towards addressing 

15 a major underlying cause of climate change. But 

16 they're also important in their own right in 

17 setting standards that will ensure that power 

18 plants are built with limits on carbon pollution 

19 so they don't further exacerbate the climate 

20 change problem.

21 At present, power companies protect the 

22 health, safety, and well being for the people 
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1 they are supposed to serve only when they are 

2 required to do so by regulations. They are set 

3 up to make the most profits possible while 

4 dumping as much of their waste and filth on the 

5 community free of charge as they are able to 

6 legally get away with and more sometimes. I 

7 commend the EPA for creating these proposed 

8 standards which will limit the extent to which 

9 the power companies will damage the nation and 

10 the planet in their pursuit of profits when new 

11 power sources are being built. The standards 

12 will go a long way towards leveling the playing 

13 fields so that clean, renewable sources of power 

14 will be able to compete and win out over dirty 

15 sources, particularly coal, and heretofore be 

16 able to pass on the cost of their pollution to 

17 the public and the planet.

18 Renewable sources of energy -- electric 

19 energy -- are now available at costs that are 

20 close to or lower than the cost of carbon-based 

21 power and are much lower when the full cost of 

22 externalities of coal are included.
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1 In a paper released in February of this 

2 year in the Annals of the New York Academy of 

3 Sciences, Dr. Paul Epstein is the associate 

4 director of the Center of Health and Global 

5 Environment of Harvard Medical School dealt at 

6 great length with the economic health and 

7 environmental costs associated with each stage in 

8 the coal life cycle, extraction, transportation, 

9 processing, and combustion. And these costs are 

10 between a third to over half a trillion dollars 

11 annually, and they are passed on directly to the 

12 public -- hidden costs that make electricity look 

13 cheap but not be cheap. Accounting for the total 

14 harm from coal would add close to -- he says --

15 17.8 cents per kilowatt hour to the cost of 

16 electricity generated -- a huge amount. And 

17 these costs don't include the full cost of 

18 climate change from storms, tornados. He only 

19 takes into account a portion of those.

20 The American Lung Association found that 

21 coal-powered electricity alone caused us over 

22 13,000 premature deaths in 2010, and as well as 
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1 almost 10,000 hospitalizations and more than 

2 20,000 heart attacks a year.

3 So it's critical that the proposed 

4 standards for carbon emissions from proposed 

5 power plants be implemented as quickly as 

6 possible to prevent the construction of new dirty 

7 power stations that will transfer more damaging 

8 costs onto the public.

9 Then, I implore you to move from there 

10 quickly to create standards for pollution from 

11 existing power sources, which is where the real 

12 problem lies.

13 Thank you so much for the work you're 

14 doing.

15 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Clarifying 

16 questions?

17 MR. HUTSON: Yes, I didn't get the author 

18 of the study that -- from the Harvard School --

19 MR. STUCKEY: I'll give you a copy of it. 

20 The reference was to a study from Paul Epstein 

21 and many other people, Annals of the New York 

22 Academy of Sciences Full Cost Accounting for a 
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1 life cycle of coal. I'll leave a copy with you 

2 when I go.

3 MR. HUTSON: Fantastic.

4 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. With the people 

5 at the registration table.

6 MR. STUCKEY: Okay.

7 MR. KOERBER: Yes. Thank you.

8 MS. GRABLE: I'm Jane Jesuit [phonetic] 

9 Grable. And I'm a concerned green citizen, and I 

10 just want to encourage you to not let me breathe 

11 coal dust. 

12 And I feel that there is investment 

13 dollars that are waiting for a clear signal from 

14 you to invest those dollars to create renewable 

15 energy. So that's my goal is to have renewable 

16 energy, not coal dust in the air.

17 And I appreciate all the work that you 

18 do. Thank you.

19 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. 

20 I'd like to call Sidney Kitzmiller and 

21 Michael Olenger.

22 [Pause.]
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1 MR. KOERBER: Is Michael Olenger present?

2 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: He's in the 

3 hallway. Can you ask?

4 [Pause.]

5 MR. OLENGER: Well, here I'm sitting with 

6 this young lady. Hi.

7 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Hello.

8 MR. OLENGER: How you doing?

9 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Good.

10 MR. OLENGER: I'm Mike Olenger. I 

11 haven't been in this room or this building since 

12 the Asian carp meetings. So let's hope we 

13 stopped them. 

14 I want to thank you guys for coming. I

15 want to thank the EPA.

16 First of all, let me explain who I'm 

17 from. I'm from the Chimney Safety Institute of 

18 America. I used to work for Standard Oil back in 

19 the day. 

20 The reason why the air is like it is 

21 right here in the Chicago land area today is 

22 directly because of fires out west that the parts 
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1 per million from fires and forest fires like this 

2 are causing our air in the east, besides China 

3 and the third world countries, to pollute our air 

4 from overseas. This is happening right now. 

5 There's five fires in Arizona. Arizona burned 

6 first last year. New Mexico burned second, and 

7 Texas burned almost all year.

8 It's a shame that -- well, only that we 

9 have one water hydrant plane in the sky, in an 

10 old jet, but you have Boeing in this town. This 

11 is not just about coal, but I will touch on coal 

12 in a few minutes.

13 Boeing needs to build the hydrant plane 

14 of the future. We spend billions and billions 

15 and billions of dollars on Homeland Security. 

16 That is where the name should be, Homeland 

17 Security. It also is with coal.

18 I live four miles west of the coal 

19 burning power plant in Waukegan, which has no 

20 Clean Air Act requirements. In order for them to 

21 burn their coal they use ammonia and mix it in 

22 with their exhaust or burn it with their exhaust 
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1 to make it past the EPA.

2 Toxic coal. The only way that you're 

3 going to clean up toxic coal is if you produce a 

4 better power plant than the one that's up in 

5 Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Pleasant Prairie because 

6 if you stand upwind and you look downwind as the 

7 smoke is going to the southeast, you will see 

8 parts per million of mercury coming out of that 

9 power plant and all good things that are really 

10 not good for us to breathe.

11 The Great Lakes here is dying. I'll tell 

12 you why they're dying. Because of the quagga 

13 mussel coming in during the Bush era. We've got 

14 Asian carp on our doorstep out here. There's 

15 ways to solve that, but I can't go into that 

16 today because I'm more concerned about our air 

17 and the toxicity of our lakes.

18 Our lake water is down. And mostly I 

19 hear the reason why it's down is because, well, 

20 it's in drought season from global warming. We 

21 had the largest dump in the lake last year of 

22 toxic material out these locks. The reason why -
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1 - besides drought -- the lake is down is because 

2 the algae is taken out of it. When you go down 

3 to the lake, you look at the lake, and it's 

4 crystal clear. The algae and the plankton 

5 produce oxygen. Oxygen in its gaseous state is 

6 very, very large. So you have two more parts to 

7 the lake that are down, and the reason why the 

8 water is down is not just because of one.

9 Our earth -- when you look at this earth 

10 and you look at our house or this building that 

11 you're in, you don't want carbon monoxide in your 

12 house or in this building. It destroys life. 

13 Our earth is a seven-mile eggshell. You can 

14 practically walk out of our atmosphere in one 

15 day. This would be the only home that we can 

16 live in. There is no other home that we can go 

17 to. We're destroying this seven mile eggshell 

18 just like DDT destroyed the eggshell of the bald 

19 eagle.

20 The laws and the water with the quagga 

21 mussel, there's no way of stopping it right now. 

22 Bitumen, whether it be from coal, whether it be 
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1 from oil, they both have the same products in 

2 them that cause cancer, that cause lung defects, 

3 that destroy this child's life right here. 

4 Eventually -- and I don't want to scare you. 

5 Eventually it's going to catch up to her. My kid 

6 right there wonders what's going on with the 

7 power plant in Waukegan. I've been out three 

8 times videoing and putting it on YouTube and on 

9 my website at Eco Lighthouse Native Shores Safety 

10 First Group.

11 This power plant -- are you going to 

12 Great America this year? Would you like to go? 

13 Yeah. Okay. Watch the video and step up for 

14 your clean air when you get on a ride because I'm 

15 just a mile east of there.

16 If you consider that bitumen comes from 

17 coal and all the byproducts of toxic combustion -

18 - I'll go back up to this. There is only one 

19 thing that you can admit to. You emit it; you 

20 pollute. No matter what you do, whether you 

21 drive a car or whether you drive a diesel truck, 

22 a farm machinery, or you burn ethanol fuel. 
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1 Ethanol fuel is one of the worst things that we 

2 could be putting in our gas right now because 

3 what it does is it drives down the miles, drives 

4 up the pollution at the power plant from the farm 

5 to transportation of diesel fuel to the still. 

6 Then you have to cook the corn in the still, 

7 which produces more carbon dioxide. You have to 

8 use something to burn that product or boil that 

9 product. Then there is no way of shipping it in 

10 a pipeline that is safe for alcohol fuel anywhere 

11 in this country. There is zero pipelines. In 

12 the ethanol industry we pumped in 23 to $25 

13 billion since 2005.

14 I'm going to touch on this Keystone 

15 pipeline. You guys are with the EPA.

16 MR. KOERBER: Sir, we're out of time.

17 MR. OLENGER: We're out of time?

18 MR. KOERBER: Yes.

19 MR. OLENGER: All right. Well --

20 MR. KOERBER: You can leave your written 

21 comments --

22 MR. HUTSON: Final comment?
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1 MR. OLENGER? Final comment? Well, let 

2 me put it this way: The EPA, like I had said is 

3 part of Homeland Security. If this Keystone 

4 pipeline goes through, that may be jobs for a 

5 year, maybe two. That oil is either going out 

6 western Canada through Kitamit or else it's going 

7 down to the Gulf. 

8 I said I worked for Standard Oil. 

9 Standard Oil had the standard for oil. Everybody 

10 tried following it. This Keystone pipeline is 

11 pumping power sludge into our rivers. Or, excuse 

12 me, it's going to. It produces 30 percent more 

13 carbon dioxide to boil the fuel off the sand. 

14 Okay? It's not for us. It's for China. It's 

15 for the Far East.

16 Remember I said at the very beginning 

17 that the Far East is much dirtier than here? I 

18 got a biologist who's working, and he really 

19 doesn't want to say anything until he gets out of 

20 the federal government because he doesn't want to 

21 lose his job --

22 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir, for your 
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1 time.

2 MR. OLENGER: Yes. I hope you breathe 

3 well. Thank you, guys. Let's clean it up.

4 MR. KOERBER: Ms. Kitzmiller, you ready?

5 MS. KITZMILLER: Yes.

6 MR. KOERBER: Okay.

7 MS. KITZMILLER: Hi, my name is Cindy 

8 Kitzmiller, and I am 11 years old. I am here 

9 today to represent the children of today and the 

10 children of tomorrow.

11 First, I'd like to thank you for 

12 listening to us today. Thank you for your 

13 mission to protect human health and environment. 

14 And thank you for your efforts to protect 

15 children from the coal industry.

16 According to the American Lung 

17 Association particle pollution from coal plants 

18 is estimated to kill approximately 13,000 people 

19 each year. We really, really need someone to 

20 protect us to ensure cleaner air.

21 Coal executives do not care about our 

22 health or the environment. Coal executives do 
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1 not care beyond bonuses earned for stealing 

2 resources from my generation and the next. They 

3 do not care that 25 percent of children living 

4 near coal plants have asthma. Coal profits do 

5 not pay the costs of coal. Children like me do 

6 with their lungs and health. 

7 We are too young to work for the coal 

8 industry. We want to be healthy and our food 

9 okay to eat. We want all of the costs to be 

10 counted before the profits and bonuses. We want 

11 coal, oil, and fracking to pay their own costs. 

12 Stop these corporations from passing these costs 

13 to us. Our health should be protected and our 

14 resources should be protected. 

15 We need the EPA to stand up to money and 

16 politics. We need the EPA to protect me from 

17 donating my lungs to coal profits. We have clean 

18 energy sources that won't give me asthma. We 

19 have clean energy sources that don't pollute the 

20 water with mercury. These clean energy sources 

21 don't pass the costs to me.

22 We have a fragile environment that most 
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1 people don't understand. We need the EPA to 

2 protect our ability to sustain lives as we know 

3 it. Our environment is dying bit by bit, more 

4 and more. Who is going to protect the 

5 environment for us, for the children living by 

6 the coal plants, for the people eating the fish 

7 in the rivers?

8 Please continue your mission and protect 

9 our only environment from the dirty coal 

10 industry, from the oil industry, and from the 

11 fracking industry, and teach us to turn to clean 

12 energy. That is our only future.

13 MR. KOERBER: Thank you very much.

14 [Applause.]

15 MR. KOERBER: Okay. We are on a five16 minute break. It is 9:50, and we will resume at 

17 9:55.

18 [Break from 9:50 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.]

19 MR. KOERBER: The time is approximately 

20 10:00 o'clock, and we are back in session.

21 Now I'd like to call Kathy Kieser and 

22 Matthew Withers. And I'll remind you that you 
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1 have five minutes each, and we have a clock here 

2 with colored lights that indicate where you are 

3 on your time.

4 MS. KIESER: Good morning. My name is 

5 Kathy Kieser. I live at 1307 Brentwood Place in 

6 Joliet, Illinois.

7 I'm here today because of my concern for 

8 the health of people in my community, 

9 particularly disadvantaged children living on the 

10 far east side of Joliet.

11 I've been involved with the Head Start 

12 Program for 30 years. During this time we have 

13 seen an enormous jump in the number of children 

14 affected by asthma. When I first began working 

15 at Head Start we had 500 children enrolled and 

16 approximately 50 children with asthma or 10 

17 percent.

18 This year there are 700 children enrolled 

19 in Head Start in Joliet, and approximately 175 of 

20 those children have asthma, 25 percent of the 

21 population.

22 Now all Head Start teachers must be 
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1 trained to respond to asthma attacks. Inhalers 

2 are available in each classroom with physician 

3 instruction on treatment for each child.

4 And in the current Head Start population 

5 6 children require EpiPens on site due to the 

6 seriousness of their asthma conditions.

7 Sadly, there was a terrible tragedy at 

8 one of our Head Start Centers, the Bluff Center. 

9 A few years ago Ms. Rodriguez worked as a 

10 teacher's assistant at that center, and one 

11 afternoon Ms. Rodriguez' 10-year-old daughter, 

12 Maria, stopped by after school. Maria suffered 

13 from chronic asthma, and her mother struggled to 

14 keep up payments of medical treatment for her 

15 daughter.

16 But on that particular day an asthma 

17 attack came on suddenly to the child. The staff 

18 struggled to respond, 911 was called but to no 

19 avail. Maria died from the asthma attack in one 

20 of the Head Start classrooms.

21 The story is a chilling reminder of the 

22 terrible risks that accompany asthma, especially 
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1 in our poorest neighborhoods, and especially in 

2 those neighborhoods adjacent to dirty coal-fired

3 power plants.

4 The EPA has made significant strides in 

5 recent years to deal with these problems, and the 

6 public is very appreciative of that. I urge you 

7 to continue to protect the health of the public 

8 by setting national limits on the amount of 

9 carbon pollution that power plants are allowed to 

10 emit. Carbon pollution standards will help 

11 prevent life-threatening conditions such as those 

12 that most surely contributed to the death of 

13 Maria Rodriguez.

14 Thank you for your time and attention.

15 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

16 MR. WITHERS: Good morning. My name is 

17 Matthew Withers. I live on the east side of 

18 Joliet. I'm here to lend my voice to the 

19 struggle that's people in the city of Joliet are 

20 being affected by.

21 Joliet's a very unique place in the sense 

22 that it does have a number of pollution-
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1 generating facilities down there, and we have 

2 seen over the years -- and I say that advisedly 

3 because shortly -- this week, I believe -- I'll 

4 be turning 72. So I've lived in Joliet most of 

5 my life.

6 And I remember seeing and hearing my 

7 mother and father talk to organizations like 

8 yours. I don't think EPA was even envisioned in 

9 those days, but it first started off with 

10 quarries. And then we went into fire generated 

11 plants. And we're talking about water pollution 

12 where these coal ash facilities are bringing --

13 dumping their coal ash into the empty quarries, 

14 which will then, in fact, leach down into the 

15 aquifers, which could cause problems with the 

16 people [sic] drinking water.

17 I'm sort of passionate about this, but I 

18 find it sort of ironic that here I am 72, and I'm 

19 looking around the room, and I may be the oldest 

20 guy here, and we're still talking about this 

21 stuff. And my mother and father are dead and 

22 gone, and we're still talking about this 
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1 pollution situation.

2 Thank you very much for your attention. 

3 Thank you.

4 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

5 I'd like to call Bill Davis and Donna 

6 Hriljac. I get it right?

7 MS. HRILJAC: Absolutely right. I'm very 

8 impressed.

9 MR. KOERBER: That's from my Chicago 

10 background.

11 You can provide them to the people at the 

12 registration table. They the official keepers 

13 out there.

14 MS. HRILJAC: I guess I'm going to go out 

15 of order since he said ladies first.

16 My name is Donna Hriljac, and I want to 

17 thank the Environmental Protection Agency for 

18 giving me the opportunity to testify.

19 I do support the new carbon pollution 

20 standards recently proposed by you. As a 

21 lifelong resident of Chicago and its suburbs I 

22 became concerned, really concerned, when I read 
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1 the report card regarding the state of the air 

2 from the American Lung Association. Cook County 

3 got an F for ozone days, for high ozone days, and 

4 an F for particular pollution. I was really 

5 surprised. I thought they were cleaning it up, 

6 but got the papers here, and that's what it says.

7 I also work with a person, Tony, who has 

8 a three-year-old son with severe allergies and 

9 asthma. They live in Evergreen Park, so they're 

10 also in Cook County.

11 I am a volunteer with Inner City Outing 

12 on the weekend. And our job is to work with 

13 local agencies and work to introduce children and 

14 teens to the out of doors. They love it. They 

15 have a great time.

16 A couple weeks ago we went to Stark Rock. 

17 We actually had to cut our trip in half because a 

18 girl with asthma had to leave early. And so, we 

19 split the group, and a nurse and one of the staff 

20 agency went out with the girl, and then we 

21 continued on the rest of the way. But that was 

22 really disappointing. I really, really feel bad 
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1 that somebody my age has more energy than a 

2 teenager. 

3 So, thank you.

4 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

5 MR. DAVIS: Good morning to each one of 

6 you. I thank you so very much for this privilege 

7 and this opportunity to come and speak with you 

8 this morning concerning this EPA.

9 My name is Bill Davis, and I live in 

10 Joliet, Illinois where I serve as a deacon at one 

11 of the largest Baptist churches there, which is 

12 Mount Zion Baptist Church where the Pastor David 

13 G. Latimore is the pastor of that church.

14 Among the neighbors of that church is 

15 located a dirty power plant and deposits coal ash 

16 residue, and there is a landfill also that is 

17 located directly within the center of that 

18 community in which the people live. And it 

19 potentially leaches water into the supply of 

20 those that lives in that community and those 

21 parishioners that attend the Mount Zion Baptist 

22 Church.
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1 And I come here today because I have 

2 testified at other EPA hearings that has been 

3 held here in Chicago. I also have traveled to 

4 Washington, D.C., and met with some legislators 

5 in the House and in the Senate regarding their 

6 mission problems in the area and similar areas in 

7 the nationwide.

8 I want to thank you also for -- like I 

9 said, for allowing me to come here and to have a 

10 say for those who have little voice or no voice 

11 from the community that I come here representing.

12 This past week our congregation held five 

13 funerals, one of which was for an eight-year-old 

14 child. This child died of leukemia, a child who 

15 had been perfectly and healthy. Then suddenly 

16 his parents observed he came down with a lump 

17 that was located in his lymph node in his neck. 

18 And this is not an unusual occurrence that is 

19 happening in that area. There has been a lot of 

20 sicknesses that have be felled a lot of people 

21 that live in that area because of the pollution 

22 that is being emitted from in the air and also 
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1 from the coal ash plant that is located directly 

2 in that area, which it contaminates the water 

3 wells.

4 I applaud you, the EPA, for establishing 

5 a national standard for new power plants so we 

6 can anticipate a future, one that's less marred 

7 by tragedies such as this child's death and some 

8 other sicknesses that has ravished that area.

9 I represented, like I said, the many 

10 folks who would like to be here but due to 

11 illness and other things that they could not join 

12 us here today. Those of you who sit in powerful 

13 places tend to forget the folks who actually live 

14 are on hold while authorities try to convince us 

15 that the contamination in our water and air is 

16 just a hoax.

17 We should get well. I am here to tell 

18 you that we are not going to get over it. We are 

19 going to clear the air, force all future power 

20 plants to adhere to national standards and 

21 continue finding innovative ways to produce 

22 power. I stand before you to claim that victory 
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1 and also ask that you would join and help us to 

2 do the same.

3 Thank you so very much for allowing me 

4 today.

5 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

6 I'd like to call Toby Chow and Martin 

7 Molowski.

8 MR. MOLOWSKI: Who do I --

9 MR. KOERBER: Is that your statement?

10 MR. MOLOWSKI: Yes.

11 MR. KOERBER: We'll give it to the people 

12 out at the desk, but you can leave it.

13 MR. MOLOWSKI: Okay.

14 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

15 MR. CHOW: Good morning. My name is Toby 

16 Chow. I am a member of SOUL, Southsiders 

17 Organized for Unity and Liberation a community 

18 organization on the south side and south suburbs 

19 here in Chicago. And I am also the Chair of the 

20 Social Ministry Committee of Augustana Lutheran 

21 Church and Campus Ministry of Hyde Park.

22 I'm here to speak in favor of the 
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1 proposed carbon pollution standards and also in 

2 favor of taking the next step of regulating 

3 carbon from existing sources. I do so because I 

4 feel an urgent need to do what I can to slow down 

5 global warming as well as the pollution caused on 

6 a local level by the extraction of fossil fuels.

7 And I want us to understand that we are 

8 talking here about an injustice on an 

9 unprecedented scale inflicted by wealthy and 

10 powerful interests upon those who are poor and 

11 vulnerable. I want us to understand this and I 

12 want us to get angry.

13 As a Christian, my understanding of this 

14 sort of anger that is appropriate to injustice is 

15 guided by scripture, so I'd like to share some 

16 scripture that I find relevant to the topic at 

17 hand.

18 I am reading from Ezekiel, Chapter 34. 

19 Thus says the Lord God, I shall judge between 

20 sheep and sheep, between rams and goats. Is it 

21 not enough for you to feed on the good pasture 

22 but must you also tread down with your feet the 
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1 rest of the pasture? When you drink of clear 

2 water must you foul the rest with your feet? And 

3 must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your 

4 feet and drink what you have fouled with your 

5 feet? Therefore, that says the Lord God to them, 

6 I, myself, will judge between the fat sheep and 

7 the lean sheep.

8 In this passage God is angry, and God is 

9 in the mood for judgment. This is a passage

10 addressed to the fat sheep, to the elite, to the 

11 wealthy, to the rulers and leaders. In this 

12 passage Ezekiel proclaims divine judgment upon 

13 this privileged class. They are judged for their 

14 sin. And what is the sin of the fat sheep?

15 In the first place, they have taken more 

16 than their fair share of the resources which have 

17 been provided to humanity -- to all of humanity 

18 as part of God's creation. They feed on the good 

19 pasture and drink of the clear water. In other 

20 words, they take the best of everything for 

21 themselves and leave everyone else, the lean 

22 sheep, to scramble for the leftovers.
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1 But the fat sheep do more than that. Not 

2 only do they take the best of the land and water 

3 for themselves, they also ruin and pollute what 

4 little they leave behind. Must my sheep eat what 

5 you have trodden with your feet and drink what 

6 you have fouled with your feet?

7 Similarly, the extraction consumption of 

8 fossil fuels reaps great riches for some and 

9 inflicts enormous suffering upon others. The 

10 lean sheep in this case are the poor and 

11 vulnerable people who have not profited in the 

12 same way from this system and have no choice but 

13 to attempt to survive in the lands and with the 

14 waters which are being fouled and desecrated by 

15 the system. 

16 We see this, for example, in the poor 

17 people of Appalachia who are stuck with the land 

18 and water poisoned by mountaintop removal coal 

19 mining. In Hurricane Katrina we saw the 

20 [unintelligible] of how climate-related disasters 

21 bring suffering most of all to the poor and to 

22 already oppressed racial minorities. In 
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1 impoverished areas of Bangladesh -- we look at 

2 things internationally -- 30 million people are 

3 set to lose absolutely everything, what little 

4 they have, over the next few decades due to rises 

5 in sea levels and the increasing severity of 

6 cyclones and droughts. They are losing their 

7 homes, their farms, their communities, and their 

8 whole way of life. Their land and water is being 

9 stolen from them from 30 million people so that 

10 others may profit. This is a great crime, and it 

11 is being committed currently with impunity. As 

12 the foreign minister of Bangladesh has commented, 

13 the people being affected are not the big banks 

14 but the poor. Our plight goes quite unnoticed. 

15 It does not make the rich countries produce 

16 trillions of dollars overnight -- unquote.

17 When the land and water is trodden upon 

18 and fouled, it is the poor and oppressed who 

19 suffer. But in the long run the suffering caused 

20 by global warming is not limited to those whom we 

21 now recognized as poor. I want everyone in this 

22 room to understand that unless we reverse current 
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1 trends radically and rapidly, the effects of 

2 global warming will become more and more severe 

3 in the decades to come to the point where 

4 basically everyone, except perhaps the ultra 

5 rich, will face devastation as a result. We will 

6 have no choice. In the long run global warming 

7 will turn us all into lean sheep.

8 We need to get angry about this, and we 

9 need to fight back. We need to fight back as if 

10 our lives depended on it because they do.

11 And to the representatives of the EPA, I 

12 don't know how much the EPA pays you, but I am 

13 guessing that most likely most of you are more or 

14 less in the same boat as the rest of us. And 

15 assuming that's right, I ask you to understand 

16 these carbon pollution standards as a necessary 

17 step along the way to combating an outright, 

18 outrageous, and vile system of injustice, one 

19 that will eventually come after you and those you 

20 care about. And I ask you to pursue these 

21 standards accordingly and move to regulate the 

22 existing sources as well.
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1 Thank you.

2 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

3 MR. MOLOWSKI: All right. Well, I hope 

4 you all are doing well today. My name is Martin 

5 Molowski. I am a graduate student studying 

6 biology at the University of Illinois at 

7 Springfield.

8 I come here not only concerned about my 

9 generation but every generation coming after it. 

10 Ninety-seven percent of the scientific community 

11 is in agreement on manmade climate change. As a 

12 biologist I can tell you that if you don't want 

13 to believe the scientists, you can just look at 

14 nature. Animals, ranging from tiny insects to 

15 large mammals, are now moving to higher 

16 latitudes. Plant species around the globe are 

17 blooming earlier in the year. This is not a 

18 conspiracy put on by the butterflies and plants.

19 The United States just saw its hottest 12 

20 months in recorded history. This is going to be 

21 the new normal. Right now what we need to focus 

22 on is damage control and how to minimize climate 
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1 change as much as possible.

2 There are some who say that we aren't 

3 causing it, that climate change occurs naturally. 

4 The earth climate changes in response to whatever 

5 the dominant forces are on the planet at the 

6 time. In the past it was volcanic eruptions and 

7 activity by organisms living on the planet in the 

8 past. Right now we are the dominant force 

9 causing change.

10 This has been scientifically tested and 

11 proven. Once again the scientific community is 

12 basically in agreement on this. One of the most 

13 alarming things about the change in particular is 

14 that past changes were very gradual, taking place 

15 over the course of thousands, even millions, of 

16 years.

17 The change that humans are causing is 

18 occurring in the geological blink of an eye. 

19 This sudden change is dangerous for many reasons, 

20 one of them being how a sudden change in 

21 temperature greatly affects the water cycle. And 

22 eventually we're going to see wet areas like 
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1 Bangladesh and Seattle experience more rain and 

2 catastrophic floods. Dry areas, like down state 

3 Illinois, and most of the Midwest are going to 

4 experience much more drought.

5 I have lived in down state Illinois for 

6 the past year. After receiving an abundance of 

7 snow every winter, they experienced virtually no 

8 winter this year. The local people I've talked 

9 to are alarmed by this.

10 Last summer central Illinois also 

11 experienced a very devastating drought. One 

12 could not see a single green patch of grass for 

13 miles. What had once been health rivers and 

14 streams flowing with fresh water were now low, 

15 stagnant ponds. 

16 Droughts caused by climate change are 

17 going to create big problems for agriculture and 

18 will likely lead to an increase in food prices 

19 nationwide. The price of many crops, including 

20 corn, soybean, and grain, will increase as a 

21 result. The price of meat will also increase as 

22 corn and grain are often used to feed livestock 
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1 and other animals. Other products that include 

2 corn and grain, like corn syrup and stuff like 

3 that, will also increase in price.

4 A recent study by Stanford and Purdue 

5 University show that the impact climate change is 

6 going to have on corn will greatly outweigh the 

7 impact caused by changes in oil prices. Many of 

8 you may be sick of the rising gas prices or sick 

9 of people complaining about the rising gas 

10 prices. Just wait until the American people are 

11 complaining about how they can't afford dinner. 

12 This is why we must act now to prevent the 

13 agricultural, economic, and environmental 

14 problems that will occur in our lifetime.

15 As of yesterday, May 23rd, 2012, 

16 according to the National Aeronautics and Space 

17 Administration, the carbon content of the 

18 atmosphere is nearly -- currently 393 parts per 

19 million. To minimize the effects of climate 

20 change we need to get that number down to 350 

21 parts per million. In order to preserve this 

22 great nation and civilization in this current 
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1 date, we're going to need to make changes.

2 About 150 years ago Charles Darwin wrote 

3 a book that was so profound, accurate, and 

4 relevant that it's still used by biologists 

5 today. Darwin would lay out the foundation for 

6 understanding survival when he said, It is not 

7 the strongest of the species that survive, nor is 

8 it the most intelligent that survive, it is the 

9 one that is most adaptable to change.

10 Thank you for your time.

11 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Any clarifying 

12 questions from the panel?

13 MR. HUTSON: I don't have any clarifying 

14 questions, but I do like the -- your line about 

15 not a conspiracy put on by the butterfly and the 

16 plants. I like that.

17 MR. KOERBER: Any questions?

18 MR. ANGELBECK: No.

19 MR. KOERBER: Thank you for your time.

20 MR. MOLOWSKI: Thank you.

21 MR. KOERBER: I would like to call Sandy 

22 Carter and Dr. Anita --
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1 DR. BELODIS: Belodis.

2 MR. KOERBER: -- Belois?

3 DR. BELODIS: Belodis.

4 MR. KOERBER: Belodis. Oh, that's a D. 

5 I'm sorry. My apologies.

6 Good to go.

7 MS. CARTER: Good morning. My name's 

8 Sandy Carter. I am a third-year undergraduate at 

9 the University of Chicago and would characterize 

10 myself as an environmental activist.

11 I just spent the past two years fighting 

12 to change the way society treats the environment 

13 in an attempt to mitigate the negative impacts of 

14 climate change the world is beginning to face. 

15 While I want my government to do more, I am 

16 excited that the EPA is looking towards issues of 

17 carbon, and I support this proposed rule to limit 

18 emissions.

19 As an individual, a student, and as a 

20 member of the next generation I am especially 

21 concerned about the future of humanity on this 

22 planet. Carbon dioxide emissions have been shown 
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1 to be linked to climate change. And as many of 

2 you know, the potential impacts of global warming 

3 are truly frightening.

4 I grew up on the shores of the Chesapeake 

5 Bay in Maryland, and I've seen firsthand the 

6 effects of fossil fuels and carbon emissions. In 

7 2003 a tropical storm struck my community and 

8 flooded by neighborhood and my childhood home. I 

9 realize that the connection between carbon 

10 emissions, climate change, and weather patterns 

11 is often doubted and remains under debate. But 

12 watching the flood waters rise was very real. 

13 And it was real when my neighbors, many of whom 

14 had lived in the region for their entire lives 

15 and whose families had called the Chesapeake home 

16 for generations, explained that no storm in the 

17 past 50 years had caused this amount of damage.

18 While my neighborhood recovered, this and 

19 many larger disasters such as Hurricane Katrina 

20 in 2005, throw into focus the direction our world 

21 is headed if we don't act. More carbon in our 

22 atmosphere means more intense storms. It means 
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1 an increase in coastal flooding. It means the 

2 oceans will take back the land. It means my 

3 mother's home will be under water in 50 years. 

4 It means our snow will melt and our rivers will 

5 run dry. It means water and food shortages. It 

6 means no future for the beautiful planet I call 

7 home, and it means no future for my generation. 

8 It means I wake up terrified, not because I don't 

9 know what job I'm going to have after I graduate, 

10 not because I worry about the economy, but 

11 because I worry in 50 years I won't be able to 

12 live, because I worry that my friends and my 

13 family, many of whom are not concerned about 

14 carbon issues, will not have air to breathe and 

15 will not have food to eat.

16 There are many days when I have my doubts 

17 about changing the future. I doubt that we can 

18 do anything about climate change, that the 

19 social, economic, and political atmosphere will 

20 ever allow for the development of a more 

21 sustainable society.

22 But the coming closure of the two coal 
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1 plants in this city which I now call home gives 

2 me some reason to hope, and this rule gives me 

3 more hope.

4 The new rule will limit the amount of 

5 carbon that new power plants can emit to a 

6 thousand pounds per megawatt hour. This is a 

7 start to moving our society off of fossil fuels. 

8 Yet I still have feelings of doubt. We 

9 need to do more. We need to stop building coal 

10 plants, period. We need to stop building natural 

11 gas plants, period. We need real climate rules. 

12 We need leaders, both nationally and 

13 internationally, willing to fight for this 

14 planet. And we need to hold our corporations 

15 accountable. We need to realize that we cannot, 

16 as a country and a world, keep waiting. And we 

17 need the EPA to institute this proposed rule and 

18 then fight for an even stronger rule.

19 Thank you.

20 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

21 DR. BELODIS: Well, I don't have any 

22 prepared speech. I'm Anita Belodis. I'm a 
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1 family physician. I've been a family physician 

2 for over 38 years. 

3 And my concern is the impact that the 

4 pollution has on health. We know that asthma has 

5 increased and has -- and we still see deaths from 

6 asthma and we know that pollution has an effect 

7 on that.

8 Chronic obstructive disease, emphysema, 

9 every single kind of pulmonary problem, whether 

10 you smoke or not, it is affected by pollution. 

11 And I really, really -- that's why I'm here.

12 I took a day off -- well, I have to work 

13 later -- and just thought I'd be here and wasn't 

14 expecting to speak, but then when I saw that it 

15 would be important for a physician to talk and to 

16 impress upon you how important it is for us to 

17 clean up our air so we can protect our children 

18 and our grandchildren.

19 And thank you for listening to me.

20 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

21 MR. HUTSON: My only point to that would 

22 be we certainly appreciate the fact that you took 
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1 the day off, and probably others have as well, so 

2 we appreciate the people coming in to share their 

3 thoughts. Thank you.

4 MR. KOERBER: I'd like to call Tom Mar, 

5 Simar.

6 MR. SIMAR: Simar.

7 MR. KOERBER: Simar. And Dennis Nelson.

8 MR. SIMAR: Just start?

9 MR. KOERBER: Yes, please. Please begin.

10 MR. SIMAR: Good morning. My name is Tom 

11 Simar, and I'm an attorney in the Chicago office 

12 of the Natural Resources Defense Council or NRDC.

13 I'm here today to talk about two reports 

14 that NRDC has released in the last year in 

15 partnership with the Rocky Mountain Climate 

16 Organization. The document that impacts the 

17 climate change is already having on the Midwest 

18 region and in the Great Lakes most popular 

19 national parks.

20 NRDC will be submitting each of these 

21 reports to the docket for this rulemaking, along 

22 with numerous other comments and information, in 
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1 strong support of EPA's proposed rule.

2 The impacts of climate change we can 

3 already see, and those we are likely to see more 

4 and more in coming years underscore the critical 

5 importance of EPA's new source performance 

6 standard for new power plants that is the subject 

7 of this hearing.

8 EPA's new source performance standard is 

9 a significant milestone to prevent more 

10 potentially disastrous ecological and health 

11 effects of climate change before they happen.

12 The first NRDC report released this month 

13 presents new data on increasing extreme weather 

14 in the Midwest region in recent years which is 

15 being driven by human-caused climate change. The 

16 largest of storms, those of three inches or more 

17 of precipitation in a single day, have increased 

18 the most, with their annual frequency more than 

19 doubling over the past 51 years.

20 Floods are to the Midwest what hurricanes 

21 are to coastal areas, the region's most widely 

22 destructive type of regularly occurring natural 
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1 disaster. Extreme storms in isolation can cause 

2 flash flooding, but when they occur where soils 

3 are already saturated and stream levels are 

4 already high, and especially when they occur in 

5 rapid succession, extreme storms can cause 

6 widespread, sometimes devastating flooding.

7 Across the United States flooding is the 

8 second most costly type of natural disaster. In 

9 2010, which ranked fourth in regional extreme 

10 storm frequency, Iowa alone had $1 billion in 

11 agricultural losses from extreme storms. In 

12 2011, which ranked fifth, Midwestern flooding 

13 caused $2 billion in damages.

14 NRDC's Midwest Extreme Weather Report 

15 identifies how future emissions of heat-trapping 

16 pollution will affect total precipitation rates. 

17 If those future emissions are relatively high, 

18 extreme storms could increase by more than 40 

19 percent. And even if we act now to hold down 

20 future emissions, storms could still increase by 

21 as much as 20 percent.

22 The second NRDC report I'm here to talk 
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1 about today, which we released last summer, 

2 documents how climate change is the greatest 

3 threat that national parks in the Great Lakes 

4 Region have ever faced. This report presents new 

5 information on how temperatures are projected to 

6 continue increasing throughout the Great Lakes 

7 Region under different future emission scenarios.

8 NRDC's Great Lakes National Parks Report 

9 makes clear that if we don't act now to rein in 

10 our emissions of carbon pollution, temperatures 

11 throughout the Great Lakes Region could go up by 

12 eight degrees or more by the end of this century. 

13 That would be the equivalent of moving Florida's 

14 climate to northwest Indiana.

15 But if we are able to put the right 

16 policies in place to cut carbon pollution and 

17 move us to a cleaner energy future, we can reduce 

18 the amount of damage that happens to our national 

19 parks and our whole region.

20 Our report details how cutting this 

21 pollution would help us preserve native plant and 

22 animal species, and iconic natural features in 
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1 our national parks. 

2 This isn't about sea levels rising or 

3 melting ice caps in some far away landscape. 

4 These national parks are special places that 

5 those of us that live in the Great Lakes Region 

6 has visited and loved our whole lives. These are 

7 some of the places we take our children on field 

8 trips and summer vacations. These parks also 

9 attract people and dollars from all over the 

10 country, but these national parks are now being 

11 put in harm's way by a warming climate. 

12 The national parks are not the only 

13 places where climate change will affect us, but 

14 the impacts are often most visible there because 

15 they are our most ecologically valuable and 

16 fragile places, the places in most need of 

17 protection.

18 But we are seeing climate change impacts 

19 not just in the national parks but all over the 

20 Great Lakes. In Lake Erie, for example, climate 

21 change combines with a multitude of other 

22 problems, making toxic blue-green algae blooms 
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1 worse by lowering lake levels and increasing the 

2 concentrations of phosphorous in the lake. 

3 We need to head off climate change 

4 quickly to protect our Great Lakes parks, the 

5 iconic landscapes and wildlife that live in them, 

6 and our own communities. The national parks in 

7 the Great Lakes Region are economic engines 

8 responsible for 3,000 jobs and $200 million in 

9 annual revenue.

10 EPA's proposed standard for limiting 

11 carbon pollution from new coal-fired power plants 

12 is needed to protect not only the health of 

13 ourselves, and our families, and our future 

14 generations but also the jobs and the massive 

15 revenue that come out of these parks from the 

16 Great Lakes $7 billion fishery and from all of 

17 the other sectors of our economy that depend on 

18 clean air and clean water.

19 Thanks for the opportunity to testify 

20 today.

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

22 Mr. Nelson.
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1 MR. NELSON: Good morning. This is real 

2 progress. Let's move forward with the proposed 

3 U.S. EPA carbon pollution standard for future 

4 power plants as quickly as possible.

5 My name is Dennis R. Nelson. I reside in 

6 Chicago near southwest side Bridgeport 

7 neighborhood. From my building I can see Midwest 

8 Generation's older Fisk coal-fired generating 

9 station, one of the two biggest industrial 

10 sources of climate disruption pollution within 

11 the city's limits, which will be closed this 

12 September. 

13 I have a Bachelor of Science, B.S. degree 

14 in biology and environmental studies from Dana 

15 College, Blair, Nebraska. I am the President of 

16 the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information 

17 Service, NEIS, Illinois' nuclear power watch 

18 group. And our website is www.neis.org.

19 Yes, I know that the U.S. EPA's historic 

20 carbon pollution standard would establish the 

21 first ever national limits for climate disruption 

22 pollution from newer coal-fired power plants. 
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1 With the N standing for nuclear in our name, I 

2 did not walk into the wrong hearing by mistake. 

3 NEIS supports this proposed carbon pollution 

4 standard as a key component of a carbon-free 

5 nuclear-free energy pathway. The U.S. EPA 

6 finally exercising its legal authority granted by 

7 the U.S. Supreme Court to regulate carbon 

8 pollution will help us to make the smoother 

9 transition to inherently cleaner and safer energy 

10 choices, state of the art energy efficiency 

11 improvements, combined heat and power, and well12 designed, property sited, appropriate renewable 

13 energy technologies. In turn, we will enhance 

14 our security, promote healthier lifestyles, and 

15 create thousands of good-paying green collar 

16 jobs.

17 This past Tuesday, May 22nd, I joined a 

18 student-organized protest of the Heartland 

19 Institute's 7th International Conference on 

20 Climate Change at the Hilton Chicago Hotel. We 

21 had better rename it the Heartland Institute's 

22 7th International Conference on Climate Denial 
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1 and Delay.

2 With an officer here in the windy city, 

3 the Heartland Institute's nice neutral-sounding 

4 name conceals its true mission as a climate 

5 denying and delaying front group think tank. We 

6 can no longer afford to deny the scientific 

7 consensus about human-induced climate disruption. 

8 About 97 percent of all climate scientists who 

9 published in peer-reviewed scientific 

10 publications accept that our activities are 

11 responsible for most of the global heating that 

12 has happened over the last 50 years or so. We 

13 can no longer afford to delay taking the urgent 

14 actions of finalizing, adopting, and implementing 

15 the U.S. EPA's historic carbon pollution standard 

16 for newer coal-fired power plants. Let's move 

17 forward to complete this process as soon as 

18 possible. This is real progress.

19 Thanks for giving me the opportunity to 

20 testify. So that concludes my remarks.

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. 

22 Any clarifying questions?
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1 MR. HUTSON: No.

2 MR. ANGELBECK: No.

3 MR. KOERBER: Mr. Simar, the names of the 

4 two reports that you cited?

5 MR. SIMAR: The first report was released 

6 in May of this year. It's Doubled Trouble and 

7 relates to the Midwest extreme weather. And the 

8 second report is Great Lakes National Parks in 

9 Peril. We released it last July.

10 MR. HUTSON: And you're going to provide 

11 copies of those or --

12 MR. SIMAR: We'll submit both to the 

13 docket for this rulemaking.

14 MR. HUTSON: Thank you.

15 MR. KOERBER: Thank you both. 

16 I'd like to call Alicia Klepfer and Carla 

17 Eisenberg.

18 Good morning. Please begin.

19 MS. KLEPFER: Hi, my name is Alicia 

20 Klepfer, and I would like to thank the EPA for 

21 holding this hearing and giving me the 

22 opportunity to testify in favor of the proposed 
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1 carbon standards for new coal plants.

2 I'm the Director of the University of 

3 Chicago Climate Action Network or UCCAN. Earlier 

4 this year our group gathered a panel of speakers 

5 to discuss solutions for climate change. Over 

6 100 students attended our event and gathered to 

7 listen as a politician, an economist, a solar 

8 energy company founder, and a Sierra Club 

9 organizer told the room that there are ways to 

10 combat the growing amounts of greenhouse gases in 

11 our atmosphere.

12 They all identified challenges in that 

13 fight, but the one common thread among all four 

14 speakers was that change is not only possible, 

15 but it is definitely possible with government 

16 regulation to stand behind our determination.

17 Currently there are no regulations or 

18 limits on how much carbon can be released into 

19 the air from coal plants. There are no 

20 regulations, even though carbon is proven to be 

21 one of the leading factors of climate change.

22 I tried to explain that to one of my 
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1 third-graders that I tutor here in Chicago. To 

2 explain that to a nine year old I had to tell him 

3 that the -- to make electricity the power plants 

4 need to burn fossil fuels, but there aren't any 

5 restrictions on how much smoke or other things 

6 are released into the air even though we have the 

7 technology to prevent it.

8 Simplified and (unintelligible) 

9 propaganda from greedy energy companies, this 

10 system of profit without respect for 

11 externalities is illogical and irresponsible.

12 Coal plant pollution is unnecessary and 

13 should be prevented with green technology and 

14 energy replacements. Without carbon standards we 

15 prove ourselves to be basically short-sighted and 

16 kind of ignorant. If we can't see the carbon and 

17 it doesn't cost us any money, why worry about it?

18 But temperature fluctuations and ocean 

19 acidification prove that carbon pollution is a 

20 very real and very harmful phenomenon. Even 

21 within the City of Chicago carbon is also proving 

22 to be more than a climate issue. As I'm sure you 
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1 have heard from everybody else, carbon pollution 

2 makes many other types of air pollution more 

3 harmful and more severe, such as mercury and 

4 soot.

5 But as a student in Chicago -- I actually 

6 grew up in Colorado, and I never had to worry 

7 about dirty air. I grew up with clear skies and 

8 snowy mountain peaks, and I just got to run 

9 outside all the time. And I came to school in 

10 Chicago, and I ended up with chronic sinus 

11 infections from the pollution in the air because 

12 I was allergic to it.

13 I will be 20 in July, which means that I 

14 hopefully have, you know, another 70 or 80 years 

15 to live on this planet. And I must admit as a 

16 University of Chicago student, I am a fan of 

17 science fiction and fantasy. So, a world with a 

18 dead ocean, and rising sea levels, and blistering 

19 summers, and freezing winters sounds like some 

20 sort of story plot that I would like to read, but 

21 when I think about doing that to my planet, it 

22 makes me kind of sick. And I hope that with the 
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1 EPA's help we don't have to do that to our 

2 planet.

3 Thank you.

4 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

5 MS. EISENBERG: My name is Carla

6 Eisenberg. I live in Hanover Park about 30 miles 

7 west of here.

8 I appreciate the opportunity to be here 

9 today to support the proposed standard to limit 

10 carbon emissions and reduce carbon pollution 

11 created by new power plants.

12 I attended the EPA hearing last year 

13 related to limiting emissions of mercury, acid 

14 gases, and toxic metals. And both times my 

15 understanding has been that control technologies 

16 are readily available to meet and exceed the 

17 proposed standards.

18 I find it unsettling that public support 

19 must be demonstrated for such a fundamental need 

20 as the right to breathe clean air. I find myself 

21 asking who among us would argue against the need 

22 to protect human health and our environment. Who 
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1 doesn't want to breathe cleaner air or eat fish 

2 without having to worry about contamination? Who 

3 exactly is opposed to protecting the health of 

4 pregnant women, infants, and the elderly who are 

5 at greater risk to all forms of pollution? Who 

6 doesn't want to protect the planet?

7 The answer is both obvious and 

8 disturbing. Industry interests cannot be trusted 

9 to regulate themselves. We need the EPA to 

10 approve strong regulatory standards. We need the 

11 EPA to have the power to enforce those standards 

12 by imposing significant penalties. And so, I 

13 come here today with my fellow citizens to 

14 empower you to act on our behalf.

15 Pollution is a form of poisoning. When 

16 we know the problem and we know the solution, 

17 acting to protect the health of our citizens and 

18 our natural environment is the only defensible 

19 position. Anything less is immoral.

20 That is why I urge you to pass these 

21 proposed standards which are necessary, modest, 

22 and overdue.
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1 I would like to leave you with this final 

2 thought based on a saying by the Cree Indians. 

3 Perhaps only when the last tree has died and the 

4 last river has been poisoned and the last fish 

5 has been caught will we realize we cannot 

6 breathe, drink, or eat money.

7 Thank you for taking this positive step 

8 to protect the environment.

9 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. 

10 Any questions?

11 MR. HUTSON: No.

12 MR. ANGELBECK: No.

13 MR. KOERBER: Thank you both.

14 Okay. I'd like to call Meleah Geertsma. 

15 My apologies for any mispronunciation.

16 MS. GEERTSMA: That was actually correct.

17 MR. KOERBER: Ready when you are.

18 MS. GEERTSMA: Good morning. And thank 

19 you for the opportunity to comment on behalf of 

20 the Natural Resources Defense Council and our 1.3 

21 million members and activists.

22 My name is Meleah Geertsma, and I am an 
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1 attorney with NRDC's Midwest program. NRDC 

2 supports the EPA's proposed carbon pollution 

3 standard for new electric power plants, the first 

4 national limits on carbon dioxide from this top 

5 emitting sector.

6 Controlling carbon pollution from power 

7 plants is critical to addressing climate change 

8 and its impacts on health, including here in the 

9 Midwest. Climate change is having and will 

10 continue to have serious impacts on the Midwest. 

11 At the most basic level climate change will 

12 increase temperatures, especially in urban areas 

13 which act as heat sinks. Last summer saw 

14 brutally hot temperatures throughout the nation 

15 with Chicago and many cities at or exceeding 

16 record temperatures on multiple days. This year 

17 is off to a record-smashing start as well with 

18 March logging as the hottest March since 

19 recordkeeping began back in 1885.

20 As Chicagoans know all too well, these 

21 extreme heat days don't just cause temporary 

22 discomfort but can kill people, especially the 
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1 elderly and young children who are especially 

2 susceptible to heat stress.

3 NRDC this week released a report called 

4 Killer Summer Heat based on peer-review published 

5 studies, which estimates the growth in health6 related deaths due to excessive heat caused by 

7 climate change in the nation's 40 largest cities. 

8 The report shows that the Midwest in particular 

9 is vulnerable to increases in heat. By the end 

10 of this century numerous cities throughout the 

11 Midwest and in neighboring states will see 

12 thousands and thousands of additional heat13 related deaths due to climate change.

14 Indeed, Louisville, Detroit, and 

15 Cleveland top the list at approximately 19,000, 

16 18,000, and 17,000 additional deaths, 

17 respectively. Chicago comes in at about 6,400 

18 additional deaths. Other Midwest cities topping 

19 the national list are Columbus, Minneapolis, and 

20 St. Louis. All told, the region is set to lose 

21 approximately 75,000 lives from excessive heat 

22 alone, about half of the nationwide total 
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1 described in our report. And it will get worse 

2 if we don't take action now to set limits on 

3 carbon pollution.

4 In addition, as my colleague Tom Simar 

5 discussed earlier this morning, extreme storms 

6 and other weather events will pummel the Midwest 

7 as a result of climate change, resulting in 

8 billions of dollars in damage to infrastructure 

9 in homes as well as public health costs.

10 For these reasons, it is imperative that 

11 EPA move swiftly to finalize its standards for CO2

12 from power plants. Power plants together produce 

13 more than 2.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide each 

14 year. This is about 40 percent of the country's 

15 total CO2 emissions and more than a third of all 

16 greenhouse gas emissions. As EPA determined 

17 after reviewing mountains of scientific data and 

18 analysis, greenhouse gases endanger the public 

19 health and welfare. EPA, therefore, has a duty 

20 to control greenhouse gases from power plants 

21 under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act. And NRDC 

22 supports the agency's efforts to date.
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1 In particular, we support the following 

2 aspects of EPA's proposed standard: establishing 

3 a single category consisting of both natural gas 

4 fired combined cycle generating units and coal5 fired steam generating units. These units 

6 perform the same function of the base load and 

7 the intermediate load power generation and so are 

8 properly considered together.

9 EPA has asked for comment on the 

10 treatment of simple cycle gas turbines, and we 

11 will address this issue further in our written 

12 comments.

13 We also support setting the standard no 

14 higher than 1,000 pounds per megawatt hour. 

15 Indeed, we believe the standard should be set 

16 below 1,000 pounds for several reasons. First, 

17 modern, new natural gas combined cycle plants can 

18 meet a tighter level at no additional. Second, 

19 new coal-fired power plants employing carbon 

20 capture and storage technology can also meet a 

21 tighter level especially in light of the 30-year 

22 averaging provisions that EPA has proposed.
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1 We note that several plants recently 

2 proposed in Illinois and Indiana as carbon 

3 capture and storage projects showed that this 

4 control option is feasible now and will only 

5 become more so in the upcoming years.

6 It is also important to note that 

7 contrary to claims by companies and groups 

8 opposing EPA's action the standard will not act 

9 as a de facto ban on constructing new 

10 conventional coal plants or result in job losses 

11 and higher utility bills. Rather, as EPA has 

12 demonstrated, the proposed new standard actually 

13 will impose no additional costs on the industry 

14 or on electric rate payers and will have no 

15 adverse impacts on jobs.

16 This is because, as numerous power sector 

17 experts have recognized, market realities have 

18 already driven decisions on new power plants away 

19 from coal. In the State of Michigan this shift 

20 can be seen in the cancelation in December 2011 

21 of a conventional coal plant proposal by 

22 Consumers Energy. The company has noted in the 
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1 press that its choice is influenced by low 

2 natural gas prices, and it intends to build two 

3 new wind farms to help serve future demand.

4 MR. KOERBER: We need you to finish up.

5 MS. GEERTSMA: Sure.

6 American Municipal Power similarly 

7 canceled a plan to build a conventional coal 

8 plant in Ohio in November 2009, citing primarily 

9 the skyrocketing cost of construction that made 

10 the plant uneconomical in light of less expensive 

11 alternatives such as natural gas and wind power.

12 Thank you for the opportunity to speak 

13 this morning.

14 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Any clarifying 

15 questions?

16 [No response.]

17 MR. KOERBER: The report that you 

18 referred to, is that the May 2012 report that --

19 MS. GEERTSMA: Yes.

20 MR. KOERBER: -- that Tom Simar mentioned 

21 earlier?

22 MS. GEERTSMA: Yes, and as he stated, 
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1 we'll be submitting it in the record.

2 MR. KOERBER: Okay.

3 MS. GEERTSMA: And I'm going to give you 

4 a written copy of my remarks as well.

5 MR. KOERBER: You can leave it with the 

6 registration table. They're the official 

7 keepers. Thank you so much.

8 MS. GEERTSMA: Thank you.

9 MR. KOERBER: I'd like to call Don Ferber 

10 and Judy Skog.

11 MR. KOERBER: Okay. We're going to give 

12 this to the official record keeper.

13 Would you like to begin?

14 MR. FERBER: Okay. (Unintelligible) had 

15 a chance to go through my notes again.

16 MS. SKOG: Oh, I'll do it then.

17 MR. KOERBER: Okay.

18 MR. FERBER: Well, no, that's fine. I'd 

19 be listening to you, so I'll just go ahead.

20 Do you need to know where we're from and 

21 everything else? Name?

22 MR. KOERBER: Your name and affiliation, 
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1 please.

2 MR. FERBER: Right. Okay.

3 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

4 MR. FERBER: My name is Don Ferber. I'm 

5 here from Madison, Wisconsin. I am a volunteer, 

6 a long-time volunteer with the Sierra Club and 

7 head of our -- a volunteer head of our Wisconsin 

8 Beyond Coal Team because I had to form some of my 

9 -- I have to say it's more personal.

10 So I want to thank you for this 

11 opportunity to be here and testify about the 

12 clean air standards that you're proposing for new 

13 power plants.

14 In one sense I guess I'm surprised we 

15 even need to be here to debate this issue given 

16 what we know about the effects and other fossil 

17 fuels on human health, on the environment, and 

18 everything else. I mean, it really seems like it 

19 shouldn't be an issue. I mean, it's not like we 

20 don't know about all the toxins in fossil fuel 

21 and about climate change already is causing and 

22 for that matter will continue to further worsen 
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1 in the future. And I don't feel like there's 

2 really a question of what needs to be done here

3 to follow the EPA's mission which is protecting 

4 good health and the environment.

5 I don't know if it was some part maybe of 

6 my upbringing that I was brought up to not do 

7 violence to others, to be conscious of what I was 

8 doing, be mindful of what the effects were. For 

9 instance, my parents didn't buy me any guns to 

10 play with. It wasn't something that you should 

11 have as a toy just to pretend where you might be 

12 doing something that would harm other people. 

13 That really wasn't acceptable.

14 And in the society, you know, if somebody 

15 goes out there and uses a gun to willfully hurt 

16 other people, they're going to be charged with a 

17 crime, which makes me wonder, you know, because 

18 we know the effects of these fossil fuel plants. 

19 Those are harming other people. So, why is this 

20 acceptable that we can allow this harm to people 

21 and to the environment?

22 You know, it's one thing if we're doing 
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1 something constructive. Obviously we do want to 

2 produce the power. We've got a demand for that, 

3 but why do we have to include or accept the gross 

4 amount of harm that's happening to other people 

5 and to the environment which is also going to 

6 contribute to the worsening problems for people.

7 Certainly the harm we're causing now is nothing 

8 compared to what's going to happen down the 

9 future in terms of what's predicted with climate 

10 change.

11 I've worked for years in Wisconsin to try 

12 to help us move beyond fossil fuels. I think we 

13 see there are better alternatives. There are 

14 ways we can do things with efficiency and clean 

15 energy that are available to us. We just have a 

16 very entrenched industry at this point in time 

17 with what's going on.

18 In Wisconsin we've known for years that 

19 it's -- there have been -- have to be cautious 

20 about eating fish from our lakes and rivers and 

21 so on because of the amount of mercury in their 

22 particular. It's a real problem. And we like to 
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1 attract people to Wisconsin to fish and enjoy the 

2 outdoor environment, but it already says 

3 something when we have all these toxins that are 

4 in the fish to an extent that we really have to 

5 be cautious about eating them.

6 We also have times when there are clean 

7 air advisories, particularly in the Madison and 

8 Milwaukee areas where the increased asthma and 

9 other pulmonary problems -- they show up in those 

10 times and people increasingly go to emergency 

11 rooms or just complain about problems that they 

12 can't go biking or whatever else, that they feel 

13 the difference. So it's definitely causing a lot 

14 of problems.

15 And in terms of climate change, also we 

16 have the Wisconsin Integrated Climate Change 

17 Institute there that has talked about the 

18 increasing rainfall events that we're having, 

19 especially over two inches of rainfall events and 

20 how dramatically that's increased and is likely 

21 to worsen.

22 We've certainly seen years where we've 
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1 had a lot of flooding that we just rarely have 

2 had historically in the past and a lot of things 

3 where they talk about 100-year floods, and yet 

4 they're coming a few years apart.

5 Wisconsin doesn't have any fossil fuels, 

6 so it realized, especially for us, that there are 

7 better ways to create jobs for the economy, not 

8 only there but elsewhere. And in most cases 

9 these jobs -- as in elsewhere -- would be local 

10 jobs. You know, there are industries. There is 

11 efficiency being buildings and other things up to 

12 better standards that can be done that will 

13 really help local economies more, and it's 

14 certainly a key thing on a lot of people's mind 

15 at this point in time.

16 So, I'm glad that the EPA has proposed a 

17 rule on new power plants, but I think it's really 

18 only a step in the right direction. I think 

19 there are some other things we need to do, given 

20 that we know the dangerous place we're at with CO2

21 and other emissions and that we need -- these 

22 standards were only a minor step in terms if we 
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1 want to get down to the 350 parts per million 

2 that's predicted that we need if we're going to 

3 control climate change or have any reasonable 

4 control over it.

5 I mean -- and I hear there's pushback on 

6 this, you know, about jobs and everything else. 

7 Well, first of all, you know, these things -- as 

8 studies have shown, especially by the Natural 

9 Resource and Defense Council, tend to create --

10 stimulate technology and innovation, and create 

11 jobs. There is very little job loss, if any. 

12 And that's not even taking in account the health 

13 care affects.

14 I mean, all the pushback on this reminds 

15 me of the complaints about automakers when they 

16 said, oh, these cars are going to cost way too 

17 much if we put on pollution controls or we put in 

18 safety belts, whatever else. Now they're putting 

19 in things that are commonplace, and they don't 

20 complain about the other things that the put in 

21 that, you know, aren't safety issues or health 

22 issues, and they just do that de facto. It's 
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1 just not a real problem.

2 So, I think there's no need to let 

3 industry also have higher limits as is proposed 

4 in this rule initially when they put in power 

5 plants. I think they should be put in that.

6 So, anyhow, the other things is currently 

7 we analyze toxins separately. I think that's a 

8 huge problem. We don't know the cumulative 

9 effects, and I think we need to be more cautious 

10 about that.

11 Also, they shouldn't only be limited to 

12 fossil fuels but waste and biomass put in 

13 considerable amounts of CO2 and other toxins as 

14 well. We need to be looking at limiting that.

15 And we need standards for current power 

16 plants. What we're going to do with the new ones 

17 is simple inadequate for what we need to do for 

18 the future. So, what I'm asking the EPA to do is 

19 create strong standards since the benefits, as 

20 you've shown and other studies have shown, 

21 considerably outweigh the costs by a large 

22 margin. And we don't want to have future 
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1 generations asking us, when you knew better, you 

2 know, about the problems that can be caused, why 

3 didn't you care enough about us to take effective 

4 measures.

5 Thank you.

6 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

7 MS. SKOG: Is this three minutes or five 

8 minutes?

9 MR. KOERBER: Five minutes.

10 MS. SKOG: Okay. Thank you, first of 

11 all. My name is Judy Skog. I drove down with 

12 Don this morning because this is really 

13 important. And I have two things that I'd like 

14 to address, the extreme weather events that have 

15 been happening in Wisconsin and pollution effects 

16 on health.

17 I have asthma. I can tell you that there 

18 is a yellow air quality day today here in 

19 Chicago, that there will be a yellow air quality 

20 day when I go home. Around Christmas a couple of 

21 years ago we had, I think, five days where there 

22 were four orange days and one red day, and I 
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1 could barely move. Now I didn't end up at the 

2 hospital or anything, but I had no energy because 

3 I just couldn't get enough oxygen. That's good 

4 enough on asthma. And my asthma is mile. I 

5 cannot imagine what it's like for people who have 

6 severe asthma.

7 I am a member of the Harmony Valley Farm 

8 CSA. Are you familiar with CSAs, Community

9 Supported Agriculture? It's a subscription thing 

10 with organic vegetable farmers. I get a weekly 

11 box of vegetables. And I've been a member for 15 

12 or 20 years in this particular farm.

13 Harmony Valley is a large organic farm in 

14 western Wisconsin that delivers hundreds of boxes 

15 to the Twin Cities and to the Madison area each 

16 week. In August of 2010 -- and I gave you 

17 pictures that the farmer took --

18 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

19 MS. SKOG: -- of the flooding. There's 

20 some pictures that show -- there's one picture 

21 that shows the fence during the flooding, and 

22 then there's a picture that shows the same scene 
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1 -- I don't know, a week or two later after the 

2 flooding had subsided.

3 In August of 2010 there was a three-inch 

4 downpour in two hours. Now this guy's got a big 

5 operation. It caused severe flooding, washed 

6 away -- now this is in a -- in the Coulee Region 

7 of Wisconsin where there's lots of valleys where 

8 the farming happens and then fairly steep 

9 hillsides. Severe flooding washed away a lot of 

10 his crop, fences, and equipment. I wasn't able 

11 to get hold of him to find out if he lost any 

12 livestock, but just almost as bad, he lost a huge 

13 amount of topsoil. He's been spending 20, 30 

14 years building this topsoil. He was devastated 

15 by the loss of the topsoil, almost as much as by 

16 the loss of the crop because now he's got to 

17 build it back up again.

18 In addition to that there were vegetables 

19 that he could not sell that did not wash away, 

20 but he couldn't sell them because nobody knew 

21 what was in the water that washed over his farm, 

22 didn't know if there were feces, or toxins, or 
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1 whatever. So there was a lot that he couldn't 

2 sell just because of that.

3 All in all he suffered somewhere around a 

4 million-dollar loss that year. And with crop 

5 insurance -- I couldn't get the numbers from him 

6 -- but I know from talking to him that it was 

7 pitiful what he would get from crop insurance. 

8 And that was hours, and hours, and hours, and 

9 hours of paperwork for him dickering and bashing 

10 the whoever over the head.

11 There's also a picture in there of a big 

12 huge stack of ramps. Now that's the big stuff. 

13 The small stuff is -- ramps are spring 

14 ephemerals. They're very tasty. They're kind of 

15 like garlicky onions. And everybody looks 

16 forward to ramps in the first box of the spring 

17 or maybe the second box.

18 Because of the week -- or was it two 

19 weeks -- of 80-degree temperatures that we had in 

20 March, which is totally crazy, the ramps came and 

21 went. And they were done two weeks before our 

22 first vegetable box May 1st. Now, normally there 
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1 are ramps in the boxes in May.

2 And then later this summer there will be 

3 approximately a 30 percent loss of strawberries, 

4 which is really making me sad. The strawberries 

5 flowered during that hot weather, just like the 

6 apple trees did, and because they were already in 

7 flower when the freezes came, which they did, and 

8 we had a number of days where there were freezing 

9 temperatures. They were SOL.

10 It is totally irresponsible of us to dump 

11 this much carbon into the atmosphere because it 

12 makes it much harder for farmers to conduct their 

13 business. They cannot know what the weather's 

14 going to do. It's not predictable anymore 

15 especially for vegetable farmers who plant a 

16 diversity of crops. I mean, if you put the corn 

17 in, you put the corn in and it grows or it 

18 doesn't grow. How can the farmers possibly know 

19 when to plant, what to plant, what the weather's 

20 going to be like with these wild and 

21 unpredictable swings from hot and cold, severe 

22 rain events, all of that.
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1 Oh, yes, and all of our lakes --

2 Madison's beautiful. We have -- we're on five 

3 lakes. Every single lake has a fish advisory 

4 because of mercury.

5 So, limiting carbon emissions from coal6 fired power plants will help me breathe better 

7 and carbon pollution limits will have a 

8 beneficial effect on the climate, which will help 

9 our farmers.

10 Thank you very much.

11 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Clarifying 

12 questions?

13 [No response.]

14 MR. KOERBER: Thank you both.

15 I'd like to call Howard Lee and Maria 

16 Torres.

17 MR. LEE: You want to go first?

18 MS. TORRES: Sure. Okay.

19 What I want to say is, you know, I grew 

20 up in Chicago Little Village --

21 MR. KOERBER: Could you give us your name 

22 for the record?
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1 MS. TORRES: Oh, I'm so sorry. My name 

2 is Maria Torres, and I'm with Pilsen Alliance. 

3 We're a community-based organization and 

4 (unintelligible).

5 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

6 MS. TORRES: And what I wanted to say is, 

7 you know, I grew up in Chicago Little Village 

8 neighborhood, and now I work in the Pilsen 

9 community. And both neighborhoods live in the 

10 shadow of coal power plants that thankfully will 

11 soon be closing down.

12 I am very proud to have helped fight --

13 you know, these plants, we should have -- you 

14 know, should have been closed a long time ago. 

15 You know, they are the two biggest emitters of 

16 greenhouse gases in the State of Illinois. 

17 Doctors, nurses, scientists, and other experts 

18 say that carbon pollution is dangerous for 

19 children because climate changes, rising 

20 temperature, is likely to make small pollution 

21 worse which will trigger the asthma attacks and 

22 cause permanent damage and reduce the function of 
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1 children's lungs.

2 Children and seniors are particularly 

3 susceptible to the dangers of air pollution. 

4 EPA's new carbon pollution standards for power 

5 plants will help protect our children and 

6 families and public health from dangerous air 

7 pollutions by limiting the health-harming effects 

8 of climate change and smog that triggers these 

9 asthma attacks and other health consequences.

10 You know, I have seen these things first 

11 hand in my community. The Fisk and Crawford coal 

12 plants here did significant damage to the health 

13 of our friends and neighbors. Like many high 

14 green-gas polluting facilities, these relics of 

15 the past also spit it out in an era of other 

16 dangerous pollutants that have taken a 

17 disproportionate toll on communities of color.

18 The EPA's carbon pollution standards for 

19 newer power plants is an important first step in 

20 making sure that the health problems we have 

21 lived in Little Village and Pilsen are not 

22 visited on others in the future. And they are a 
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1 way -- these are ways to limit some of the 

2 ongoing legacies of these plants in the form of 

3 respiratory diseases in my neighbors and in my 

4 neighborhood.

5 MR. KOERBER: Thank you very much.

6 Mr. Lee?

7 MR. LEE: Good. Thank you. Good 

8 morning. My name is Howard Lee. I am the owner 

9 of Wirehead Technology here in Chicago, Illinois. 

10 I'd like to thank you for having the hearing 

11 today.

12 My small business was founded in 2005. 

13 We are energy saving -- we provide energy-saving 

14 computers for mobile marketing and additional 

15 service to help small and local business 

16 stabilize their IT function so they can save 

17 money and grow.

18 By directing clients to the right kind of 

19 products, we're helping them reduce their carbon 

20 footprint. That means a reduction in their 

21 business cost. Many people don't realize that 

22 the cooling equipment is a colossal energy drain, 
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1 and, therefore, it comes with a high price.

2 When businesses start using more energy 

3 efficient equipment, it reduces their energy 

4 costs. And I can't emphasize enough the 

5 importance to pursue energy efficient technology 

6 because it's cost efficient for all business. 

7 That's why supporting the environment, 

8 protecting the standards to limit carbon 

9 emissions for power plants would have a positive 

10 effect on my business and many others. It would 

11 do a great deal to raise the awareness of the 

12 kind of technology we're promoting at Wirehead.

13 We're driving more companies to seek our 

14 service, and looking for optimum boosting on the 

15 bottom line. Small businesses like mine -- all 

16 small businesses for that matter, regardless of 

17 what industry, have the potential to turn the 

18 economy around; but we need smart policies to 

19 facilitate that process. Implementing the 

20 stronger carbon pollution standard under the 

21 Clean Air Act can help.

22 I recently saw two surveys from Small 
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1 Business Majority that illustrates entrepreneurs 

2 across the country like me are looking for 

3 innovative policies to usher us into a modern 

4 economy that's not -- that's more efficient but 

5 also more competitive.

6 The organization's most recent clean 

7 energy poll released last month found that a vast 

8 majority of small businesses, 71 percent, believe 

9 government investment in clean energy plays an 

10 important role in creating jobs now and boosting 

11 the economy.

12 In the same Small Business Majority 

13 survey which was conducted in Colorado, Michigan, 

14 Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the 

15 organization also found respondents about 

16 specific proposals by the EPA to limit carbon 

17 emissions from new power plants. The result they 

18 found powerful and enduring support that this 

19 ruling apply to most amongst small businesses.

20 The poll revealed that 76 percent of 

21 entrepreneurs in those states, which is more than 

22 three-quarters, are in favor of the EPA 
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1 determining federal limits on power plant 

2 emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon 

3 dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, which is 

4 exactly what carbon pollution standards proposed 

5 by the EPA would do. The support from these 

6 entrepreneurs were so steadfast that 56 percent, 

7 the majority of them, said they would still back 

8 this rule even if it meant a possible increase in 

9 their utility rates. 

10 In addition, Small Business Majority 

11 asked these owners whether they believed that 

12 EPA's regulations of carbon pollution and other 

13 emissions would impact their business in some 

14 degree. And 57 percent said it would. This 

15 truly highlights how significant the standards 

16 would be for small business sectors.

17 Another poll Small Business Majority 

18 conducted last summer showed similar results. 

19 That survey asked more than 1,000 business owners 

20 nationally how they would view EPA standards 

21 under the Clean Air Act that would curb carbon 

22 emissions from power plants and other emitters.
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1 The results were identical to the more 

2 recent polls. Seventy-six percent supported the 

3 standard, and a striking 43 percent strongly 

4 supported it. And as they did in the six-state 

5 poll, more than half of the respondents said that 

6 their own business would be impacted by the EPA 

7 regulations carbon emission with 6 in 10 saying 

8 that it would impact their business in a good 

9 way.

10 The carbon pollution standards for new 

11 power plants will help the United States become 

12 a more competitive and global economy, but more 

13 importantly will have a positive impact at the 

14 local level because small business owners right 

15 here at home will become more aware of the 

16 benefits of energy efficiency. This will mean 

17 new projects, opportunity for businesses like 

18 mine, and our new clients to save money for 

19 themselves.

20 Altogether our increased income will be 

21 used to reinvest in our business, create and 

22 maintain jobs, and contribute to the economic 
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1 growth. So I support the EPA proposed carbon 

2 pollution standard because it's good for small 

3 business, and it's good for the economy.

4 Thank you.

5 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. Clarifying 

6 questions?

7 MR. HUTSON: I just didn't catch the name 

8 of your business.

9 MR. LEE: Wirehead Technology.

10 MR. HUTSON: Wirehead?

11 MR. LEE: Yes.

12 MR. KOERBER: Wirehead.

13 Thank you both.

14 MR. LEE: Yes, thank you.

15 MR. KOERBER: I'd like to call --

16 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Excuse me, 

17 gentlemen. I was wondering if I could turn in my 

18 testimony?

19 MR. KOERBER: Yes, the young lady there 

20 will take it.

21 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I want to hold 

22 onto it.
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1 MR. KOERBER: Can you make copies for 

2 him?

3 UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'll make a copy.

4 MR. KOERBER: Okay. Thank you for 

5 helping him.

6 I would like to call Roberto Carmono and 

7 Leanne Castin.

8 Good morning.

9 MS. CASTIN: Good morning.

10 MR. KOERBER: Have you been running?

11 MS. CASTIN: Running like crazy. They 

12 wouldn't take my credit card, and I couldn't park 

13 because of the credit card because three credit 

14 cards didn't work.

15 MR. KOERBER: Would you like a minute to 

16 catch your breath and have Mr. Carmono go first?

17 MS. CASTIN: No, he can go first so that 

18 I can --

19 MR. KOERBER: Relax a little. Okay. 

20 Very good. Make yourself comfortable. Mr. 

21 Carmono?

22 MS. CASTIN: Thank you.
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1 MR. CARMONO: Good morning. My name is 

2 Roberto Carmono, President and CEO of the Crimson 

3 Leadership Group and a board member of Voces 

4 Verdes, a coalition of Hispanic businesses and 

5 community leaders who support clean energy and 

6 healthy communities. Thank you for your time 

7 today.

8 On behalf of our coalition I'm here to 

9 express support for this critical EPA rule. This 

10 standard is an essential step towards spurring 

11 innovation, investment in low and non-carbon 

12 technologies, new energy infrastructure, and 

13 energy efficiency.

14 As an Hispanic businessman and advisor to 

15 numerous businesses, I understand the importance 

16 of spurring new technologies and the beneficial 

17 effects these have on our businesses and our 

18 communities. The new standard will encourage a 

19 market-based transition to clean energy economy, 

20 which will boost investment and create jobs all 

21 across the country.

22 In my work I interact with numerous 
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1 businesses and various fields in energy 

2 construction management in retail businesses. I 

3 understand firsthand that good business planning 

4 requires clear directions. These regulations 

5 provide that. I said in a clear direction that 

6 includes limits on carbon pollution would help 

7 resolve the uncertainty that is constraining the 

8 major investments that companies might consider. 

9 With clear predictability businesses can better 

10 invest in our future.

11 EPA's proposed standard give businesses 

12 the assurance they need in order to invest in our 

13 country's future. Many of my clients are seeking 

14 to invest in clean energy. They recognize that 

15 if we intend to grow the economy, we all need to 

16 use the tools at our disposal to encourage 

17 transition to a clean energy economy. We also 

18 need the motivation, and this proposed standard 

19 provides this.

20 For my clients, many of those who are 

21 like me, self-made Latino entrepreneurs, doing 

22 the right thing for our business should go hand 
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1 in hand with doing the right thing for our 

2 community. We know that the carbon pollution is 

3 considered by experts to be a major public health 

4 threat with the power to impose staggering health 

5 costs on the economy and business owners. This 

6 nation needs to invest in clean energy 

7 technologies that will create jobs, strengthen 

8 the economy, and lead to clean air.

9 The American people count on EPA to 

10 protect them from carbon and other forms of air 

11 pollution. Hispanic support for EPA is even 

12 stronger than among the general public, 

13 recognizing the need for these standards even 

14 where added costs may be involved. This support 

15 is strong among small business owners with 79 

16 percent of small business owners supporting 

17 ensuring clean air and water and 61 percent 

18 supporting moving the country towards energy 

19 efficiency and clean energy.

20 In conclusion, our members at Voces 

21 Verdes, my colleagues at the Illinois Hispanic 

22 Chamber of Commerce, and leaders nationwide agree 
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1 EPA must support these strong protective policies 

2 for our families, our businesses, and our 

3 communities. We urge EPA to adopt these rules.

4 Thank you.

5 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. 

6 MS. CASTIN: My name is Leanne Castin. I 

7 live in Evanston, Illinois. Do you want to know 

8 the organizations I belong to?

9 MR. KOERBER: Or who you're representing 

10 today.

11 MS. CASTIN: About 50 of them.

12 MR. KOERBER: Oh, okay.

13 MS. CASTIN: That's an exaggeration. I'm 

14 representing CAPOW, capow, Citizens Act to 

15 Protect Our Water. I'm representing the Sierra 

16 Club, and I'm representing NEIS, Nuclear Energy 

17 Information Service. Okay?

18 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

19 MS. CASTIN: That's not 100, but -- and 

20 I'm here to testify about the issues surrounding 

21 coal-fired plants and their carbon emissions.

22 There is not one of you here who is not 
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1 aware of the consequences to human health and the 

2 environment because of excess carbon in the 

3 atmosphere. You would not be sitting where you 

4 are were you not listening to the citizens like 

5 me if you are not qualified to fully understand 

6 the issues. You really know.

7 So I'm not going to discuss the health 

8 effects of our environmental problems. I'm going 

9 to discuss the politics and the kind of climate 

10 where this hearing is even necessary.

11 Years ago, after deep citizen anger EPA 

12 was commissioned to do a thorough analysis of the 

13 deadly chemical Dioxin, the contaminant in Agent 

14 Orange. They did the study, and it was damning. 

15 All the scientific information capable of causing 

16 serious legal headaches for those chemical 

17 companies like Dow and Monsanto that made Agent 

18 Orange during the Vietnam war. I have those 

19 studies. 

20 Under corporate and government pressure 

21 EPA never published those findings. This, 

22 despite a second round of equally exacting 
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1 studies, EPA buckled then. The companies were 

2 protected.

3 Now, some 40 years later, things are 

4 worse. I have not seen so much cruel contention 

5 and ugliness around environmental issues as I do 

6 now. I see the development of a value system 

7 where, today more than ever, profits are being 

8 put ahead of human health, the health of our 

9 future children, and the health of this very 

10 precious planet. And that includes my own very 

11 special grandchildren.

12 I see a callous indifference to life. 

13 False science created to promote what is 

14 indefensible and a total disregard of that which 

15 created EPA in the first place. I see 

16 corruption.

17 So, and simply instead of doing things 

18 that are right, just, and logical, EPA must hold 

19 these hearings to bolster what is completely 

20 within your power to act. 

21 So I urge you all to do what is right. 

22 Protect the health of our citizens and the health 
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1 of our planet. You are all probably under some 

2 pressure. Hold fast and help create a world 

3 where we may all be able to breathe clean air and 

4 drink our water unpolluted by emissions with 

5 safety and a sense of security. It's that 

6 simple.

7 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

8 MS. CASTIN: Thank you. Now if you want 

9 this, I'll be glad to give it to you.

10 MR. KOERBER: Give it to the young lady 

11 here so put it into the record.

12 MS. CASTIN: Okay.

13 MR. KOERBER: Go on recess?

14 UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

15 MR. KOERBER: Okay. The time is 11:16, 

16 and we will be on recess until we have more 

17 speakers. And we will officially break for lunch 

18 at noon. So if we have no speakers between now 

19 and noon, then we'll be on lunch break from noon 

20 to 1:00, and then start up promptly at 1:00 

21 o'clock.

22 Thank you all. Thank you for being here 
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1 today.

2 [Break from 11:16 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.]

3 MR. KOERBER: Well, good afternoon. 

4 Thank you for attending this public hearing.

5 My name is Mike Koerber, and I am the 

6 Associate Director for Policy in EPA's Office of 

7 Air Quality Planning and Standards. I will be 

8 chairing today's hearing.

9 Joining me on the panel are Nick Hutson 

10 with EPA's Sector Policies and Programs Division 

11 in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and 

12 Alexis Cain with EPA'a Region 5 Office.

13 We are here today to listen to your 

14 comments on EPA's Proposed Carbon Pollution 

15 Standard for New Power Plants. EPA published the 

16 proposed standard in the Federal Register on 

17 April 13th. This common sense step under the 

18 Clean Air Act would for the first time set 

19 national limits on the amount of carbon pollution 

20 power plants built in the future can emit.

21 For future power plants EPA is proposing 

22 to set an output-based standard of 1,000 pounds 
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1 of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour. The 

2 Agency's proposal does not apply to existing 

3 units or to planned units that have already 

4 received permits and break ground within the next 

5 12 months. EPA's proposed standard reflects the 

6 ongoing trend in the power sector to build 

7 cleaner plants that take advantage of American8 made technologies.

9 The proposal is flexible and would help 

10 minimize carbon pollution through the deployment 

11 of the same type of modern technologies that 

12 power companies are already using to build the 

13 next generation of power plants. 

14 EPA's proposal would ensure that this 

15 progress toward a cleaner, safer, and more modern 

16 power sector continues.

17 Today we will be accepting oral comments 

18 on all aspects of our proposal, and we will 

19 prepare a written transcript of the hearing. The 

20 transcript will be available as part of the 

21 official record for this rule. We are also 

22 accepting written comments on the proposed rule 
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1 until June 25th.

2 At the registration area, which is 

3 located in the hallway outside of this room, 

4 there are handouts with detailed information for 

5 submitting written comments by mail, fax, or 

6 electronically. EPA will consider your comments 

7 as we move forward to complete a final rule.

8 Let me describe the procedures for 

9 today's hearings. I will call the scheduled 

10 speakers to the table in pairs. When it is your 

11 turn to speak, please state your name and 

12 affiliation before you begin your testimony. It 

13 would help our court reporter if you also spelled 

14 your name.

15 To be fair to everyone, please limit your 

16 testimony to five minutes each and remain at the 

17 table until both speakers in a pair have 

18 finished. After you finish your testimony, 

19 members of the panel may ask clarifying 

20 questions. If, in addition to the transcript of 

21 your testimony, you would also like us to put the 

22 full text of your written comments into the 
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1 docket, please be sure to give a copy of any 

2 written comments to our staff at the registration 

3 table.

4 We have a time-keeping system consisting 

5 of green, yellow, and red lights to help you 

6 track your five minutes to speak. Right here. 

7 When you begin speaking, the green light will 

8 come on. The yellow light will signal that you 

9 have one minute left to speak. When the red 

10 light comes on, five minutes has passed, and I'll 

11 ask you to please complete your testimony.

12 Today's hearing is scheduled from 8:30 

13 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. So we will be in this room 

14 until 4:30 today.

15 If you would like to testify but have not 

16 yet registered to do so, please sign up at the 

17 registration table in the hallway outside of this 

18 room. For those who have already registered to 

19 speak, we have tried to accommodate your request 

20 for specific time slots. We ask for your 

21 patience as we proceed through the list of 

22 speakers. We may need to make some adjustments 
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1 as the day progresses. If any questions arise, 

2 please see a staff member at the registration 

3 table for assistance.

4 Thank you again for participating. And 

5 let's get started. Our first two speakers will 

6 be Pat Walter and Andy Andre.

7 MS. WALTER: And where was this green 

8 light then?

9 MR. KOERBER: It will be showing it right 

10 here. You can start whenever you're ready.

11 MS. WALTER: Okay. Thank you very much 

12 for being here in the City of Chicago and holding 

13 this hearing on the proposed rule for the carbon 

14 emissions. I fully support it and I agree with 

15 the testimony I heard earlier this morning about 

16 the importance of having this regulation 

17 established.

18 MR. KOERBER: Excuse me. Your name for 

19 the record?

20 MS. WALTER: Oh, I'm sorry. My name is 

21 Patricia Walter, W-A-L-T-E-R.

22 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.
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1 MS. WALTER: Thank you. Sorry.

2 As your name says, you are here as part 

3 of our wonderful government to protect our 

4 nation. And you folks, specifically, are a part 

5 of the vital process.

6 I am here to represent myself and others 

7 like me who need these regulations. I am a 

8 three-time breast cancer survivor. I know very 

9 well how vital and important our time is here and 

10 on the planet. I was first diagnosed in 1994 and 

11 most recently in 2007. I have tried to live as -

12 - with many health habits as I can. I don't 

13 smoke. I don't drink. I've never used drugs. 

14 I've did what I thought was right and I still got 

15 breast cancer anyway.

16 I've worked for the Social Security 

17 Administration for over 40 years. I know what 

18 regulations are, and I actually read them and 

19 could understand most of it.

20 I have two sisters who have never had any 

21 type of cancer. According to the American Lung 

22 Association website, Cook County is a grade F for 
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1 the air. My sisters live in -- one lives in 

2 Albuquerque, which is a grade B, and the other 

3 one lives in Pittsburgh, which is a grade D. I 

4 thought it was interesting that Pittsburgh was 

5 better than Chicago.

6 I'm not trying to say that air pollution 

7 caused or was any part of causing my cancer, but 

8 part of the problem right now -- and that's the 

9 good news is that I'm doing fine. But the 

10 current fact that is known is that there are 

11 currently, according to the National Cancer 

12 Institute, 2.6 million cancer survivors. That's 

13 a good number, and it's a nice large number, and 

14 we want it to grow -- on the good news.

15 On the other side there's always going to 

16 be side effects from these treatments. Breast 

17 cancer is known to go to four favorite places if 

18 you want to call it that: the brain, the bones, 

19 the lungs, and the liver. And I used to do 

20 presentations on breast cancer.

21 I am concerned about the air. I'm more 

22 sensitive to the air, any environmental problems 
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1 such as air pollution. As we get more survivors, 

2 there's going to be more of us. I'm sure 

3 everybody here has probably either known or is 

4 well acquainted or even not related to somebody 

5 who has had breast cancer.

6 So, I see this as an important part of 

7 the ways that your agency can continue to protect 

8 our nation. I think that I want to continue 

9 being healthy. To be honest, one of the things 

10 that I just added was that I was scared during my 

11 treatment. I had chemotherapy for six months. 

12 Losing my hair was very scary. But I tell you, 

13 one of the most scary times was when the 

14 treatment ended because then you're just --

15 you're kind of out there, and you just know it.

16 And I am concerned about my air. I am 

17 concerned about my water. I am concerned about 

18 what I eat, but I can do something about what I 

19 eat and drink. I can't do anything about my air. 

20 I walk outside. I can't live in my basement. I 

21 can't live in a cave. We need you.

22 I know this is going to have limited 
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1 impact, but it's a start; and you have to have a 

2 start. And I very strongly hope that you will 

3 establish future regulations for plants that are 

4 currently operating. From what I understand, 

5 this is only going to have any impact upon future 

6 ones to be built and probably not any one that's 

7 going on right now, but I sometimes feel like I 

8 am responsible with my car, and yet I'm following 

9 a truck down the road that is spewing forth all 

10 these gallons of stuff. There are too many 

11 trucks out there that don't pay attention.

12 So, thank you very much.

13 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

14 Mr. Andre?

15 MR. ANDRE: I am Andy Andre. That's A-N16 D-R-E. And I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I 

17 am here strictly on behalf of myself, although in 

18 some way perhaps on behalf of everybody who is 

19 still lucky to be breathing.

20 So I do, however, want to thank Sierra 

21 Club for providing a transportation for me 

22 because in all honesty, having been unemployed 
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1 for quite a few years, a 50, $60 cost in just gas 

2 and parking alone would have been prohibitive in 

3 coming down here to testify. And as much as I 

4 appreciate that you guys have the, you know, 

5 option to testify in two or three cities, it's 

6 too bad that more people can't come in and speak 

7 up. 

8 But that aside, I really want to thank 

9 you for existing or for taking these, you know, 

10 hearings rather than just listening to the people 

11 on the top who keep screaming against you. And 

12 I'll bitch and moan, I guess, that the government 

13 controlling this and that and everything else. 

14 Okay?

15 I don't want to bore you with the things 

16 that you know way the heck better than I do in 

17 terms of, you know, that we have to obviously 

18 control the pollution of every aspect of our life 

19 because if we don't, we're in deep trouble. 

20 Okay? 

21 I don't believe in the people that 

22 obviously think that the earth is still flat and 
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1 that what we do here doesn't affect us over 

2 there. Okay? And whether Milwaukee or Chicago 

3 or for that matter, any other city, you know, in 

4 the states or in the world is better or worse 

5 than the other, we're all eventually going to eat 

6 it, or breathe it, or drink it, or whatever. 

7 Okay?

8 As the lady said here, you know, we have 

9 to depend on you guys to control things that we, 

10 ourselves, can't control. Okay?

11 And I'm thinking back over the days when 

12 we just started controlling exhaust from the 

13 cars. You know, and I'm one of those that used 

14 to have a big gas guzzler that, you know, the 

15 only thing that mattered was how many horsepower 

16 are you going to put out of it. And God knows 

17 what the heck the thing spewed behind. And I'm 

18 reminded of that every time I see a, you know, 

19 car show nowadays with the cars from the '60's 

20 and '70's being on display. And every time they 

21 start it, you know, it's a coughing fit that we 

22 have as opposing to the newer cars that you can 
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1 sit behind and you can hardly tell that they're 

2 running.

3 So -- and I also remember days when those 

4 controls came about or were proposed. 

5 Everybody's screaming, oh, we're going to lose 

6 the jobs and we're all going to be starving to 

7 death because all the jobs are going to be gone 

8 because they won't be able to afford to make the 

9 cars that burn cleanly.

10 Guess what. Burning the cars cleanly not 

11 only made them better and cleaner air, which was, 

12 of course, what the whole thing was all about, 

13 but it also made them more efficient because the 

14 biggest problem with any combustion is the fact 

15 that a lot of unburned fuel gets dumped out in 

16 the air.

17 Look at a truck every once in a while 

18 that steps on the gas, and there's this smoke 

19 billowing out of it. Most of it is unburned 

20 fuel. If we burned it better, we wouldn't 

21 pollute as much, and we'd getter a better fuel 

22 efficiency.
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1 So, that's kind of what's going to 

2 happen, I am pretty sure, with this proposal as 

3 well. I wish you went further and that it was 

4 tighter, but I understand, as a mechanical

5 engineer myself, that you can't jump before you 

6 learn how to walk -- you know, crawl, and walk, 

7 and run, and all the other things first. Okay.

8 So, by all means, you know, you have my 

9 hundred percent support, not only to push this, 

10 but even much more stricter regulations. Will 

11 they be painful at first? Yes, they will be. 

12 But in the long term I think we're all going to 

13 benefit, including the people that are screaming 

14 against them. 

15 So, again, I want to thank you so very 

16 much for giving us this opportunity and, by God, 

17 keep pushing for it because we depend on you. 

18 Thank you.

19 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. Any 

20 questions?

21 MR. HUTSON: Well, just as a comment. 

22 You said that, you know, you had the opportunity 
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1 to come here to testify and you wish others had 

2 the opportunity. One thing I hope everyone knows 

3 is that everyone has the ability to submit 

4 written comments.

5 MR. ANDRE: Right.

6 MR. HUTSON: And we take those written 

7 comments, as we do oral comments, very seriously. 

8 And so, you know, that is another opportunity for 

9 citizens and groups to submit comments.

10 MR. ANDRE: Thank you very much. Yes. 

11 Excellent. Thank you.

12 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

13 MS. WALTER: Thank you.

14 MR. KOERBER: I'd like to call Gary Jones 

15 and Carolyn Gerwin. Is Gary Jones in the room? 

16 [No response.}

17 MR. KOERBER: How about Lawrence Lemon? 

18 Is Lawrence Lemon present?

19 UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

20 MR. KOERBER: Whenever you're ready.

21 MS. GERWIN: Okay. My name is Carolyn 

22 Gerwin, G-E-R-W-I-N. And I am affiliated with 
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1 the Illinois Wind Watch. Our website is at 

2 www.illinoiswindwatch.com. 

3 I have not received any payment. I have 

4 no affiliations with any industry group I paid 

5 my own way to drive two hours to come here and 

6 park at ridiculously high rates I might say.

7 MR. KOERBER: My apologies.

8 MS. GERWIN: However, I am glad to be in 

9 Chicago, and I would like to express our group's 

10 opposition to the proposed rule.

11 I noticed on the list of pre-registration 

12 that the vast majority, if not all of them, 

13 appear to be in favor of the rule. And you might 

14 ask why are there so few in opposition. I, 

15 myself, strongly debated whether it was 

16 worthwhile to come because the existing rules 

17 already make it very, very difficult, as I 

18 understand it, to start a new power plant in this 

19 country as a coal plant to be specific. And 

20 also, there isn't the usual legislative process. 

21 This an administrative action which many feel 

22 there really -- it really is a done deal and so 
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1 no point in commenting, at least that's some of 

2 the talk that I've heard.

3 Our feeling is that common sense would 

4 lead one to oppose this rule. Our current 

5 energy, electrical energy generation sector is 

6 not broken. Our current air is not dirty, and 

7 so, it's not broke and it doesn't need to be 

8 fixed.

9 Meanwhile, certain subsidies and so on 

10 continue. We believe that the government should 

11 get out of the business of manipulating the 

12 energy markets, and we support HR 3308 for that 

13 reason. Free markets will move our country 

14 toward cleaner natural gas with absolutely no 

15 cost to the taxpayer or the rate payer.

16 In contrast, this rule will cost us a 

17 great deal. Existing rules -- it's so new that 

18 there is actually no study as to -- that I could 

19 find that talks about the cost. But the existing 

20 rules have already had a great impact. And there 

21 was a piece in Fox News and I'd like to put some 

22 of this information in the record. It will be 
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1 easily verifiable.

2 This is dated May 22nd, 2012, so very 

3 timely. Last week the U.S. Energy Information 

4 Administration reported a shocking drop in power 

5 sector coal consumption in the first quarter of 

6 2012. Coal-fired power plants are now generating 

7 just 36 percent of U.S. electricity versus 44.6 

8 percent just one year ago.

9 Last week PJM Interconnection, the 

10 company that operates the electric grid for 13 

11 states -- Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, 

12 Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, 

13 Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West 

14 Virginia, and the District of Columbia -- held 

15 its 2015 capacity auction. These are the first 

16 real market prices that take Obama's most recent 

17 anti-coal regulations into account. And they 

18 prove that he is keeping his 2008 campaign 

19 promise to make electricity prices -- quote --

20 necessarily skyrocket -- unquote. The market21 clearing price for new 2015 capacity -- almost 

22 all natural gas -- was $136 per megawatt. That's 
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1 eight times higher than the price for 2012, which 

2 was just $16 per megawatt. 

3 In the mid Atlantic area, covering -- and 

4 they list the states -- the new price is $167 per 

5 megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served 

6 by First Energy the price is a shocking $357 per 

7 megawatt.

8 Andy Ott from PJM stated the obvious. 

9 Quote: Capacity prices were higher than last 

10 year's because of retirements of existing coal11 fired generation resulting largely from 

12 environmental regulations which go into effect in 

13 2015. Northern Ohio is suffering from more 

14 forced coal plant retirements than the rest of 

15 the region, hence, the even higher price. These 

16 are not computer models, or projections, or 

17 estimates. These are the actual prices that 

18 electric distributors have agreed to pay for new 

19 capacity. The costs will be passed on to 

20 consumers at the retail level.

21 Obviously, the impact on our 

22 manufacturing and energy-intensive of businesses 
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1 will be dramatic and will have the effect -- just 

2 common sense. It will have the effect of driving 

3 them out of business or out of our country.

4 This will increase our deficits and 

5 decrease the prosperity of our nation. And 

6 health is more clearly related to prosperity than 

7 just about any other factor you can look at. It 

8 is a key driver of health in any society. 

9 Also, the increased cost in our electric 

10 bill -- wait, that is one affiliation I have with 

11 a utility company is I do pay my electric bill 

12 every month -- is an extremely regressive impact. 

13 It tends to impact the most vulnerable in our 

14 society more than the rest of society.

15 MR. KOERBER: Excuse me. Could you start 

16 to wrap up? 

17 MS. GERWIN: Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see 

18 the clip over there.

19 So, I just want to wrap up by saying that 

20 we are -- we don't want to keep playing the 

21 energy hunger games for the same reasons that 

22 they didn't want to play the hunger games in the 
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1 movie. We oppose this kind of draconian 

2 controls. And we don't want to sacrifice our 

3 kids' future. There is no free lunch. And at 

4 the rate we're going there will be no lunch.

5 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

6 Mr. Lemon?

7 MR. LEMON: Hello. My name is Lawrence 

8 Tawneven Lemon, L-A-W-R-E-N-C-E, Tawneven, T-A-W9 N-E-V-E-N, Lemon, L-E-M-O-N. I was born and 

10 raised and now reside in Columbus, Ohio; and I am 

11 in association with the Ohio Conference of the 

12 NAACP.

13 Two visions come to mind as I began to 

14 think of our environment from a more personal 

15 perspective. And as with almost everything in my 

16 life, my thoughts return to family. I think of 

17 my mother telling me the story of my father, 

18 originally from Kingston, Jamaica, and his first 

19 experience with snow, how amazed he was by this 

20 beautiful white stuff falling from the sky onto 

21 his brown face with his bright pure white smile 

22 matching the falling snowflakes. This rich 
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1 contrast creates a beautiful image in my mind. 

2 And though I wasn't there to witness this event, 

3 I can imagine. 

4 My second vision is a stark contrast and 

5 a very different feeling. This image is one of 

6 my future grandsons standing inside on a hot 

7 summer day, his smile nonexistent, yet covered 

8 with a mask to protect him from the harsh 

9 pollutants of over 30 years of unregulated 

10 greenhouse gas emissions that have destroyed the 

11 world that his grandfather and grandmother, my 

12 father and my mother, once regarded as beautiful.

13 Though I haven't lived to see that day, I can 

14 imagine.

15 Yet a vivid imagination is not necessary 

16 when faced with the fact that in 2006 I lost my 

17 mother, Latania Lemon. My mother, the one who 

18 nurtured my imagination and provided me the 

19 inspiration for the vision of my father 

20 surrounded by the beautiful white stuff, her 

21 journey began with a cough. And after three 

22 years of confusion, medication, asthma and 
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1 allergy misdiagnosis, her journey led this 

2 beautiful, young 57-year-old healthy, vibrant, 

3 Christian pastor, community leader, mentor, and 

4 mother whose only stays in the hospital prior to 

5 were for the birth of her children and who hadn't 

6 smoked a day in her life to depend on an oxygen 

7 machine, that even with the assistance found it a 

8 burden to travel more five steps without needing 

9 to rest and catch her breath and who spent the 

10 last month of her life in a medically-induced 

11 coma on a ventilator, surrounded by her family 

12 and loved ones. Though I witnessed her struggle, 

13 I couldn't feel her pain, but I can imagine.

14 It wasn't until her journey led her to 

15 one of the top medical facilities in the country, 

16 a luxury which years of education, hard work, and 

17 health insurance afforded her the ability to 

18 obtain, yet is not common amongst the vast 

19 majority of our American families. It is here 

20 where she was diagnosed with Jo-1 Syndrome, a 

21 very rare autoimmune disease, though unfounded 

22 has a suspiciously close connection to the 
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1 affects of the environment.

2 Though the most frequent clinical 

3 manifestation of Jo-1 Syndrome is myotosis [sic] 

4 with interstitial lung disease frequently found 

5 and critical for the diagnosis. According to the 

6 National Library of Medicine, National Institutes 

7 of Health, 51 percent, 51.5 percent, excuse me, 

8 of the Jo-1 patients develop lung impairment. 

9 And Jo-1 disease was associated with 91 percent 

10 of interstitial lung disease. This disease 

11 describes a large group of disorders, most of 

12 which cause progressive scarring of the lung 

13 tissue, which is generally irreversible; and it 

14 eventually affects your ability to breathe and 

15 get enough oxygen into your bloodstream.

16 Interstitial lung disease can be caused 

17 by long-term exposure to hazardous materials such 

18 as asbestos, cigarette smoking, environmental 

19 pollution, and certain medication. It is the 

20 belief of my members of my family that the 

21 exposure to the mold, though treated, found on 

22 the outside of my mother's office to be the cause 
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1 of her condition and unfortunate and untimely 

2 death.

3 Though the true cause of my mother's 

4 diagnosis of the Jo-1 Syndrome is still 

5 undetermined, knowing her and her love for life, 

6 family, and health, and with my increasing 

7 knowledge on emissions pollution and its effects 

8 on the environment and the health of those 

9 exposed to them, again, I can imagine.

10 The facts surrounding the harmful effects 

11 of emissions are proven and evident by the 

12 continuing growing cases of health problems, 

13 birth defects, and deaths, and in our unusual 

14 weather, storms, and environmental conditions.

15 So, here again, the need for an active 

16 imagination isn't necessary. Just look up. Look 

17 around, breathe, and imagine. 

18 Imagine the kind of world you see for 

19 your family's future. Imagine your life without 

20 the benefit of clean, fresh air. And imagine 

21 what this world would be like if we decide not to 

22 take action to reduce emissions pollutions. 
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1 Imagine.

2 Thank you.

3 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. 

4 Any clarifying questions?

5 MR. HUTSON: My question for Ms. Gerwin 

6 is that you mentioned a report. Are you planning 

7 to submit that?

8 MS. GERWIN: It's just a news article so 

9 I don't have the official PJMI report, but --

10 MR. HUTSON: Okay.

11 MS. GERWIN: -- certainly we will 

12 probably submit -- we're planning to submit 

13 written comments.

14 MR. HUTSON: Written comments. Good. 

15 Okay.

16 MS. GERWIN: I also should have mentioned 

17 that -- I don't know if I mentioned that Illinois 

18 Wind Watch is an association of citizens and 

19 citizens groups. It's a non-profit. It's not 

20 incorporated. It's -- it's just an ordinary 

21 association of citizens.

22 MR. KOERBER: Thank you both for coming 
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1 here today.

2 MR. LEMON: Thank you.

3 MR. KOERBER: Okay. I'd like to call 

4 Gary Jones. Gary Jones, I'm sorry. Cory Jones 

5 is coming up.

6 MR. JONES: Thank you.

7 MR. KOERBER: Mr. Jones, we're giving the 

8 speakers five minutes each. And when you have 

9 one minute to go, I'll give you a little heads up 

10 on that. Okay?

11 MR. JONES: Oh, thank you.

12 MR. KOERBER: And begin whenever you're 

13 ready, sir.

14 MR. JONES: Oh, speak now or forever hold 

15 my peace?

16 MR. KOERBER: That's right.

17 MR. JONES: All right. Now I'm from 

18 Joliet, so I'm surrounded by a couple antique 

19 coal plants, the Joliet Station and the Will 

20 County Station, some of the biggest carbon 

21 emitters as well as other not-so-pleasant 

22 materials.
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1 And now the issue of global warming is 

2 something that I realize has kind of fallen out 

3 of favor. It's kind of almost chic among some 

4 circles to deny it even exists, but, you know, I 

5 think it's getting more serious as the years go 

6 by.

7 I've read a recent article where they 

8 mention some methane gas seeps up in the 

9 Antarctic. They found a bunch of new ones. And 

10 that tells me maybe the global warming issue may 

11 even -- may even be getting worse than we think, 

12 that is -- because if you're -- for those 

13 unscientifically -- methane gas is actually a 

14 worse global warming gas than carbon dioxide --

15 somewhere on the order of over 20 times worse. 

16 And then eventually it breaks down into carbon 

17 dioxide, but in the meantime, it actually traps 

18 more greenhouse gas.

19 And when I read this article -- of 

20 course, first thing I thought was, why can't we 

21 trap some of this methane gas and use it for --

22 power my stove because methane gas is actually 
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1 pretty much is what natural gas is. But of 

2 course, that's impractical, but since the polar 

3 ice caps are melting and the permafrost is 

4 melting, more of it is being released into the 

5 air.

6 So, you know, it may come down to where 

7 maybe it's irreversible. There's a part of me 

8 that's saying might be fatalistic that they're --

9 but still, we could make it a lot less as bad if 

10 we start right now to stop putting carbon dioxide 

11 into the air or other greenhouse gases.

12 And it doesn't take much, just some small 

13 changes in our lifestyle and it would have a 

14 great effect. After all, it doesn't really have 

15 -- take that much carbon dioxide in the air. As 

16 you know, if you could feel it, you could feel 

17 it. You add a little extra carbon dioxide into 

18 the air, and you can feel the difference.

19 So, I feel we should start -- you know, 

20 the -- because the global warming issue has been 

21 with us for quite a while. The term greenhouse 

22 effect, that's what it was called when I was a 
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1 kid. And that's been around a while. In fact, I 

2 remember being taught about our -- the greenhouse 

3 effect when they described our planet, comparing 

4 it to our sister planet, Venus. And I thought 

5 this was an interesting comparison that the earth 

6 and Venus are about the same size, the same mass, 

7 and roughly the same amount of carbon in the 

8 crust. The big difference is most of the carbon 

9 in the earth's crust is in the -- is wrapped up 

10 in limestone, even more so than in life or in 

11 fossil fuels. Well, on Venus all of the carbon 

12 is in the atmosphere. And there's a huge 

13 difference in the living conditions on the 

14 planets. You know, one -- the temperature and 

15 the pressure are so hot you can't even land a 

16 space probe on the surface.

17 So, I'm just -- interesting. I'm not 

18 saying and I don't think -- we're a long ways 

19 away from that kind of runaway greenhouse effect, 

20 but it was an interesting comparison.

21 Add a little bit of change now, add --

22 who knows? The earth will be able to repair 
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1 itself. 

2 And I thank you for giving me the 

3 opportunity to either -- to, shall we say, 

4 espouse -- get in touch with my inner nerd and 

5 espouse some of these issues. So, I wish you --

6 let's go up in this -- did I make it within that 

7 five minutes?

8 MR. KOERBER: You did, sir. Thirty 

9 seconds to go.

10 MR. JONES: Yeah, right.

11 MR. KOERBER: Do you want to use your 

12 last 30 seconds?

13 MR. JONES: No, that's all right.

14 MR. KOERBER: All right.

15 MR. JONES: Better to go under than over 

16 unless my dog has something to say.

17 MR. KOERBER: What is your dog's name?

18 MR. JONES: That's Cuddles.

19 MR. KOERBER: Cuddles.

20 MR. JONES: Woof.

21 MR. KOERBER: Very well behaved.

22 MR. JONES: Yes, she's a good one.
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1 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. Thank you 

2 for being here today.

3 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: If I may borrow 

4 his 30 seconds? One way we can all help each 

5 other -- don't take it wrong -- is by opening the 

6 shades and turning off the lights. Here, here. 

7 Enjoy the sunlight which we don't have to pay for 

8 yet. And not having to build as many power 

9 plants as we otherwise do.

10 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

11 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Just a brief 

12 thought.

13 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

14 I'd like to --

15 MR. JONES: That's one reason why my 

16 electric bill's lower than the average.

17 [Laughter.]

18 MR. KOERBER: I'd like to call Cory Jones 

19 and Michael Ohlinger, Jr.

20 MR. OHLINGER: Hi, I am Michael Ohlinger, 

21 M-I-C-H-A-E-L, O-H-L-I-N-G-E-R. I am from 

22 Gurnee, Illinois. I am 17 years old, in high 
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1 school. I go to Warren Township High School.

2 It is a well-known fact that the coal 

3 power plants are great producers of a vile, toxic 

4 substance called mercury. What isn't as greatly 

5 known is that the fish of our country have fallen 

6 plague to this mercury. 

7 I live but a few miles away Lake Michigan 

8 and happen to be an avid fisherman. And it's 

9 nice to know that if I catch a lake trout over 27 

10 inches, a carp, or a channel catfish, it has such 

11 a high mercury content that it is deemed unsafe 

12 to eat. It's just so depressing that we are 

13 poisoning our food, water, and air sources for 

14 nothing but greed. Our children are the future, 

15 and we are introducing so many carcinogens and 

16 toxins to their young agile minds it's not even 

17 funny. It just makes me mentally question what 

18 am I going to do 10 years, 20 years from now?

19 That's it.

20 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

21 Ms. Jones?

22 MS. JONES: My name is Cory Jones. I live 
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1 here in Illinois. Illinois is a state that 

2 produces 25 percent more power than it currently 

3 needs, yet at the same time Illinois is a state 

4 that has been perpetually targeted for the 

5 building of new power plants due to our 

6 significant coal reserves. Without any kind of 

7 regulation, Illinois actually would soon become 

8 the ashtray of the Midwest.

9 By setting up carbon pollution 

10 protections -- I actually -- I congratulate the 

11 EPA for moving forward to clean up and modernize 

12 the way we power our nation. So, thank you.

13 As the proposed standard would require 

14 new coal plants to incorporate technologies that 

15 reduce carbon pollution, again, I applaud the EPA 

16 for this critical first step towards curbing 

17 global warming pollution, towards protecting our 

18 public health, preserving the environment, and 

19 taking common sense steps to secure a clean 

20 energy future for America.

21 As the proposed carbon pollution would 

22 not affect existing power plants nor any other 
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1 plants that are already permitted or set to begin 

2 construction within the next year, some critics 

3 call this new standard only symbolic. These 

4 critics give the EPA credit for acknowledging 

5 global warming is a problem, but they subtract 

6 points from your kudos for not taking dramatic 

7 steps to cut the current emissions.

8 However, I'd like to give the EPA a 

9 little bit more credit than that assessment, 

10 which is based on a short-term market analysis of 

11 cheap and readily accessible natural gas. Those 

12 who think the standard is only symbolic, as 

13 mentioned in the Washington Post -- those who 

14 think the standard is only symbolic are assuming 

15 that no new coal plants will be built due to the 

16 cost of carbon capture. However, if the price of 

17 natural gas increases, if the markets become 

18 volatile, unstable, as the 50-year -- quote, 

19 unquote -- 50-year supply that everyone is so 

20 certain that we have, comes into question.

21 Illinois' vast coal reserves aren't going 

22 anywhere. They're still going to be here and 
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1 look very attractive. This first step, 

2 implementing the standard on future carbon 

3 pollution, is very commendable. It is, however, 

4 just the first step.

5 An interesting observation about 

6 government regulations: Government regulations 

7 are often referred to as a negative, a detriment 

8 to progress, a hindrance to innovation. And I 

9 come from the Harvard side, so I hear it all the 

10 time.

11 But perhaps the corporations that 

12 perpetuate such talk have forgotten that it was 

13 an act of government interference in 1790 that 

14 has fostered the for-profit pursuits of new 

15 technologies. In 1790 government interference 

16 set the stage for for-profit innovations by 

17 creating the modern American patent system. Our 

18 patent system signed into law by President George 

19 Washington, effectively setting parameters and 

20 limitations around the industry of product 

21 innovation.

22 Since then our government has regulated a 
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1 lot. Food safety via the FDA for the safety of 

2 the food we eat, automotive safety for the cars 

3 we drive. That's been regulated, helping us 

4 making those exploding Ford Pintos a thing of the 

5 past. 

6 So, what is the controversy with clean 

7 air regulations, keeping safe the air we breathe, 

8 keeping safe the planet that all of us Democrats 

9 and Republicans depend on for survival. I 

10 advocate that clean air and clean energy 

11 regulations will encourage the development of 

12 smarter solutions to meet future energy demands. 

13 And clean air and clean energy regulations will 

14 protect future generations by mandating better 

15 stewardship practices of our environment.

16 So I would argue that government 

17 regulations can actually be a positive change for 

18 the future. And that change is in your hands 

19 right now. 

20 I understand the EPA is also crafting 

21 carbon regulations for oil refineries and other 

22 stationary and pollution sources. And according 
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1 to a Washington Post article on March 27th, all 

2 of these future rules can matter a lot, 

3 cumulatively.

4 A 2010 report from the World Resources 

5 Institute found that the EPA carbon rules when 

6 fully deployed could cover about three-quarters 

7 of the country's greenhouse gas sources and 

8 reduce U.S. carbon emissions anywhere from 5 

9 percent to 12 percent below 2005 standards by 

10 (unintelligible) levels by 2020. 

11 So -- but like the Washington Post 

12 article also said -- this is from March 27th --

13 this can only happen if the leadership team at 

14 EPA implements these rules and regulations to 

15 their fullest extent. So, please consider doing 

16 just that.

17 So, thank you for being here today, for 

18 being part of our leadership team on the EPA; and 

19 thank you for protecting our future going 

20 forward.

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you for 

22 being here.
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1 Clarifying questions?

2 MR. HUTSON: No.

3 MR. KOERBER: Thank you both.

4 I'd like to call Jocelyn Travis. When 

5 you're ready.

6 MS. TRAVIS: Okay. Thank you. Good 

7 afternoon. My name is Jocelyn Travis, and I live 

8 in Cleveland, Ohio, which is the largest urban 

9 area of Ohio.

10 Recently our city has announced that we 

11 have the highest level of asthma cases of any 

12 city in the state. Well, we can just add this to 

13 our dubious distinction of the many other issues 

14 we are confronted with such as the number one 

15 city in poverty in the country, number two most 

16 segregated city in the country. The fact that 

17 one of our communities in the St. Clair area, 

18 where I grew up, has the highest level of lead 

19 poisoning in the state, et cetera.

20 In Ohio we continue to struggle with the 

21 failing economy and extremely high rate of 

22 unemployment to add this to our list of woes. 
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1 Please be mindful that because of the 

2 poor economic condition we face in our city, many 

3 people don't have access to quality health care 

4 and funds for medication to help them overcome 

5 these health issues, which can occur from toxins 

6 and pollutants in our air and environment.

7 Finally, to add insult to injury, we have 

8 an unsympathetic Ohio EPA director who is in 

9 opposition with the new federal emission rules 

10 and is working actively to disengage Ohio from 

11 being involved with the National Association of 

12 Clean Air Agencies, which would be extremely 

13 detrimental to our state.

14 I come before you today to applaud your 

15 efforts to reduce the toxins being emitted from 

16 coal-fired power plants with the regulation of 

17 carbon pollution standards. However, in my city 

18 of Cleveland we have the sixth worst coal-fired 

19 power plant in the country; and we have four 

20 failing coal-fired power plants in the State of 

21 Ohio.

22 While these plants will be making 
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1 adjustments on the new regulations, I strongly 

2 feel that it is not enough. First Energy, the 

3 company owning all four of the failing plants in 

4 Ohio, will not meet the required regulations 

5 until 2014 and possibly 2015. The fact that 

6 these plants have gone this long emitting such 

7 harmful pollutants into our environment is a 

8 travesty.

9 When I mentioned the community with 

10 children having the highest of lead poisoning in 

11 the State of Ohio, I don't think that it's a 

12 coincidence that the community is in the 

13 immediate vicinity of the power plant. What do 

14 we have to do to protect our children?

15 The fact that many families rely on food 

16 from the fish that they are eating from Lake Erie 

17 which sits right at the base of the power plant -

18 - it terrifies me that we are continuing to allow 

19 these plants to operate at full force with no 

20 immediate plans for correction. And even at that 

21 time I truly believe that they will be starting 

22 tactics of support from our current leadership.
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1 The power plant in Cleveland is not only 

2 situated by the lake, it is right next-door to a 

3 high school. A 2011 graduate of the high school 

4 and one of our Cleveland NAACP Youth Council 

5 members who is a very intelligent and engaged 

6 young lady was asked if she was aware that her 

7 school was next-door to the power plant. She

8 indicated that she had no idea and was shocked --

9 well, when she was made aware of the issues 

10 concerning this plant.

11 I also contacted the city councilman from 

12 the area who was also unaware of this plant and 

13 the toxins it was emitting into the environment. 

14 If this plant and other failing coal-fired power 

15 plants throughout the state and country are going 

16 to be allowed to continue operating at their 

17 current level without making corrective changes 

18 for several years, it is important that the 

19 community is aware of the challenges that they 

20 are facing from these plants.

21 The current health issues that plague our 

22 community must be acknowledged and addressed 
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1 immediately. And First Energy should bear 

2 responsibility for making that happen. 

3 My vision for the Cleveland area and the 

4 State of Ohio is that with the help of the EPA, 

5 First Energy, and the NAACP we embark on a two6 year campaign to clean up our air -- actually, 

7 two years and longer. This could be done through 

8 an awareness education program, especially in the 

9 area surrounding the failing power plants.

10 It is important that this effort also 

11 involves funding for health screenings and 

12 testing for lead poisoning, asthma, cancer, and 

13 other health-related issues resulting from the 

14 inhalation and ingesting of toxins from coal and 

15 other chemicals used within these plants.

16 There must also be funds available for 

17 treatment of those who have been directly 

18 affected. The more knowledge I obtain about the 

19 pollutions in our air, the more determined I am 

20 to ensure that we do all possible to bring about 

21 a positive change.

22 As Youth Advisor of the NAACP, I am 
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1 extremely concerned that we are not doing enough 

2 to clean up our air and environment. This is the 

3 time that we must all work together to make a 

4 difference in holding the energy companies and 

5 our elected officials accountable to do what is 

6 right in promoting a health community.

7 I am very thankful to the EPA for 

8 providing me the opportunity to share my concerns 

9 about what is happening in my environment and 

10 urge you to keep up your great work in ensuring a 

11 brighter, cleaner, and safer future for 

12 generations to come.

13 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

14 MS. JONES: Thank you.

15 MR. KOERBER: Any questions? 

16 [No response.]

17 MR. KOERBER: No questions. Okay.

18 Pardon me?

19 UNINDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just the one.

20 MR. KOERBER: More speaker?

21 UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

22 MR. KOERBER: Marissa Lieberman Klein?
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1 MS. LIEBERMAN KLEIN: Thank you for 

2 giving me the opportunity to speak today. My 

3 name is Marissa Lieberman Klein, and I am a 

4 third-year student at the University of Chicago 

5 where I helped found Youth Chicago Climate Action 

6 Network and Chicago Youth Climate Coalition, both 

7 of which are organizations that work to stop 

8 climate change in our city, our state, and our 

9 country.

10 I helped to create these organizations 

11 because I think that climate change is the single 

12 largest problem affecting my generation. If we 

13 don't stop global climate change, then eventually 

14 none of the other problems will matter because in 

15 50 years or so there won't be any world left to 

16 be affected.

17 There's been a lot of talk about my 

18 generation and especially about how it's up to us 

19 to fight for the world that we want. And many of 

20 us are doing just that, but in the end what we 

21 want is a world to fight for, a world that will 

22 exist in 50 and 100 years, a world for 
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1 generations to come, not a world too hot to live 

2 in or one ravaged by drought, rising sea levels, 

3 and climate wars, and refugees.

4 I'm from Long Island, New York, a place 

5 practically at sea level. If we allow climate 

6 change to continue and allow the sea levels to 

7 rise, Long Island and New York City will be under 

8 water. So will many other parts of the world, 

9 all just as important as New York is.

10 My father's already talking about how 

11 when he retires, he needs to buy some land that 

12 won't be under water when sea levels rise, won't 

13 be in a future drought area, and won't be too hot 

14 as the world warms up. He wants the house to 

15 sustain itself, make its own electricity, have a 

16 greenhouse, and a garden to grow food, the works. 

17 And when I graduate, he hopes that I'll move 

18 somewhere similar so I'll always have somewhere 

19 to live. We're thinking Quebec, Canada, near 

20 Montreal.

21 I don't think that I should have to use 

22 rising temperature and sea levels as well as 
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1 droughts to determine where I live in the future. 

2 I shouldn't need to do that because my government 

3 hasn't done enough to stop these things from 

4 occurring. Climate change is already happening; 

5 although we can stop it from becoming disastrous, 

6 but my generation and I can't do it alone. We 

7 don't yet have the power to set regulations, for 

8 example; but you, at the EPA, do.

9 Passing a carbon emissions standard on 

10 proposed power plants is a really good first 

11 step, but it's just that, a first step. I'm glad 

12 that the EPA is passing a standard that focuses 

13 on carbon dioxide, clearly showing that it 

14 believes climate change is happening and that we 

15 need to do something about it. That's good, but 

16 we need to do more. We need the strongest 

17 regulations we can get. The world won't wait for 

18 everyone to agree on what to do.

19 We need to take strong, decisive action 

20 to stop climate change. That's why this 

21 regulation should be as strong as possible and do 

22 as much as it can to stop carbon dioxide from 
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1 being emitted. Even if that's not popular, it's 

2 right; and that's what matters. If industry or 

3 politicians don't want it to be that strong, I 

4 think that's just too bad. They may not be here 

5 in 50 years. I and my generation will, and we 

6 want the toughest regulations on greenhouse gases 

7 and climate change that we can get.

8 Thank you.

9 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

10 MR. WELCH: Thank you. Lyman Welch. Hi.

11 MR. KOERBER: Good afternoon.

12 MR. WELCH: Good afternoon. My name is 

13 Lyman Welch, and that's spelled L-Y-M-A-N. The 

14 last name is W-E-L-C-H. And I appreciate you 

15 holding the public hearing and allow us to come 

16 in and speak with you about this proposed rule.

17 I'm here today to support the rule. I 

18 think this is a reasonable to control greenhouse 

19 gas emissions from coal plants. It's long 

20 overdue. We have had a decision from the Supreme 

21 Court that gives EPA certainty that it has the 

22 authority to regulate carbon emissions from coal 
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1 plants. And it's high time that EPA take this 

2 step.

3 Most scientists in the world agree that 

4 climate change is a reality. The actions that we 

5 take putting pollutants into the air will affect 

6 not only our life here on earth but generations 

7 to come. We need to take steps now to reduce the 

8 harm that we are doing by putting these 

9 pollutants into the air.

10 Everyone breathes the air. We all enjoy 

11 having clean air and having a climate that we can 

12 live in. We need to be working towards a 

13 sustainable economy and environment. I like to 

14 enjoy wild places where I can hike, where I can 

15 be outdoors and see glaciers. If I go to the 

16 Glacier National Park, for example, I'd like to 

17 be able to see the glaciers that the park is well 

18 known for.

19 With global warming and climate change I 

20 am concerned that I and generations after me will 

21 not be able to enjoy that natural beauty. The 

22 more pollutants that we put into the air, the 
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1 more we impact our climate in ways that we may 

2 not even know the true impact until years into 

3 the future, can be truly devastating. This 

4 regulation is necessary. 

5 Voluntary measures have certainly not 

6 proven effective with coal plants. We have 

7 hundreds of new coal-fired power plants that are 

8 being proposed to be built. Regulations need to 

9 be in effect to establish a common measurement 

10 and common regulation.

11 You specifically asked for comments on 

12 the standard for the emissions limit for carbon 

13 dioxide. I would urge you to look towards the 

14 strongest limit possible. If the 950 pounds of 

15 CO2 per megawatt hour is justified, you should 

16 impose that more stringent requirement in the 

17 regulation.

18 You also asked about allowing an 

19 affirmative defense for the 30-year-averaging 

20 compliant option. I don't see how you can 

21 justify or need to have an affirmative defense 

22 for that provision. The coal plants need to be 
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1 in compliance with this regulation.

2 Penalties and fines can be adjusted 

3 through enforcement discretion, and you should 

4 not add additional affirmative defenses and ways 

5 for the companies to further litigate and avoid 

6 the requirements that they need to comply with 

7 here. 

8 So, in conclusion, I want to firmly 

9 support EPA's efforts to develop and implement a 

10 strong rule and a reasonable one such as you've 

11 proposed here today. This is a good start. As a 

12 country and a nation we need to do more to work 

13 towards a more sustainable world to move our 

14 economy into the next generation of power. The 

15 United States can be at the forefront of 

16 technology by working to build new technologies 

17 that address greenhouse gas emissions and climate 

18 change. And we shouldn't be using old out-dated 

19 technologies from the last century.

20 Thank you.

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Any clarifying 

22 questions?
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1 [No response.]

2 MR. WELCH: Oh, I'm sorry.

3 MR. KOERBER: No. I think we're good. 

4 Thank you, sir.

5 MR. WELCH: Okay. Thanks.

6 MR. KOERBER: Okay. We do not have any 

7 speakers present, so we will be on break until at 

8 least 2:00 o'clock. So if people want to get up 

9 and stretch, feel free to do so.

10 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: But there are 

11 speakers in the next room if you want to listen 

12 to those.

13 MR. KOERBER: Yes. They'll be ongoing in 

14 the next room.

15 [Break from 1:58 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.]

16 MR. KOERBER: The time is approximately 

17 4:00 p.m. We have no further speakers for our 

18 session. I, therefore, close this session, and 

19 we are recessed for the day. Thank you.

20 [Whereupon, at 4:01 p.m., the Public 

21 Hearing was concluded.]

22 - - -