Good morning. My name is Mary Anne Hitt. I'm a mother, a concerned citizen, and the 

director ofthe Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign. !live in West Virginia with my family, and 

because my husband is traveling on business this week, I am joined today by my two-year-old 

daughter, Hazel. Hopefully, her patience will match the length of my remarks this morning. We 

will see. 

I'm here today to voice my full support for the EPA's proposed carbon pollution 

standard. 

A decade ago, there were over 200 proposed coal-fired power plants on the drawing 

board nationwide. Fast forward to today, ten years later, and only a handful ofthose plants 

have been built. Why? 

Some were rejected by moms, dads, small business owners, and other local residents 

who feared a major new industrial polluter in their backyard would harm their children's 

health, destroy their property values, and trap them in a town or neighborhood condemned to 

a downward spiral of pollution and poverty. 

Some were rejected by governors, who wanted their states to be clean energy leaders in 

the 2151 century, and thought major new investments in coal would take their state in exactly 

the wrong direction. 

Some were rejected by state regulators, who feared that ratepayers would pay dearly 

on their electric bills iftheir state became locked into high carbon energy for the next fifty plus 

years. 

And some were rejected by financial backers, who realized that these projects were an 

increasingly bad bet, because they simply could not compete with the rapidly dropping prices of 

cleaner sources of energy. 

As a result, only one new coal-fired power plant has broken ground in the US since 2008, 

and the permit for that project was recently struck down in a unanimous decision by the 

Mississippi Supreme Court. 

Mary Anne Hitt- Page 1 
During this same decade, in 2009, the EPA issued its finding that carbon pollution 

endangers public health and welfare. As I just noted, Americans of all walks of life were 

simultaneously reaching the same conclusion- from financiers to governors, from state 

regulators to local moms and dads. 

In issuing this proposed carbon pollution standard, the EPA has taken an important step 

to safeguard our health and our families. As I'm sure you will hear many times today, carbon 

pollution has been linked by scientists to increasing temperatures and increasing levels of 

smog, which triggers asthma attacks and other life-threatening health problems. 

But carbon pollution doesn't just threaten our children's health today. As the main 

cause of climate disruption, carbon pollution casts a dark shadow over every aspect of their 

future, a future menaced by the threat of increasing droughts, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, 

and rising sea levels, not to mention the resulting political instability around the world. 

My daughter Hazel is the light of my life. She is learning to sing, she never wants to 

come inside, and one of her favorite things is wandering around the alleys of our small town 

looking for cats. She is also an 11th generation West Virginian, through her father. With our 

deep Appalachian roots, we understand all too well the challenges that the clean energy future 

poses to some parts of our country. But I believe we have the ingenuity and know-how to tackle 

those challenges. Here is how the largest newspaper in West Virginia, the Charleston Gazette, 

put it in their editorial this past Sunday: 

"This topic [climate change] has special resonance in West Virginia, a fossil fuel treasure 

trove. And what happens here has a special impact on the future of the planet. Pollution 

controls seeking to reduce global warming are sure to impose tighter restrictions on coal 

and natural gas. West Virginia's energy should not be squandered on a shortsighted 

attempt to protect the status quo, or to discredit science in the public's eyes, or to vilify 

the Obama administration's very reasonable proposal that new coal-fired power plants 

be required to limit their greenhouse gas emissions." 

Mary Anne Hitt- Page 2 
The EPA's proposed carbon pollution standard is a common-sense step towards 

addressing a very real threat to this nation, and to the future that my daughter, and all our 

children, will inherit. If anything, the EPA is arriving late in the game, following in the footsteps 

of community leaders, governors, state regulators, and financiers who all realized, in the past 

decade, that new power plants in this country must deal with their carbon pollution. I support 

the proposed standard, and I encourage you to finalize it with all due haste. Thank you. 

Mary Anne Hitt 

PO Box 459 

Shepherdstown, WV 25443 

maryanne.hitt@sierraclub.org 

304-876-7064 

Mary Anne Hilt- Page 3