1

1 Environmental Protection Agency

2

3

4

5

6 Public Hearing on

7 Proposed Clean Power Plan for

8 Existing Power Plants

9

10

11

12 9:00 a.m. to 5:36 p.m.

13 Thursday, July 31, 2014

14

15 Room B

16 William S. Moorhead Federal Building

17 100 Liberty Avenue

18 Pittsburg, Pennsylvania 15222

19

20

21

22

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1 EPA PANEL 1:

2 DAVID ARNOLD, 

3 EPA Regional Office, Philadelphia

4 MIKE KOERBER,

5 EPA Headquarters, Air Office, North Carolina

6 DIANA ESHER, 

7 EPA Regional Office, Philadelphia 

8 SHAWN GARVIN, 

9 EPA Regional Administrator, Philadelphia

10

11 EPA PANEL 2:

12 MEG VICTOR, 

13 EPA Air Office, Washington, D.C. 

14 MIKE KOERBER, 

15 EPA Headquarters, Air Office, North Carolina

16 DONNA MASTRO, 

17 EPA Region 3, Air Division

18

19

20

21

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1 C O N T E N T S

2 PAGE

3 JIM DOYLE, 22 

4 President of Business Forward

5 MARK DIXON, 27 

6 Filmmaker, citizen, activist

7 LORA CHAMBERLAIN, MD 33 

8 Representative of Frack Free Illinois

9 JILL PAULUS, 38

10 Illinois resident

11 ELAINE LABALME, 42

12 Illinois resident

13 STEPHANIE BILENKO, 45

14 Illinois resident

15 CHRISTOPHER MAXIE, 50

16 National Wildlife Federation

17 JAY APT, MD, 53

18 Carnegie Mellon professor

19 PAT LUPO, 58

20 Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania

21 REVEREND LEAH SCHADE, MD, 61

22 Advocacy Ministry of Pennsylvania

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1 C O N T E N T S (continued)

2 PAGE

3 NIKKI SILVESTRI, 66

4 Executive Director, Green for All

5 SUSAN CARTY, 71

6 President, League of Women Voters of PA

7 ANNETTE SHIMER, 75

8 President, League of Women Voters of 

9 Greater Pittsburgh, former member of

10 Allegheny County Air Quality Commission 

11 MATT RUSSELL, 80

12 Iowa farmer

13 PETER BIXLER, 86

14 Pennsylvania resident

15 JACKSON MORRIS, 88

16 Director, Eastern Energy to Natural 

17 Resources Defense Council

18 JONATHAN ROBERSON, 95

19 Pennsylvania attorney

20 ISA MUHAMMAD, 97

21 Ohio resident

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1 C O N T E N T S (continued)

2 PAGE

3 JOHN ZIAK, MD, 100

4 Statistician, Pennsylvania State University

5 JOHN EICH, 103

6 Pennsylvania resident

7 FRED KRAYBILL, 107

8 Pennsylvania resident

9 JEANEEN ZAPPA, 110

10 Executive Director, Conservation 

11 Consultants, Inc. 

12 MELODY FLECK, 115

13 Pennsylvania resident

14 PETER WRAY, 118

15 Chair, Allegheny Group of the Sierra Club

16 JOHN BECHTEL, 123

17 Pennsylvania resident

18 STEPHEN TODD, 126

19 Pennsylvania resident

20 MICHELLE NACCARATI-CHAPKIS, 129

21 Women for a Health Environment 

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1 C O N T E N T S (continued)

2 PAGE

3 GEORGE RATLIFF, 134

4 Inventor, solar efficiency 

5 STACY WICKETT, 137

6 Pennsylvania resident

7 ANNA BERCH-NORTON, 139

8 Pennsylvania resident

9 BARBARA PACE, 141

10 Clean Water Action Committee

11 JOHN NAGLE, 146

12 Professor, Carnegie Mellon 

13 ROBERT BAKER, 151 

14 Virginia resident

15 PAUL FISCHBECK, 155

16 Professor, Carnegie Mellon, research team

17 MICHAEL NIXON, 160

18 Center for Biological Diversity

19 DAN SULLIVAN, 165

20 Director, Saving Communities

21 JENNIFER GARRISON, 169

22 Former Ohio State Representative 

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1 C O N T E N T S (continued)

2 ROBERT CIESIELSKI, 

3 New York State Atlantic Chapter, 172 

4 Sierra Club 

5 BRIGET SHIELDS, 183

6 Pennsylvania resident

7 DAVID INGRUND, 188

8 Pennsylvania resident

9 MATT WALKER, 192

10 Director, Clean Air Council

11 SHERRI SMITH, 199

12 Ohio resident

13 JENNIFER QUINN, 204

14 Pennsylvania resident

15 ANNE CARUSO, 208

16 Fracking representative, Ohio Group

17 Sierra Club

18 ROBERT ALTENBURG, 214

19 Energy Analyst, PennFuture Energy Center

20 RACHEL MARK, 219

21 Pennsylvania Unified Power and Light

22

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1 C O N T E N T S (continued)

2 DEB NARDONE, 223 

3 Director, Sierra Club's Beyond Natural 

4 Gas campaign

5 LOIS HORNBOSTEL, 227

6 Proposal supporter

7 CHARLOTTE OWENS, 231

8 Ohio resident

9 THOMAS RADECKI, MD 234 

10 Retired physician

11 TOM RODD, 239

12 Director, Friends of Blackwater Allegheny 

13 Highlands Climate Change Initiative

14 GEORGE HOGUET, 244

15 Pennsylvania resident

16 SEAMUS MCGRAW, 250

17 Pennsylvania resident 

18 JUDY ROSEMAN, 254

19 Ohio resident and businesswoman

20 TOM MULLANEY, 260 

21 History teacher 

22

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1 C O N T E N T S (continued)

2 ALAN LOCKWOOD, MD, 262

3 Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social 

4 Responsibility

5 CINDY DUNN, 267

6 Read on behalf of Dr. Michael Mann

7 GRETCHEN DAHLKEMPER, 272

8 Manager, Moms Clean Air Force

9 PATRICIA SNEAD, 277

10 West Virginia resident

11 ARIANA NELSON, 281

12 Pittsburgh Citizen Climate Lobby

13 CHRISTINA ZHOU, 285

14 Environmental engineer

15 ARLENE MERCURIO, 291

16 Master's - public policy, Sierra Club member

17 SCOTT MILLER, 294

18 Director, Sustainability and Product Affairs, 

19 Knauf Insulation

20 COURT GOULD, 299

21 Executive Director, Sustainable Pittsburgh

22

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1 C O N T E N T S (continued)

2 PATRICK GRENTER, 304

3 Executive Director, Center for Coalfield 

4 Justice

5 FRANCIS RECO, 308

6 Pennsylvania resident

7 JIM EGGED, 312

8 Retired firefighter, Public Safety through

9 Environmental Advocacy

10 MIKE KAMANDULIS, 316

11 Pennsylvania resident

12 JACLYN CLIFFORD, 321

13 Intern, Center for Coalfield Justice

14 TOM HOFFMAN, 323 

15 Director, Midwestern Pennsylvania Water 

16 Action

17 DON GOLDSTEIN, MD, 325

18 Department of Economics, Allegheny College

19 NICK BATES, 330 

20 On behalf of Donald A. Brown, Wagner 

21 University of Law

22

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1 C O N T E N T S (continued)

2 RUSS LORINCE, 335

3 Vice President of External Affairs, 

4 Arch Coal, Inc.

5 MICHAEL SPEERSCHNEIDER, 341

6 Chief Permitting and Policy Officer,

7 EverPower Wind Holdings

8 RUSSELL ZERBO, 346

9 Advocacy Coordinator, Clean Air Council

10 KHARI MOSLEY, 351

11 Program Manager, Blue Green Alliance

12 ALLISON FREEMAN, MD, 355

13 Pennsylvania resident

14 DORIAN GHORBI, 361

15 Director, American Coalition for Clean 

16 Coal Electricity

17

18

19

20

21

22

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

2 MR. KOERBER: Good morning. Thank you 

3 for all being here today. We're going to start 

4 off with a few words from Shawn Garvin, who is 

5 the Regional Administrator for our EPA office in 

6 Philadelphia. 

7 MR. GARVIN: Thank you, Mike.

8 Good morning and thank you for joining us 

9 today as part of this national effort obtaining 

10 comments on EPA's Clean Air Act proposal to 

11 eliminate carbon emissions from power plants. 

12 This is the fourth public hearing that EPA has 

13 held on this proposal. Earlier this week, EPA 

14 held three separate public hearings in Atlanta, 

15 Denver, and Washington, D.C. 

16 Since the Clean Power Plan announcement 

17 in early June, EPA has received a tremendous 

18 amount of feedback. Recognizing this interest, 

19 we added a second day of public hearings in each 

20 location. 

21 Since last September, prior to ever 

22 putting pen to paper, EPA collected extensive 

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1 public input, including 11 public listening 

2 sessions and meetings with more than 300 groups 

3 from across the country. This input has helped 

4 guide the development of the Clean Power Plan. 

5 What we heard helped shape the guiding 

6 principles of our proposal. We heard that 

7 flexibility is key, so we maximized choices 

8 states could make for themselves. We heard that 

9 states could cut pollution cost effectively by 

10 looking at energy system as a whole, so we built 

11 that in. We heard that power sector is 

12 interconnected and not bound by state lines, so 

13 we allowed states to work together or go it 

14 alone, whatever works best for them.

15 The public comment period is incredibly 

16 valuable to us. We met with 60 different groups 

17 in just the first 25 business days after our 

18 proposal. As for the beginning of this week, 

19 we've received more than 300,000 comments and 

20 expect many more. We want no stone unturned and 

21 no good idea off the table.

22 We expect great feedback at these 

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1 sessions. They're a critical opportunity for 

2 people to speak to their government directly. 

3 But let me also make clear, any comment we 

4 receive by October 16th will be equally accepted 

5 and analyzed. There are no special comments or 

6 special groups. We look at everything carefully, 

7 and EPA does the work to shape that into a rule 

8 we all can be proud of.

9 We know the purpose of this rule couldn't 

10 be more important. That's why we're putting so 

11 much importance on the process, and the comments 

12 we're getting are going to help us get this rule 

13 right.

14 Science tell us that climate change is 

15 real; that human activities are fueling that 

16 change, and that we must act now to avoid the 

17 most devastating consequences.

18 In June 2013, President Obama announced 

19 his climate action plan, calling on agencies 

20 across the federal government, including EPA, to 

21 take action to cut carbon pollution, to protect 

22 our country from the impacts of climate change, 

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1 and to lead the world in this effort. The 

2 president directed EPA, "To work expeditiously to 

3 complete carbon pollution standards for both new 

4 and existing power plants," because currently no 

5 federal standards exist for carbon pollution from 

6 the country's largest source.

7 In September 2013, EPA announced that it 

8 was setting standards for carbon pollution 

9 emitted by new power plants to ensure that power 

10 companies investing in new fossil fuel-fired 

11 power plants would use modern technologies, 

12 limiting emissions of harmful carbon pollution.

13 Last month, EPA proposed carbon pollution 

14 guidelines for existing power plants. These 

15 guidelines are required by the Clean Air Act to 

16 develop and implement programs for reducing 

17 carbon pollution from the power plants operating 

18 in each state.

19 EPA's mandate is to deliver clean air, 

20 clean water, and safe and healthy lands to 

21 American families. We've done this for more than 

22 four decades, and we've done it by relying on the 

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1 best available science, being transparent in our 

2 decision-making, and working with everyone to 

3 develop common sense approaches to protecting and 

4 improving the environment across the country.

5 Before I turn things over to Mike to give 

6 you details about the logistics and procedures 

7 for today's hearing, let me conclude with some 

8 final thoughts. 

9 We know we don't have to sacrifice a 

10 healthy economy for a healthy environment. 

11 History shows that since EPA has existed, we've 

12 cut air pollution by more than 70 percent, while 

13 the gross domestic product has tripled. 

14 We know that climate change can't be 

15 solved overnight. It's going to take a broad 

16 concerted effort from all levels or government, 

17 industry, NGOs, utilities, the public, and the 

18 international community. We know that climate 

19 change is already presenting very real risk to 

20 our health, our economy, and our way of life, and 

21 we cannot afford further delay. 

22 People from all sectors of the economy 

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1 and all walks of life are calling for climate 

2 action because our moral obligation is clear. We 

3 all want to make sure the world we leave our 

4 children is a clean, safe, and healthy as 

5 possible, and that's what our proposal is 

6 designed to do. 

7 I want to thank you all for being here 

8 today. I look forward to hearing your comments. 

9 And I just want to preface, I'm actually going to 

10 go downstairs and open the hearing downstairs, so 

11 I'm going to have to leave in a couple minutes; 

12 but I want to turn it back over to Mike, Diana, 

13 and Dave. Thank you all.

14 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, Shawn. That was 

15 wonderful.

16 My name is Mike Koerber, and I work with 

17 EPA's Headquarters Air office in North Carolina. 

18 I will be chairing this morning's session. 

19 Joining me on the panel are Diana Esher -

20 - Diana Esher and Dave Arnold with our EPA 

21 regional office in Philadelphia.

22 As Shawn said, we are here today to 

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1 listen to your comments on two proposed EPA rules 

2 to reduce carbon pollution from power plants. 

3 EPA proposed both of these rules on June 2nd.

4 Before we get started, I'd like to go 

5 through a few housekeeping and ground rules for 

6 today's hearing. First, please be sure that you 

7 have checked in at the registration desk 

8 downstairs, even if you're not planning to speak 

9 today, and if you signed up to speak in advance 

10 but have not checked in, please do so. 

11 Second, if you're a speaker and you were 

12 given a room letter, you were either given A or 

13 B. This is Room B. You're, of course, welcome to 

14 listen in either of the rooms, and we encourage 

15 you to do so; and if you were assigned to speak 

16 in Room B, as I said, you're in the right place. 

17 If you're assigned to speak in Room A, please 

18 show up there at your designated time. 

19 Third, please put your phones on vibrate, 

20 and don't hang around in the hall afterwards if 

21 you can help it. There are other offices on the 

22 floor, and we'd like to be respectful of their 

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1 operations. 

2 So here's how today's hearing will work. 

3 I will call speakers up in pairs. When your name 

4 is called, please come to the table at the front 

5 of the room. When I call on you to speak, please 

6 state and spell your name. Your comments will be 

7 transcribed by our court reporter and will be 

8 included in the rule-making record for these 

9 proposed rules. 

10 Each speaker will have five minutes. We

11 have a light to help you know how much time you 

12 have left to speak. When the light turns from 

13 green to yellow, that means you have one minute 

14 remaining. When it turns red, that's the signal 

15 to wrap up your testimony. The light will flash 

16 red and beep when you have spoken for five 

17 minutes and it's time to stop.

18 When you're finished speaking, please 

19 remain at the table until the person next to you 

20 has completed his or her testimony. I will then 

21 call up the next pair of speakers and so on.

22 Also, we are here to listen to your 

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1 comments today; however, a panel member may ask 

2 you questions to help clarify your comments. And 

3 if you brought a written copy of your testimony, 

4 please give it to the staff at the registration 

5 desk before you leave; and if you have an extra, 

6 if you want to drop it off for the court 

7 reporter, that would be great. 

8 Because of the large number of people who 

9 signed up to speak, and to be fair to everyone, 

10 we must enforce the five-minute limit. If you 

11 have additional comments you'd like to make, then 

12 please submit them in writing. And as Shawn 

13 said, EPA gives just as much consideration to 

14 comments we receive in writing as we do to 

15 comments we receive at public hearings like this.

16 There's still plenty of time to send 

17 written comments, and there are comment cards 

18 available at the registration desk; and I have 

19 some up here if you'd like. Comments must be 

20 received by October 16th. We will put any 

21 written comments submitted today in the official 

22 record for the proposed rules. 

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1 Instructions for submitting written 

2 comments in other ways are available at the table 

3 in the back of the room and also at the 

4 registration desk.

5 We're scheduled to go until 8:00 p.m. 

6 tonight. We'll take a lunch break, a dinner 

7 break, and other short breaks as needed.

8 If you have any questions during the day, 

9 please see the staff at the registration desk and 

10 someone will help you.

11 Finally and most importantly, please be 

12 respectful of everyone who speaks today. We have 

13 people here with a wide variety of views, and we 

14 want to hear from all of you. So to be fair to 

15 everyone, we ask that you listen quietly. Even 

16 applause can slow things down. As I said, we 

17 want to hear from everyone who has signed up to 

18 speak. 

19 Thank you, again, for taking the time to 

20 share your comments on EPA's proposed rules. Now 

21 let's get started. 

22 I'd like to call the first two speakers. 

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1 Thank you, Shawn, for being with us. Our first 

2 two speakers will be Jim Doyle and Mark Dixon.

3 Mr. Doyle? 

4 MR. DOYLE: J-i-m, D-o-y-l-e. My name is 

5 Jim Doyle, and I am president of Business 

6 Forward, a trade association that works with tens 

7 of thousands of business leaders across the 

8 country. I recently co-authored a study 

9 examining how the proposed carbon standards we 

10 are discussing here today will affect electricity 

11 costs for manufacturers.

12 Critics argue that new EPA standards will 

13 cause American manufacturers to shut down their 

14 factories, but if you look at what manufacturers 

15 actually spend on electricity and how that 

16 spending relates to the rest of their budgets, 

17 you’ll find that projected rate increases will 

18 have a small impact on manufacturers’ bottom 

19 lines. Electricity represents less than one 

20 percent of a manufacturer’s total costs on 

21 average. That average is taken across America’s 

22 19 largest manufacturing industries. 

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1 The EPA rates would increase costs by 

2 approximately six percent -- electricity rate 

3 costs by about six percent by 2020. That means 

4 that the average industry’s total cost would rise 

5 less than .06 percent, six basis points. In 

6 other words, if it cost a company $100 to make a 

7 part today, there -- the cost of producing that 

8 $100 part will increase by six cents.

9 On the other hand, supply chains 

10 represent about 60 percent of a manufacturer’s 

11 costs. That’s 60 times more than electricity. 

12 Over the past four years, American factories have 

13 been disrupted by typhoons in Thailand, 

14 hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, droughts in 

15 Texas, tornadoes in Kentucky, falling water 

16 levels across the Great Lakes, and flooding in 

17 the Northeast. This is part of a wave of severe 

18 weather that from 2011 to 2013 cost our economy 

19 more than $200 billion. Cargo ships crossing the 

20 Great Lakes are carrying less cargo to avoid 

21 running aground, ports are preparing for more 

22 hurricanes and rising sea levels, highways and 

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1 bridges are subject to more frequent delays, and 

2 cargo trains detoured during last winter’s storms 

3 took months to arrive at their factories. 

4 Together, these events are shutting down or 

5 slowing down plants for hours, days, sometimes 

6 weeks at a time, and this is actually quite new. 

7 Manufacturing plants across all industries have 

8 experienced four unexpected disruptions each 

9 year, on average. These are caused by equipment 

10 failures, power outages, absence of key 

11 personnel, and severe weather. Together, those 

12 four outages cost them about 20 hours of 

13 production.

14 With the frequency and intensity of 

15 severe weather increasing, so are production 

16 delays and disruptions. An auto plant in Indiana 

17 that rarely lost production to severe weather 

18 lost four days of production last winter alone. 

19 That’s $50 million of lost production. 

20 Leading employers here in Pittsburgh have 

21 begun reporting these risks to their 

22 stockholders. PPG, US Steel, Heinz have all 

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1 reported about how severe weather is affecting 

2 their supply chains, or they disrupted their 

3 business. But really, to appreciate what climate 

4 change could do to manufacturers, it’s really 

5 important to understand that the very things that 

6 make supply chains efficient, that make American 

7 manufacturers profitable, are the very 

8 characteristics that make their supply chain so 

9 vulnerable to climate change. 

10 American manufacturers are efficient 

11 because of just-in-time inventory, which means 

12 that you maintain only a certain amount of parts 

13 in your plant at one time. That saves them 80 

14 percent of their space costs. It cuts their 

15 labor costs by half, but it means that a parts 

16 factory or an auto assembly plant has only three 

17 or four hours of parts in their facility at one 

18 time. So if the trucks that supply that factory 

19 are delayed four or five hours that assembly 

20 plant shuts down, and when it shuts down, it 

21 loses about $1.25 million per hour on average.

22 So here in Pittsburg, Behr, Alcoa, PPG 

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1 are huge auto suppliers across the region. There 

2 are 22 assembly plants here, Michigan, Ohio, 

3 Indiana alone, and literally thousands of auto 

4 suppliers. They’re heavily dependent on a supply 

5 chain that stretches across the world. Because 

6 of just-in-time manufacturing, even a half day 

7 shutdown in shipping can shut down a plant.

8 Supply chains are also global, which 

9 means that if there’s a hurricane in Norfolk, it 

10 shuts down plants in the Midwest. If there is a 

11 typhoon in Thailand, it can shut them down. PPG, 

12 a major employer here in the city, saw its 

13 operations disrupted substantially by Thailand 

14 floods in 2011.

15 Using the auto plants as an example, if 

16 it costs an assembly plant which produces about 

17 300,000 cars each year and employs about 3000 

18 workers, if it costs the assembly plant $1.25 

19 million to shut down for just one hour because of 

20 climate change-caused severe weather, what does 

21 it cost that plant with -- oh, sorry.

22 Thank you very much for your time.

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1 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

2 MS. ESHER: That's actually the --

3 MR. DOYLE: Yeah. The blinking red.

4 MR. KOERBER: Yeah, yeah. It flashes 

5 yellow when you have a minute to go, and then it 

6 will turn red --

7 MR. DOYLE: If you'd turn it to me so we 

8 could see it because I couldn't see it.

9 MR. KOERBER: You couldn't see it?

10 MR. DOYLE: Yeah.

11 MS. ESHER: I'm sorry.

12 MR. DOYLE: That's okay. 

13 MR. KOERBER: My apologies.

14 MR. DOYLE: Yeah. 

15 The EPA rates will cost an assembly plant 

16 less over a course of a year than it would cost 

17 them to lose one hour of production. That’s what 

18 I was trying to say at the last, but thank you.

19 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

20 Mr. Dixon? 

21 MR. DIXON: Great. Hello. M-a-r-k, D-i22 x-o-n.

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1 My name is Mark Dixon, and I’m a 

2 filmmaker and citizen, activist. I have looked 

3 at, through my film work, environmental issues in 

4 all 50 states. I have six main points to share 

5 with you today.

6 Point number one, thank you. Thank you 

7 for holding this public hearing and for listening 

8 to our comments. Few things will matter as much 

9 in the course of human history as the climate 

10 change policies that we choose to create and 

11 implement today.

12 Point number two, go further than you 

13 think you can. This plan does not go far enough 

14 in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed, 

15 rate–based emissions restrictions create a 

16 massive loophole allowing infinite emissions so 

17 long as we emit more efficiently. Who are we 

18 kidding? When you confront the laws of physics, 

19 there are no prizes for doing the best you can, 

20 no prizes for economic viability. The only prize 

21 goes to the civilization that gets to zero 

22 greenhouse gas emissions before we run out of 

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1 space in the atmosphere. We’ll get that prize if 

2 we set that bar high enough to galvanize the 

3 genius of a generation towards such a noble 

4 cause, but this plan does not set the bar that 

5 high. In its present form, your plan. Short6 term economic viability in exchange for my future 

7 and my children’s future. Why choose anemic 

8 change at the expense of inspiration and deep 

9 innovation, at the expense of reality, and at the 

10 expense of the moral high ground?

11 Point number three, natural gas is not a 

12 bridge fuel. Natural gas as a path to climate 

13 stability is a nonstarter. When you burn it, you 

14 get CO2, and when it leaks, it’s much worse than 

15 CO2. If this is a bridge fuel, then show me the 

16 plans for the bridge. We need to look at fuel 

17 sources that reduce our greenhouse gas emissions 

18 dramatically from coal, and the very fact that 

19 there is a debate about whether the full life 

20 cycle of natural gas emits more or less than that 

21 of coal proves to me that we can accept neither.

22 Point number four, exported carbon 

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1 emissions are just as bad as local ones. States 

2 that export fossil fuel should count the 

3 greenhouse gas emissions impacts of those exports 

4 against their progress towards the targets set 

5 forth in your rule, particularly if the exports 

6 go to locations outside the jurisdiction of this 

7 proposed rule. 

8 Point number five, industry will complain 

9 -- except for you. Industry tends to complain 

10 about how regulations are hard or impossible to 

11 meet until they’re forced to comply with them. 

12 It’s virtually their obligation to do so. Your 

13 obligation and the reason we’re here today is to 

14 develop the boundaries for what we find 

15 acceptable and then require industry to work 

16 within those boundaries. When industry 

17 complains, you must ask how those complaints 

18 stand up against the well-being of countless 

19 future generations.

20 Point number six, don’t play chicken with 

21 our climate. Our nation’s approach to climate 

22 change feels like an epic game of chicken. 

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1 Humanity is in a car with our foot on the gas, 

2 accelerating towards a brick wall of climate 

3 catastrophe, meanwhile, we are debating whether 

4 to let up on the gas by a quarter or half an 

5 inch. It’s time to take our foot off the gas 

6 pedal and put it on the brake. We only get one 

7 chance in a healthy planet and every decision we 

8 make takes us closer to or further from that 

9 opportunity. Why risk such beauty? Why risk 

10 such a gift on a juvenile game of chicken?

11 That completes my six points. In 

12 summary, I thank you for your time and 

13 consideration. I encourage you to go further 

14 than you think you can, because your decisions on 

15 this issue must stand the test of time. Natural 

16 gas is not a bridge fuel if its merits are 

17 debatable. Exported carbon emissions are just as 

18 bad as local ones. And finally, industry will 

19 complain, but you have a professional and moral 

20 responsibility to ensure that your policies do 

21 not play chicken with our climate. Thank you.

22 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, Mr. Dixon.

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1 I’ll ask the panelists if they have any 

2 questions.

3 I actually did for Mr. Doyle. You 

4 referred to a study that you had done. If you 

5 could submit that to our docket --

6 MR. DOYLE: Absolutely.

7 MR. KOERBER: -- for our rule making, 

8 that would be helpful.

9 MR. DOYLE: Great.

10 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you both.

11 I’d next like to call Lora Chamberlain 

12 and Jill Paulus. My apologies for any 

13 mispronunciation.

14 MS. ESHER: She forgives us. She 

15 forgives you.

16 MR. KOERBER: I’m sure you will correct 

17 me.

18 Extra copies?

19 MS. ESHER: Yeah. I read the testimonies 

20 and the petitions.

21 MR. KOERBER: Okay. Is that an extra?

22 DR. CHAMBERLAIN: (Inaudible)

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1 MR. KOERBER: Okay. You want to share 

2 one with our recorder? That would be helpful.

3 DR. CHAMBERLAIN: Oh, should I give it to 

4 this one?

5 MR. KOERBER: If you have an extra.

6 DR. CHAMBERLAIN: I just have all that 

7 for you.

8 MR. KOERBER: Okay. Then we’ll take --

9 we’ll keep that. Thank you.

10 DR. CHAMBERLAIN: May I ask you a 

11 question? Those are petitions signed, so those 

12 will be all documented as --

13 MR. KOERBER: Those will be provided --

14 included in our rule-making record. Thank you.

15 DR. CHAMBERLAIN: Is that good enough? 

16 MR. KOERBER: Ms. Chamberlain, you can go 

17 first.

18 DR. CHAMBERLAIN: Okay, great. So I’m 

19 Dr. Chamberlain, Dr. Lora Chamberlain.

20 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

21 DR. CHAMBERLAIN: L-o-r-a, C-h-a-m-b-e-r22 l-a-i-n, and I am from Chicago, Illinois and I 

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1 represent Frack Free Illinois. We are a 

2 statewide environmental organization of thousands 

3 of members, and today specifically, I am 

4 representing over a thousand members that have

5 signed this petitions that are in front of you. 

6 While members of Frack Free Illinois 

7 appreciate that President Obama and the EPA are 

8 attempting to finally address our carbon 

9 emissions from existing power plants, we are 

10 extremely disheartened that all of the evidence 

11 of the planetary risk of runaway climate change 

12 has not been translated into a draft Clean Power 

13 Plan that actually takes the threat seriously. 

14 We are calling for an urgent redraft of this 

15 plan.

16 Many analysts are calling this plan, 

17 arbitrary, ineffective, and political. Your 

18 criteria for reduction goals are unnecessarily 

19 complicated, and the abatement standards are 

20 flipped upside down. States that already have 

21 significant clean energy mixes have to do a 

22 higher percentage of abatements than states that 

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1 burn large amounts of coal. Concessions were 

2 obviously made to the coal states in the state3 by-state requirements. All we can say is get 

4 ready for the lawsuits and stop wasting precious 

5 time.

6 The Onion described the Clean Power Plan 

7 the best in their headlines, “New EPA regulations 

8 would force power plants to find 30 percent more 

9 loopholes by 2030.” We are saddened beyond words 

10 that President Obama and the EPA have chosen to 

11 nip around the edges of this carbon problem 

12 rather than embracing the science of climate 

13 change and promoting policies that will actually 

14 make a significant impact on the climate.

15 The number one danger of inadequately 

16 dealing with carbon pollution is the accelerated 

17 warming of the Arctic seas, permafrost and 

18 wetlands, and the release of vast stores of 

19 methane from frozen methane hydrates in the sea. 

20 It’s called the clathrate gun. And this was 

21 beautifully illustrated in a video recently 

22 called Last Hours. I’ve given you the link 

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1 there.

2 We must take heed of what is happening in 

3 the Arctic. The Arctic Methane Emergency Group 

4 has been sounding the alarm that Arctic methane 

5 is the global warming carbon bomb. Please keep 

6 in mind that methane is 86 times more potent as a 

7 greenhouse gas than CO2 over a 20-year period. 

8 The groups report that the Arctic is presently 

9 the site of 40 percent of the world’s carbon, and 

10 it is already a substantial source of methane 

11 release to the atmosphere. 

12 The group reports that the methane 

13 emissions are increasing as the Arctic is warming 

14 several times faster than the rest of our planet. 

15 The group says that if the Arctic continues to 

16 warm, then methane release will greatly increase 

17 and will feed back to accelerate the rate of 

18 global warming. Unstoppable runaway Arctic 

19 warming will lead to unstoppable runaway global 

20 warming. 

21 The group is warning the world that the 

22 warming of the Arctic must stop. Vast releases 

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1 of methane from the seafloors were the cause of 

2 the Permian mass extinction 250 million years 

3 ago, so the precedent of runaway climate change 

4 due to methane release has already occurred at 

5 least once on this planet. The Swedish polar 

6 research group reported on July 28th that there 

7 is presently a methane mega flare being released 

8 from the Siberian Sea slopes. Has the clathrate 

9 gun already started to shoot? 

10 The teams of scientists hypothesize that 

11 over the last decade, a stream of warmer Atlantic 

12 Ocean water has been flowing along the Siberian 

13 ocean sea slope and destabilizing the methane 

14 ice. We are extremely concerned about this and 

15 we are asking you to pay attention to what’s 

16 going on in the Arctic. If we are on the 

17 precipice of the massive release of methane in 

18 the Arctic, then we might be facing the sixth 

19 mass extinction on this planet and that will 

20 certainly involve the human race.

21 This science is what members of Frack 

22 Free Illinois would like President Obama and the 

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1 EPA to pay attention. So, our biggest 

2 disappointments is that the plan is too little, 

3 too late. We recommend that you follow Sierra 

4 Club’s recommendation for 50 percent reduction by 

5 2050. We ask that you phase out dirty coal–fired 

6 power plants. We ask you to reject the reliance 

7 on frack gas. Frack gas is not a bridge fuel, 

8 and there is just far too much methane being 

9 released from the entire infrastructure. Remove 

10 nuclear subsidies from the carbon rules, and 

11 prioritize and accelerate the deployment of 

12 renewable energy and energy efficiency by 

13 considering a carbon tax and rebate. 

14 And we thank you for -- all the rest of 

15 the comments are in this letter. We thank you 

16 for this opportunity.

17 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. And thank you 

18 for the petitions and the information you 

19 provided. We’ll make sure that gets in the 

20 record.

21 Ms. Paulus?

22 MS. PAULUS: Paulus. Jill Paulus, J-i-lOLENDER REPORTING, INC.

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1 l, P-a-u-l-u-s.

2 So this is my Clean Power Plan comment 

3 for today. To cut carbon by approximately 30 

4 percent is a good beginning point, but we must 

5 consider doing better. Methane and nuclear waste 

6 are not mentioned in the Clean Power Plan, nor 

7 the carbon we export to other countries which, 

8 after being extracted here, is not counted in the 

9 30 percent for the USA. This plan falls short 

10 because extraction and development of dirty 

11 energy is not curtailed.

12 Clean energy development should be 

13 financially supported in this plan, as most 

14 Americans, shown by recent studies would pay more 

15 for clean solar and wind. To be realistic, a no 

16 carbon future needs to be the goal now. Germany 

17 is leading the way and we should be as ambitions. 

18 The expense of climate change storms, fires, and 

19 rising seas are financially greater than clean 

20 energy development. Nuclear propped up, as it is 

21 in Illinois -- that’s where I’m from – and new 

22 plants, as in Georgia, are funded by rate and 

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1 taxpayers. 

2 As I said above, people want to pay for 

3 wind and solar. Propping up old nuclear plants 

4 and developing new will not only suppress real 

5 clean energy growth, but will cost more in terms 

6 of carbon pollution. I say nuclear will grow 

7 carbon pollution because it is considered clean, 

8 and at least in Illinois where I live, these 

9 clean credits are proposed to be traded so we can 

10 increase dirty coal mining.

11 Also in Illinois, we face the 

12 industrialization of horizontal fracking, which 

13 is methane-laden. Not only are fracking and coal 

14 mining depleting and polluting our climate and 

15 water, it appears the mining will involve 

16 horizontal fracking of coal seams. This dirty 

17 extraction can create coal seam fires along with 

18 carbon pollution. All horizontal fracking 

19 creates methane leaks and should be prohibited. 

20 To protect people from carbon pollution is only a 

21 beginning, therefore, fossil-free extraction must 

22 be considered in terms of all methane 

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1 ramifications as well. Methane adds more to 

2 global climate change than does carbon.

3 To sum up, all carbon and methane needs 

4 to stay in the ground, whether natural gas, oil 

5 or coal. To export these, which is intended, is 

6 to increase over the 30 percent in the Clean 

7 Power Plan. We must reduce consumption and use 

8 our stockpiles judiciously while we grow wind, 

9 solar and other clean energy sources.

10 I want to thank you for this time and I 

11 want to thank the people before me who gave 

12 substantiation to my comments which were not as 

13 well substantiated. Thank you.

14 MR. KOERBER: Well, I want to thank you 

15 both for traveling so far to be with us this 

16 morning. I really appreciate it. 

17 Let me ask if the other panel members –

18 MS. CHAMBERLAIN: We didn’t drive.

19 MR. KOERBER: You didn’t drive? Okay. 

20 Have a safe trip home.

21 Next I’d like to call Stephanie Bilenko 

22 and Elaine LaBalme to testify.

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1 MS. LABALME: Shall I go first?

2 MR. KOERBER: Ms. Bilenko, when you’re 

3 ready.

4 MS. LABALME: Oh, I’m Elaine LaBalme.

5 MR. KOERBER: Oh, okay.

6 MS. LABALME: Okay. My name is Elaine 

7 LaBalme, E-l-a-i-n-e, L-a-B-a-l-m-e. I’m here 

8 today speaking as a private citizen. I do work 

9 for PennFuture. I support the EPA’s proposed 

10 standard to limit carbon pollution from power 

11 plants and applaud EPA’s flexible approach to 

12 state implementation. 

13 The clear and present danger from a 

14 rapidly changing climate creates an urgency to 

15 act and we support implementation of the rule. 

16 The Clean Power Plan will reduce power plant 

17 carbon pollution by 30 percent by 2030. In doing 

18 so, it will help us avoid thousands of premature 

19 deaths, hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks, 

20 lower electric bills, and lead to between 55 

21 billion and 93 billion in health and climate 

22 benefits.

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1 The benefits of cleaner air are clear to 

2 the residents of southwestern Pennsylvania who 

3 have struggled with carbon pollution largely from 

4 coal-fired power plants for far too long. That 

5 said, cities including Philadelphia and 

6 Harrisburg are not immune to poor air quality, as 

7 noted in the American Lung Association’s annual 

8 State of the Air report. As a society, we bear 

9 the externalized healthcare costs of those 

10 suffering from asthma and other respiratory 

11 diseases and heart disease, many of these 

12 illnesses triggered by carbon pollution and the 

13 attendant smog brought about by a warming 

14 climate. This is an unfair burden to place on 

15 our citizens and the Clean Power Plan will have 

16 the dual purpose of improving public health as it 

17 alleviates healthcare costs.

18 I’m going to divert from my prepared 

19 comment for just a moment to say that myself, my 

20 husband, and our 12-year-old son moved out here 

21 from California seven years ago, and I am 

22 absolutely staggered by the amount of children on 

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1 our street that have asthma. I didn’t know any 

2 kids with asthma in northern California. My son 

3 has suffered asthma attacks since we got to 

4 Pittsburgh, and I have developed asthma here as 

5 an adult here in Pittsburgh. We need to act on 

6 this.

7 Among the tools available to Pennsylvania 

8 to me the EPA’s carbon rule is energy efficiency, 

9 the least cost resource. And already, we are 

10 seeing utilities switch from coal-fired 

11 generation to natural gas generation, and that 

12 gas is a cleaner-burning fossil fuel. While this 

13 is true, we cannot take our eye off of methane 

14 leakage associated with natural gas production. 

15 Methane, a greenhouse gas 86 times more potent 

16 than CO2 in the first 20 years after it’s 

17 released into the atmosphere could undo the 

18 benefits of the coal-to-gas switch if it’s not 

19 captured and controlled, and the tools currently 

20 exist to do this in a cost-effective manner. We 

21 need to usher in an era of renewable energy in 

22 Pennsylvania, with solar and wind energy 

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1 providing the climate and health benefits we need 

2 in the long term. Setting limits on the carbon 

3 pollution causing climate change will spur 

4 investment and innovation in both energy 

5 efficiency and clean energy technologies. New 

6 solar and wind capacity will not only bring more 

7 clean, domestic energy to the market, but recent 

8 modeling has shown that construction of these 

9 resources creates more jobs than building the 

10 equivalent fossil fuel capacity. 

11 The real economic risk here is inaction. 

12 From 2011 to 2013 alone, damages from extreme 

13 weather events in the US have exceeded 200 

14 billion. We must get this right now. The time 

15 to act is right now. Thank you for your time.

16 MR. KOERBER: Thank you very much.

17 Ms. Bilenko?

18 MS. BILENKO: Stephanie, S-t-e-p-h-a-n-i19 e, Bilenko is B, as in boy, i-l-e-n-k-o. Came 

20 from Illinois along with my other Illinois 

21 fracktivists. 

22 The Clean Power Plan proposed reduced 

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1 carbon emissions on a national basis, and that’s 

2 rolled up into the state standards, 26 percent 

3 below 2005 by 2020, and 30 percent by 2030. You 

4 have set modest and achievable targets which are 

5 not nearly enough according to the new report by 

6 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 

7 the IPCC. 

8 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 

9 Change concludes that global emissions have risen 

10 to unprecedented level despite a growing number 

11 of policies to reduce climate change. Emissions 

12 grew more quickly between 2000 and 2010 than in 

13 each of the three previous decades. 

14 Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions grew at an 

15 average annual rate of 2.2 percent between 2000 

16 and 2010 compared with the growth of 1.3 percent 

17 per year over the period of 1970 to 2000. CO2 

18 emissions from fossil fuels and industrial 

19 processes contributed 65 percent of global 

20 greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. 

21 This is a quote from Ottmar Edenhofer. 

22 He was a co-chair of the Working Group III on the 

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1 IPCC. He says, “Climate policies in line with 

2 the two degrees goal need to aim for substantial 

3 emission reductions. There is a clear message 

4 from science: To avoid dangerous interference 

5 with the climate system, we need to move away 

6 from business as usual.”

7 The scenarios developed by the IPCC 

8 suggest that to have a likely chance of limiting 

9 the increase in global mean temperatures to two 

10 degrees Celsius, that means lowering the 

11 greenhouse gases by 40 to 70 percent -- 40 

12 percent 2010 to mid-century 70 percent, to near13 zero by the end of the century. 

14 One can have doubts if these targets are 

15 realistic. However daunting they may seem, we 

16 really do not have a choice. The EPA and 

17 President Obama have to muster the political will 

18 to hold carbon emitters’ feet to the fire. A 

19 couple of those are Chevron, ExxonMobil, 

20 ConocoPhillips and Peabody Energy. You got to 

21 stop fooling Mother Nature. I mean, pigs --

22 earrings on a pig are just that. 

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1 So we ask you to phase out dirty coal2 fired plants, as my colleague said before; reject 

3 the reliance on frack gas; and I do have a 

4 compendium of scientific and medical report to 

5 hand in. It is peer-reviewed and it is -- it 

6 covers all the bases of, let’s see, air 

7 pollution, water contamination, engineering 

8 problems, radioactive releases, occupational 

9 health and safety hazards, earthquakes, flood 

10 risks. So we want you to reject the reliance on 

11 frack gas, remove nuclear subsidies from the 

12 carbon rules because it’s just kind of based on –

13 you know, like building a new reactor that costs 

14 millions and it takes a long time to get it 

15 online, it’s not reliable, there’s shutdowns. I 

16 mean, our water is warming. I just read last 

17 week that Turkey Point in Florida, they relied on 

18 the canal water to circulate and cool the 

19 reactors. The NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory 

20 Commission’s temperature set was 100 degrees, so 

21 they just changed it to 103. So and then there’s 

22 always, you know, Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three 

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1 Mile Island.

2 I also want you guys to prioritize and 

3 accelerate the deployment of renewable energy and 

4 energy efficiency. The good news is that 

5 renewable energy and energy efficiency 

6 investments create far more jobs per dollar than 

7 fossil fuels, including natural gas. 

8 Specifically, clean energy investment generates 

9 more than three times the number of jobs as the 

10 spending the same amount of money in the fossil 

11 fuel sectors, and the clean energy sector is 

12 growing at a rate nearly double the growth rate 

13 of the overall economy. There is a group -- not 

14 a group -- it’s the Solutions Project. They have 

15 solutions for each state, and I gave you the link 

16 to that. 

17 Please take the warnings of the climate 

18 scientists seriously, throwing off the politics 

19 of the carbon polluters. Develop a plan that 

20 actually impacts climate change, thus helping to 

21 mitigate the serious danger that humanity is 

22 facing. 

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1 And I also have to hand in, and it’s 

2 specific to Pittsburgh since we’re here, it’s a 

3 map. This comes from the Earth Justice Group, 

4 and it shows all the fracking accidents; and 

5 there’s a lot in the Pittsburgh area.

6 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. If you’d like 

7 to leave copies of those with us, we’d be happy 

8 to accept them.

9 MS. BILENKO: Yes.

10 DR. CHAMBERLAIN: Thank you.

11 MS. BILENKO: Thank you.

12 MR. KOERBER: Thank you both.

13 Next I’d like to call Christopher Maxie 

14 and Jay Apt.

15 MR. MAXIE: My name is Christopher Maxie, 

16 C-h-r-i-s-t-o-p-h-e-r, M-a-x-i-e. I am with the 

17 National Wildlife Federation.

18 I am speaking today as a native of 

19 southeastern Ohio. Included in the tri-state 

20 region of Kentucky and West Virginia, my areas 

21 home to some of the largest coal deposits in 

22 North America. I’m going to start by saying, as 

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1 a proud son of Appalachia that I understand the 

2 complex history of coal country. There 

3 generations of workers labor in the mines that 

4 their fathers have labored in an attempt to build 

5 a better future for the children. From the old 

6 mine wars to the days’ battles over environmental 

7 impacts, it is not uncommon to see entire 

8 communities divided by an industry that is once 

9 their livelihood and their poison. 

10 The reckless behavior of these companies 

11 is not impacting Appalachia in a vacuum. At 

12 large, coal-fired power plants are responsible 

13 for 40 percent of America’s carbon pollution. 

14 This is having devastating effects on the Earth’s 

15 climate and is increasing the frequency of 

16 violent and erratic weather. It is severely 

17 compromising Ohio’s fishing and hunting heritage 

18 by increasing invasive species, warming waters 

19 for cold water fish like walleye, and increasing 

20 harmful algae blooms otherwise known as HABs. 

21 It is compromising our ecosystems, our 

22 food systems, and our public health. In fact, 

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1 according to the American Lung Association, 

2 nearly half of all Americans are now living in 

3 areas where air is unsafe to breathe. Put 

4 simply, the unlimited dumping of carbon emissions 

5 by coal-fired power plants is unethical and needs 

6 to stop. 

7 For too long, the CEOs of these big 

8 polluters have deceptively presented the American 

9 public with the false choice of healthy 

10 communities or a healthy economy. The reality is 

11 that with proper investment, we can have both. 

12 Technologies exist to mandate that these 

13 companies meet responsible carbon emission 

14 standards, but we cannot afford to wait for the 

15 day that they prioritize community welfare over 

16 their bottom lines. That is why we have 

17 government regulatory agencies.

18 The Clean Power Plan would drive 

19 investment, allow flexibility for states and 

20 municipalities, and would proactively alleviate 

21 billions of dollars of government spending on 

22 climate-related disaster relief efforts. I want 

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1 to thank the EPA for recognizing that our current 

2 staff -- path is unsustainable and for taking 

3 bold, common sense steps to secure a safe, stable 

4 future for the next generation. Speaking as a 

5 representative of the National Wildlife 

6 Federation, I want to publicly state that there 

7 is no greater threat to the future of wildlife or 

8 to the future of our own species than our 

9 changing climate. And with that, thank you.

10 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

11 Dr. Apt?

12 DR. APT: Thank you. My name is Jay Apt, 

13 J-a-y, A-p-t. At Carnegie Mellon University I’m 

14 a full professor in the The Tepper School of 

15 Business and in the engineering college. I’m 

16 also co-director of the Carnegie Mellon 

17 Electricity Industry Center. 

18 I commend the EPA for searching for 

19 flexible ways to reach the goals of reducing the 

20 atmospheric concentration of pollutants including 

21 carbon dioxide, enhancing energy security, 

22 maintaining electric reliability, and controlling 

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1 costs. The proposed rules are very likely to 

2 decrease forms of pollution that are even more 

3 immediate issues than greenhouse gas control.

4 A recent peer-reviewed research paper in 

5 the New England Journal of Medicine shows that 

6 even well after the Clean Air Act of 1990, 

7 further reductions of particulate matter would 

8 greatly increase life expectancy. The Nation 

9 Academy has reported that, quote, the aggregate 

10 human health damages associated with emissions 

11 from coal-fired facilities in 2005 were 

12 approximately $62 billion. Reducing these costs 

13 at the same time that greenhouse gases are 

14 controlled is a great strength of the proposed 

15 rule and should not be dropped.

16 The flexibility in the rule is 

17 praiseworthy. Rather than mandating a particular 

18 technology, the rule allows the states to choose 

19 what is most appropriate for them, whether it be 

20 nuclear, renewables, efficiency, or fossil fuels 

21 with greenhouse gas capture. I’ve spent much of 

22 the past decade studying renewable power. We’ve 

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1 just published a 328-page book on it. Wind 

2 currently provides about four percent of all the 

3 electric power in the USA. In my view, wind can 

4 certainly grow to provide perhaps 20 percent of 

5 electric power before issues arising from land 

6 use are likely to restrict further wind plants. 

7 Solar may grow greatly from its present 0.2 

8 percent, one-five hundredth of all electric 

9 power, to perhaps five percent. Low pollution 

10 nuclear power now supplies 20 percent of our 

11 electricity. 

12 That leaves a big gap between our needs 

13 and the 40 or 50 percent that nuclear and 

14 renewables together can supply. It’s simply not 

15 in the cards to generate enough power without 

16 using America’s abundant coal and gas resources. 

17 But the issue with coal and natural gas is this. 

18 Long before we run out of fossil fuels, we’ll run 

19 out of atmosphere in which to dump their 

20 combustion products like carbon dioxide. But I 

21 have to say, doomsday predictions of coal’s 

22 demise are overblown. In fact, Bloomberg News 

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1 reported on July 16th that US imports of coal are 

2 going to increase 26 percent this year over last. 

3 That’s imports. 

4 The EPA’s proposed rules allow the use of 

5 America’s reserves of carbon-based fuels without 

6 emitting much carbon dioxide into the air. 

7 That’s a big advantage. The proposal also allows 

8 the use of uranium, transformed into energy by 

9 bright engineers like those at Westinghouse 

10 Nuclear here in Pittsburgh. 

11 I teach in a business school. I believe 

12 in America’s industries’ ability to innovate when 

13 there’s a reason to do so. We did exactly that 

14 in response to the Clean Air Act of 1970. The 

15 number of patents filed for sulfur dioxide 

16 pollution control rose by a factor of 20 after 

17 the rules were promulgated, and we profited by 

18 selling that technology abroad. 

19 EPA’s proposed rule will foster 

20 innovation and create jobs. Coal power plant CO2 

21 pollution control is feasible and the first 

22 plants are being constructed at scale now. 

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1 Southern Company’s 582-megawatt Kemper plant will 

2 be in operation within the next year, as will a 

3 110-megawatt plant in Canada. Just this month, 

4 NRG Energy announced that they are moving forward 

5 on their 240-megawatt coal plant with CO2 capture 

6 in Texas.

7 EPA’s proposed rule provides the proper 

8 incentives for low pollution power and the 

9 flexibility for states to reduce pollution in 

10 sensible ways. It should be adopted. Thank you.

11 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

12 Panel members have any questions? 

13 Questions? No?

14 Thank you both.

15 And Dr. Apt, I’ll not that your testimony 

16 had a graphic in it as well, so we’ll make sure 

17 this gets in the rule-making record.

18 DR. APT: Thank you very much.

19 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

20 Next I’d like to call Pat Lupo and Leah 

21 Schade.

22 Again, my apologies for any 

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1 mispronunciations.

2 DR. SCHADE: Schade. Yeah, that’s okay.

3 MR. KOERBER: Schade. Thank you.

4 MS LUPO: Pat Lupo, P-a-t, L-u-p-o. My 

5 name is Pat Lupo and I’m here today representing 

6 the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania. 

7 I believe that faith communities all over 

8 the world are called to demonstrate their 

9 commitment to environmental action and to do it 

10 in partnership with environmental organizations, 

11 their local communities, and civic and 

12 governmental entities. Speaking from this faith 

13 perspective, our call to stewardship and the 

14 moral imperative of doing no harm to creation, I 

15 urge you to enforce emission guidelines that will 

16 finally limit carbon pollution.

17 The time to act is now. We cannot 

18 continue to take a step backward each time there 

19 is pressure to do so. Our best evidence 

20 indicates that power plants are the largest 

21 stationary source of carbon emissions in the 

22 United States, and a major contributor to climate 

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1 change. 

2 I do not speak as an expert on carbon 

3 pollution or climate change, but I do speak as an 

4 advocate for people, present and future, and for 

5 our wonderful planet. In the words of Pope 

6 Francis, I remind you, “Creation is a gift. It 

7 is a wonderful gift that God has given us, so we 

8 care for it and we use it for the benefit of all, 

9 always with respect and gratitude.” 

10 The tradition of Catholic social teaching 

11 offers a developing and distinctive perspective 

12 on environmental issues. I believe that the 

13 following themes drawn from the tradition are 

14 integral dimensions of ecological responsibility, 

15 and they are: A God-centered and sacramental 

16 view of the universe which grounds human 

17 accountability for the fate of the Earth; a 

18 consistent respect for human life which extends 

19 to respect for all creation; a world view 

20 affirming the ethical significance of global 

21 interdependence and the common good; an ethic of 

22 solidarity promoting cooperation and a just 

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1 structure of sharing in the world community; an 

2 understanding of the universal purpose of created 

3 things which requires equitable use of the 

4 Earth’s resources; an option for the poor which 

5 gives passion to the quest for an equitable and 

6 sustainable world; a conception of authentic 

7 development which offers the direction for 

8 progress that respects human dignity and the 

9 limits of material growth.

10 As Benedictines, we are taught to listen 

11 with the ear of our heart. When we do -- when we 

12 all do this, then our view of the Earth will 

13 bring us to openness and compassion for the 

14 Earth. Our religious traditions call us to 

15 stewardship, a call tied to environmental 

16 responsibility and civic engagement. 

17 As you consider emission guidelines to 

18 provide carbon limits on fossil fuel power 

19 plants, I urge you to set limits that actually do 

20 the job of reducing pollution and global climate 

21 change. The proposed limits are a very small 

22 beginning, but the proposed will -- rule will 

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1 help carbon pollution, uphold human life, and 

2 demonstrate a greater respect for the planet. It 

3 needs to be done and it needs to be done now and 

4 not in some future decade. Thank you.

5 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

6 Reverend Schade?

7 DR. SCHADE: The Reverend Dr. Leah 

8 Schade, spelled L-e-a-h, S-c-h-a-d-e. 

9 First, I want to thank the EPA and 

10 Administrator McCarthy for paying serious 

11 attention to the issue of carbon emissions and 

12 their deleterious effect on our planet’s 

13 atmosphere. I commend you for giving citizens 

14 the opportunity to be heard on this important 

15 issue. 

16 The proposed rule is well researched with 

17 solid background in science regarding greenhouse 

18 gases, their effect on the planet, and their 

19 negative impact on the public health. It offers 

20 a wide range of options for states and power 

21 generators to meet the new requirements to reduce 

22 greenhouse gases.

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1 As a pastor who has particular concern 

2 for the least of these, I was especially pleased 

3 to see attention given to the health of children 

4 when weighing the input of stakeholders. I come 

5 today on behalf of myself, my husband and two 

6 young children, my congregation, United in Christ 

7 Lutheran Church in Lewisburg, the Upper 

8 Susquehanna Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran 

9 Church in America, the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry 

10 of Pennsylvania, and the Interfaith Sacred Earth 

11 Coalition of the Susquehanna Valley to express my 

12 support for the new EPA rule to reduce carbon 

13 pollution even while it is under attack from 

14 industry groups that want to weaken this life15 saving measure.

16 As a clergy person, you can be sure of my 

17 backing of this proposal. However, as a member 

18 of my Senate’s task force on slick water 

19 hydraulic fracturing which spent two years 

20 studying the ethical and moral issues surrounding 

21 fracking, and as a member of several 

22 environmental groups that study and bear witness 

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1 to the harmful effects of the shale gas industry 

2 in our state and across the country, I must raise 

3 concerns that are not addressed in EPA’s proposed 

4 rules. 

5 Three years ago, I gave testimony in 

6 support of the EPA’s mercury and air toxins rule, 

7 which at the time was a strong measure for 

8 reducing poisons from the coal industry. An 

9 unexpected and harmful effect of this rule, 

10 however, is that it helped to pave the way for 

11 the shale gas industry to establish itself in our 

12 state and commit untold damage to our air, water, 

13 state and private lands, and public health. I 

14 fear that this new rule on carbon emissions will 

15 only further enable the shale gas and oil 

16 industries to secure its hold in Pennsylvania and 

17 do still more damage to ecological and human 

18 health. 

19 Yes, the new EPA rules will force 

20 Pennsylvania to reduce its air pollution and burn 

21 less coal, but how we adjust to less coal will 

22 make all the difference. If we build new green 

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1 energy infrastructure and increase energy 

2 efficiency, our air will be cleaner and 

3 greenhouse gases will be reduced. But if we 

4 replace coal with fracked gas, we will only be 

5 making our air and atmosphere worse. These 

6 rules, as written, will only codify the 

7 transition from coal to gas that is already 

8 underway. As well, the rule gives implicit 

9 consent to burn more trash, tires, coal sludge 

10 and other forms of toxic waste for electricity. 

11 So while I believe the proposal is a good first 

12 step, it is not only inadequate, it will have the 

13 unintended consequence of replacing one dirty 

14 fuel with many others. Methane is a greenhouse 

15 gas even more potent than carbon. The rule does 

16 not address total lifecycle emissions from 

17 methane gas-fired plants, including leakage 

18 during production, processing and transmission, 

19 emissions flarings at gas wells, and energy 

20 consumed in production and transport of liquefied 

21 natural gas. Researchers found methane leaks --

22 leak rates of 100 to 1,000 times greater than EPA 

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1 estimates at well pads in Pennsylvania, and the 

2 EPA’s office of the Inspector General just issued 

3 a report citing the agency’s failures to manage 

4 methane leaks from pipelines.

5 Instead of promoting a strategy that 

6 perpetuates fossil fuels and fracking, and make 

7 no mistake, shale gas is a fossil fuel, the 

8 proposed rule should include an aggressive 

9 pursuit of renewables, energy efficiency, and 

10 conservation. The shale gas and oil are not the 

11 solution to carbon pollution in the United 

12 States. They are, in fact, and even worse enemy. 

13 The rule should set absolute reduction targets 

14 for total greenhouse emissions from each state. 

15 Otherwise, emissions will continue to grow as 

16 more energy is consumed. 

17 I urge that the rule be substantially 

18 amended with policies that expressly favor 

19 stringent conservation standards, as well as 

20 increasing sourcing of electricity from renewable 

21 energy which is emission free. I am committed to 

22 helping people of faith learn how to do their 

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1 part to care for God’s creation and support eco 

2 justice issues. 

3 I call for the EPA to not only stand its 

4 ground with this rule, but to actually strengthen 

5 and expand it in order to put in place the 

6 strongest protections possible to defend public 

7 health, the fragile atmosphere of our planet, and 

8 the communities that will bear the cost and 

9 suffering from our addiction to fossil fuels and 

10 greenhouse gases. Thank you.

11 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. 

12 Any questions? No? Okay. Thank you 

13 both.

14 Well, I’m -- oh, here comes some more 

15 cards. Thank you.

16 Next I’d like to call Nikki Silvestri and 

17 Susan Carty. Five minutes each. When it flashes 

18 yellow, you got one minute.

19 MS. SILVESTRI: Good morning.

20 MR. KOERBER: Good morning.

21 MS. SILVESTRI: My name is Nikki 

22 Silvestri and I’m the executive director of Green 

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1 for All, which is a national environmental 

2 organization working to make sure that vulnerable 

3 populations benefit from the new clean, green 

4 economy.

5 Green for All supports the EPA carbon 

6 emission standards, as do I. I’m here to say, as 

7 well, that people of color, likely minority 

8 voters, also support the EPA clean emission 

9 standards. The problem is that vulnerable 

10 populations, people of color, low income people, 

11 children, the elderly, are disproportionately 

12 affected by climate change, and by carbon 

13 emissions in particular. 

14 Sixty-eight percent of African-Americans 

15 live near a coal plant. It affects our health, 

16 it affects our well-being, and it affects our 

17 ability to make money in ways that are actually 

18 good for our families. When it comes to climate 

19 change overall, people of color are hit first and 

20 worst because of historical disenfranchisement of 

21 our communities. 

22 Green for All wanted to know once and for 

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1 all whether or not vulnerable populations across 

2 the country, African-Americans, Latinos and Asian 

3 Americans would support the carbon emission 

4 standards so that there just wouldn’t be any 

5 argument. We wanted to have data and we wanted 

6 to have facts, so we conducted a national poll 

7 last month and I’m here to share the results of 

8 those polls with you.

9 Fifty percent of likely minority voters 

10 across the country believe that the carbon 

11 emission standards are going to increase their 

12 energy prices and are going to cut jobs. 

13 However, 75 percent of those same likely minority 

14 voters also believe that in the long term, the 

15 carbon emission standards are going to make them 

16 healthier, it’s going to spur innovation, and 

17 it’s going to create jobs. So what we found from 

18 the poll is that our folks have a complex 

19 understanding of the carbon emission standards. 

20 They are actually willing to accept short-term 

21 costs if that’s what it takes so that in the long 

22 term they’ll be healthy.

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1 What were the most important things to 

2 them when it came to the carbon emission 

3 standards? At the top of the list was training 

4 people who are in the current energy economy in 

5 to the new renewable energy economy. There was a 

6 story of a gentleman in the Midwest who worked 

7 for a coal mining plant. He was put out of a job 

8 because of water shortages and a renewable energy 

9 company hired him. Those are the kind of stories 

10 that really impact African Americans, Latinos and 

11 Asian Americans across the country, the assurance 

12 that people who are currently in the economy will 

13 continue to have jobs and likelihood for their 

14 family.

15 Finally, what I wanted to share is why 

16 are the carbon emission standards important at 

17 all. How do likely minority voters actually 

18 process climate change in the environment and 

19 what’s the most important thing to them? At the 

20 very top of the -- we thought it was going to be 

21 the economy. But at the very top of the list it 

22 was the moral obligation to leave a healthy 

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1 planet for our children. The plurality actually 

2 said that that was the most important thing to 

3 them. So the morality message hits likely 

4 minority voters and people of color across the 

5 country. 

6 The second thing was jobs and the 

7 economy, and the third thing was health. 

8 So I wanted to share these results just 

9 to let you know that the carbon emission 

10 standards are very, very important to those most 

11 impacted by climate change. We’re ready to fight 

12 for it, we’re ready to support it, and we’re 

13 ready to work with the states that we live in to 

14 come up with ways to meet the carbon emission 

15 standards that actually to get to what’s 

16 important to us. Thank you.

17 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

18 MS. SILVESTRI: I’m also prepared to 

19 leave a copy of the poll with you.

20 MR. KOERBER: That will be great. We’ll 

21 make sure that gets included in the record for 

22 the rule making. Thank you.

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1 Ms. Carty?

2 MS. CARTY: Good morning. My name is 

3 Susan Carty, C-a-r-t-y, and I’m the president of 

4 the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania for 

5 whom I’m speaking. We thank you sincerely for 

6 the opportunity to speak with you today. But 

7 first I would like to ask you to take a few 

8 seconds to consider a different world. 

9 Imagine a world where all invisible gases 

10 were infused with color and odor. Imagine the 

11 impact of that. Consider the visual of an 

12 interstate highway snaking across the state as a 

13 massive, thickly-fogged purple corridor. Who 

14 would breathe that? You, your children, your 

15 grandchildren, the infirm, the elderly? Who 

16 would? And who would act and who would block 

17 your action? 

18 The League is sensitive to the role that 

19 Pennsylvania plays in carbon dioxide emissions 

20 and the costs that it incurs. We’re the fourth 

21 largest coal producer in the nation. Seventy22 five percent of our bituminous coal generates 

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1 over half of the electricity in the country. We 

2 produce 56 percent of Pennsylvania’s energy from 

3 coal, while we export 30 percent. At the same 

4 time, we understand that coal power generating 

5 plants are responsible for approximately 30 

6 percent of carbon emissions. 

7 Coal pollution, carbon pollution has been 

8 identified as the greenhouse gas that 

9 significantly contributes to carbon -- climate 

10 change. That same carbon pollution is 

11 responsible for premature deaths, risks of 

12 asthma, respiratory disease, and hundreds of 

13 thousands of missed work and low activity days. 

14 The costs of these emissions relative to 

15 climate impact are increasingly daunting for 

16 states and taxpayers. According to the Lung 

17 Association, dirty air intensified by climate 

18 change disproportionately affects low income 

19 communities, as well as children, seniors, and 

20 those who work or play outdoors. 

21 The proposed rule for existing power 

22 plants is only a first step in fulfilling our 

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1 obligation to protect the health of our residents 

2 while meeting the challenge of climate change. 

3 The League urges the EPA to continue to take 

4 action in regulation of methane emissions as

5 prescribed in the Climate Action Plan from March 

6 2014 Strategy to Reduce Methane Emissions. 

7 Natural gas is primarily methane. 

8 Please note that we also have a link in 

9 our report for you that refers to the Compendium 

10 dated July 10th, 2014 from the Scientific, 

11 Medical and Media Findings Demonstrating the 

12 Risks and Harms of Fracking. We also have a link 

13 for you to a Colorado investigation that is 

14 concerned about a spike in fetal abnormalities 

15 that are near gas drilling sites. 

16 According to the Intergovernmental Panel 

17 on Climate Change, methane as a greenhouse gas is 

18 more than 80 times potent as carbon dioxide over 

19 a 20-year period. Wellheads, pipes, valves, 

20 pressures, and even abandoned wells are releasing 

21 increasing volumes of methane into our 

22 atmosphere. About 30 percent of all methane 

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1 emissions are derived from natural gas and 

2 petroleum systems. 

3 Best practices and appropriate regulation 

4 must be enacted and enforced to reduce this 

5 greenhouse gas. EPA must assume responsibility 

6 for setting the standards to minimize the risk. 

7 On your website, quote, Pound for pound, 

8 the comparative impact of methane on climate 

9 change is more than 20 times greater than carbon 

10 dioxide over a 100-year period, end quote.

11 In 2012, when EPA proposed the first-ever 

12 standards to control industrial pollution from 

13 power plants, the League joined with its 

14 environmental and social justice allies in 

15 collecting the largest number of comments ever 

16 submitted in review for EPA regulation. More 

17 than three million comments were presented in 

18 support of the proposed rules of the new power 

19 plants. 

20 We, again, here today add our voice in 

21 defense of the proposed rule change. This 

22 proposal is reasonable. It’s an essential step 

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1 in addressing climate change. We have a moral 

2 obligation to do this for our children and to 

3 provide future generations with a cleaner, safer, 

4 and more stable environment. We trust that you 

5 will refer to our national air quality positions 

6 based on study and consensus. Thank you.

7 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. 

8 Questions? No? Okay.

9 And while we’re waiting for the card, let 

10 me --

11 Thank you so much. We’ll make sure that 

12 gets in the record.

13 Let me thank the audience for listening 

14 quietly and being very respectful of our 

15 speakers. I appreciate it, and they certainly 

16 appreciate it as well.

17 Next I’d like to call Annette Shimer and 

18 Matt Russell.

19 MR. KOERBER: Ms. Shimer, you can go 

20 first.

21 MS. SHIMER: Annette Shimer, S-h-i-m-e-r. 

22 I am Annette Shimer, president of the League of 

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1 Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh. I am also a 

2 former member of the Allegheny County Air Quality 

3 Advisory Committee.

4 The League recognizes that the EPA has 

5 held countless public listening sessions leading 

6 up to the creation of this rule, and we commend 

7 the EPA for holding this public hearing. For 

8 decades, the League has supported federal 

9 controls of air pollution from many sources and 

10 promoted coordination of government 

11 responsibilities and activities. In Allegheny 

12 County, the League began to study the effects of 

13 air pollution in the early 1970s and has since 

14 advocated for effective air pollution control and 

15 adequately funded and staffed agencies. We have 

16 supported participated in regional air pollution 

17 control arrangements.

18 Over many years, US citizens have been 

19 expected to trade respiratory health for industry 

20 and business prosperity. However, through the 

21 efforts of citizens and government agencies, 

22 concentrations of many pollutants emitted into 

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1 the air have been significantly reduced and 

2 public health has been improved. For the most 

3 part, business has succeeded and thrived.

4 Now citizens are being asked by industry 

5 and business interests to trade the future health 

6 of the plant for their prosperity. Climate 

7 change brought on by carbon and methane emissions 

8 is beginning to raise the global temperature, 

9 which creates more extreme weather events and 

10 disrupt both agricultural patterns and ocean acid 

11 levels, endangering food production.

12 We have a moral obligation to change that 

13 tradeoff. We can do so by setting the first ever 

14 limits on carbon pollution from power plants to 

15 reduce the 40 percent of the carbon pollution in 

16 the United States that they produce. 

17 The EPA proposed rule revises the 

18 tradeoff to better protect the health of the 

19 Earth and its inhabitants, including future human 

20 generations. We applaud that proposal.

21 Here in Allegheny County, we remember the 

22 success of the 1970's implementation strategy for 

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1 the Clean Air Act of federal goals and the state 

2 implementation plan that delegated authority to 

3 the county to address unique conditions. We 

4 believe that the EPA's proposal to provide 

5 flexibility to the state and build on state 

6 leadership to achieve carbon reductions is 

7 appropriate and will be effective. Pennsylvania 

8 already has programs in place that could be part 

9 of its individual or regional plan to reduce 

10 carbon pollution, including energy efficient 

11 codes for residential and commercial buildings, 

12 renewable energy portfolio standards or goals.

13 The League also looks forward to the 

14 economic impact of innovation and investment in 

15 new clean energy technologies that will create a 

16 new generation of clean energy jobs. The return 

17 on that investment will be substantial. Since 

18 1970, every dollar invested in compliance with 

19 Clean Air Act standards has yield $4 to $8 in 

20 economic benefits. In addition, some of the 

21 economic devastation of extreme weather events 

22 will be avoided. 

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1 We understand that there will be rate 

2 increases for electric power, and that the 

3 effects of increased rates are concerns that 

4 business and industry are voices. But the prices 

5 of the products and services that they provide 

6 should cover all the costs of production, 

7 offloading costs on the public in the form of 

8 healthcare expenses and now climate change 

9 effects is a violation of the basic market-based 

10 economic system that business interests profess 

11 to support.

12 We also understand the possible hardships 

13 of rate increases for low income people. On the 

14 other hand, climate change effects often involve 

15 disproportionately on these same people.

16 Finally, we have concerns with the 

17 reputed advantage of gas over coal. The League 

18 study on Marcellus shale gas extraction noted 

19 shale gas production has an 8 to 11 percent large 

20 greenhouse gas footprint than conventional gas 

21 over the lifecycle, although this could change 

22 with improved practices. We hope that eventually 

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1 EPA will address methane emissions. Thank you.

2 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. 

3 Could somebody close the door? We're 

4 getting some noise from the hallway and don't 

5 want to disturb the speakers. 

6 We do have extra chairs up front here, 

7 and if people don't want to sit in the front row, 

8 you can always wheel the chairs to the back. 

9 It's a cascade effect. I know.

10 Mr. Russell?

11 MR. RUSSELL: Matt Russell, M-a-t-t, R-u12 s-s-e-l. 

13 Good morning. My name is Matt Russell. 

14 I'm a fifth generation Iowa farmer. I've been 

15 involved in agriculture my entire life, starting 

16 with my parents' farm and buying my own farm in 

17 2005 that I co-own and operate with my spouse, 

18 who works full-time on the farm, and building a 

19 career, educating about and advocating for 

20 agriculture, including earning a Master's in 

21 rural sociology from Iowa State. Currently, I'm 

22 on staff at the Drake University Agricultural Law 

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1 Center, where I work on food and agriculture 

2 policy.

3 Global climate change is the most 

4 important human problem of my lifetime. The 

5 consequences of a changing climate aren't that 

6 big of a problem for the planet. It's probably 

7 not even that big of a problem for life 

8 continuing to exist on the planet, but the 

9 climate change is a huge problem for human life.

10 In the next decade we're going to move 

11 beyond debating whether to deal with climate 

12 change to an all-out race against the clock to 

13 adapt the consequences as well as to innovate to 

14 reverse the causes.

15 As a farmer, I rely on science every day 

16 to help grow my crops and produce my livestock. 

17 I also depend on and trust the climate scientists 

18 who are sounding the alarm about what climate 

19 change is going to mean for my farm.

20 The proposed EPA standard on carbon 

21 emissions is a positive step toward both reducing 

22 the impacts of climate change on agriculture and 

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1 creating a dynamic where farmers use our land and 

2 know-how to develop clean energy-producing 

3 technologies and to develop practices that can 

4 pull increasing amounts of carbon out of the 

5 atmosphere.

6 As farmers, our business is to respond to 

7 very basic human needs, growing the feed, fiber, 

8 and fuel the world demands. We don't do this in 

9 an office or factories. We do it in nature. The 

10 weather on a daily basis is absolutely essential 

11 to our individual livelihoods. The climate is 

12 critical for farmers to be able to feed 7 billion 

13 people living on planet Earth.

14 Extreme weather over the past decade has 

15 changed the discussion among farmers. We've seen 

16 firsthand what the climate scientists have said 

17 is going to happen. Just in the past year, 

18 American farmers have seen historic droughts, 

19 historic flooding, historic fires, and historic 

20 winds. We're dealing with new pest infestations, 

21 super weeds, and crop diseases fueled by a 

22 changing climate.

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1 In the last year and a half on my farm we 

2 experienced snow in May. We've broken rainfall 

3 records and drought records. We've broken high 

4 temperate records and low temperature records, 

5 and last year we had 800,000 acres of Iowa 

6 farmland that went unplanted because of wet 

7 conditions, followed by yield losses because of 

8 dry weather in subsequent months, and we're back 

9 into that pattern. Record rainfall in June this 

10 year, and now we're going into the third week of 

11 not a drop of rain on our farm, and my parents, 

12 they haven't had rain on their farm since July 

13 5th.

14 Some farmers are still in the camp of 

15 denying that humans are causing climate change, 

16 but every farmer is scrambling to adjust to the 

17 increase in extreme weather. In just the last 

18 decade, there's been this intense increase in the 

19 anxiety about going as hard as you can when you 

20 can because you just don't know when the weather 

21 is going to stop you in your tracks because it 

22 has changed. A mistake in timing or missing a 

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1 window is the difference between having and not 

2 having the crop. Last year, those 800,000 

3 unplanted acres in Iowa proved this point.

4 Climate change is real. It's happening. 

5 It's going to get worse, and it's already causing 

6 great harm to American farms. The future 

7 predicted by climate scientists looks like 

8 present day California with crop failures, 

9 increased food cost, lost jobs, and battles over 

10 resources.

11 But American farmers are not just 

12 victims. We can be part of the solution. We can 

13 innovate. We can implement, and we can lead the 

14 world in solving the problems of climate change.

15 US farmers may be lagging behind on 

16 addressing climate change politically, but we are 

17 starting to step up. Agriculture will play a 

18 huge role in reducing emissions and actually 

19 putting carbon back in the ground. We're 

20 developing cover crops, using no till, and buying 

21 higher efficiency equipment. 

22 We can also generate clean energy. For 

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1 example, Pennsylvania joins Iowa as a leader in 

2 wind energy. Dairy farmers are developing 

3 methane digesters, turning manure into 

4 electricity. Farmers have developed the biofuels 

5 industry. Reducing our dependence on the most 

6 polluting power plants increases the ability of 

7 American farmers to innovate on our land. 

8 American farmers are going to step up and be 

9 counted on to lead the world in battling climate 

10 change. 

11 I speak for a lot of American farmers 

12 when I say let's stop wasting our time debating 

13 the existence of climate change. Let's stop 

14 wringing our hands because this problem is going 

15 to take resources to solve. We need to use our 

16 time and money to find ways to protect the 

17 climate we depend on. Time and again, American 

18 agriculture has led the world in solving big 

19 problems. We are ready to put our shoulders to 

20 the wheel to help solve this one. Thank you.

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. And thank 

22 you for traveling so far to be with us today.

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1 MR. RUSSELL: Thank you.

2 MR. KOERBER: Appreciate it.

3 Next I'd like to hear from Peter Bixler 

4 and Jackson Morris.

5 Mr. Bixler?

6 MR. BIXLER: Hello. My name is Peter 

7 Bixler, and I live in Philadelphia with my sister 

8 and my parents.

9 I came all the way from Philadelphia to 

10 Pittsburgh to say how important this issue is to 

11 my family and to my community.

12 I thank the EPA for proposing this long 

13 overdue effort to limit carbon pollution from 

14 power plants. I'm concerned with the future of 

15 the world and that it will be changed 

16 irreversibly due to the climate change.

17 A couple years ago my family took a 

18 vacation to Alaska, and we saw an amazing glacier 

19 there. I'm concerned that I won't be able to 

20 visit that same glacier with my children because 

21 it will have vanished due to change in climate.

22 I notice the effects of global warming 

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1 every day around me. This winter was the coldest 

2 one I've ever experienced, and my aunt and uncle 

3 own a house down by the Jersey Shore. And when I 

4 went to visit them a couple years ago, I saw the 

5 devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy. 

6 Scientists say that these major weather events 

7 are only going to keep happening over and over 

8 because of the change in climate due to humans.

9 Many students at my school have asthma, 

10 and the climate is only exacerbating their 

11 asthma. One of my friends almost died because of 

12 an asthma attack on the bus.

13 My mom is a physician in the Philadelphia 

14 Public Health System, and she keeps telling me 

15 about all her patients who are plagued by 

16 respiratory issues.

17 Once again, I would like to thank the EPA 

18 for coming to Pennsylvania and urge you to enact 

19 the proposed standards as soon as possible. 

20 Thank you.

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. That was 

22 wonderful.

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1 Mr. Morris?

2 MR. MORRIS: Yes. Jackson Morris, M-o-r3 r-r-i-s.

4 Good morning. My name is Jackson Morris. 

5 I'm director of Eastern Energy of the Natural 

6 Resources Defense Council and a native 

7 Pennsylvanian who traveled across the state from 

8 my family farm in the Susquehanna Valley to 

9 testify today. 

10 NRDC is a nonprofit environmental 

11 organization with more than 1.4 million members 

12 and online activists, including over 54,000 in 

13 Pennsylvania. Since our founding in 1970, our 

14 lawyers, scientists, and other environmental 

15 specialists have worked to protect the world's 

16 natural resources, its public health, and the 

17 environment. 

18 NRDC's top institutional priority is 

19 curbing global warming emissions and building the 

20 clean energy economy. I'm also a father of 

21 three, and my top personal priority is taking 

22 care of my kids. For both of those reasons, I'm 

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1 here to support EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan.

2 It is the largest single step ever taken 

3 to reduce global warming emissions in this 

4 country. By reducing emissions, we will reduce 

5 the risk of climate impacts for our children, 

6 including the droughts, severe storms, and 

7 climate-change-related health problems such as 

8 respiratory problems that we are already 

9 experiencing in Pennsylvania and across the 

10 country.

11 The proposed Clean Power Plan will also 

12 yield other significant benefits for us here in 

13 the Keystone state. Modeling shows that pursuing 

14 carbon reductions through a state plan that ramps 

15 up our investments in energy efficiency and 

16 renewable energy can yield more than 5,000 jobs 

17 by 2020 and save families and businesses over 

18 $450 million in energy costs. These reductions 

19 will also prevent thousands of asthma attacks, 

20 heart attacks, and other respiratory illnesses by 

21 cutting air pollution from power plants.

22 In Pennsylvania we already have some good 

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1 ongoing models that will help us to meet the 

2 state target of a 32 percent reduction of carbon 

3 intensity by 2030. In fact, since EPA used 

4 fairly conservative assumptions to generate its 

5 estimates of our renewable energy and energy 

6 efficiency potential, Pennsylvania could harvest 

7 significantly greater cost effective carbon 

8 reductions with increasing benefits.

9 On energy efficiency, the state's energy 

10 efficiency law, Pennsylvania Act 129, enacted in 

11 2008, has already delivered huge cash in energy 

12 savings to customers and is set to deliver many 

13 more. Customers of the state's largest 

14 distribution utility PICO have saved roughly $331 

15 million since the law was first implemented, and 

16 customers of PPL, my own utility, have saved 

17 roughly $428 million.

18 There's huge potential to do more on 

19 efficiency in Pennsylvania. The state's own 

20 analysis shows we can cost effectively cut more 

21 than 27 percent of our forecasted energy use over 

22 the next 10 years using currently available 

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1 technology. By contrast, EPA assumes cumulative 

2 energy savings in 2029 of just over 11 percent.

3 On the renewable energy front, while the 

4 state's alternative energy portfolio standard 

5 definitely needs to be strengthened, Pennsylvania 

6 is well positioned to ramp up. Even in its 

7 currently relatively modest form, the standard 

8 has already driven the installation of more than 

9 1,300 megawatts of wind power, 25 wind farms, 

10 providing 1.5 percent of the state's energy in 

11 2013 and powering the equivalent of 300,000 

12 homes.

13 A solid solar power foundation has been 

14 established as well. There are more than 440 

15 solar companies in our state, employing 2,900 

16 workers and are installed solar capacity is 11th 

17 in the nation. 

18 We can give Pennsylvania more jobs, more 

19 energy savings, a more stable climate, and 

20 healthier families by meeting and exceeding the 

21 targets in the proposed plan.

22 NRDC also strongly supports EPA's 

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1 proposal to allow states to pursue regional 

2 multistate approaches to compliance. As the 

3 Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has 

4 demonstrated, a regional approach as a number of 

5 advantages. These include but are not limited to 

6 greater flexibility for compliance entities, 

7 better alignment with energy markets, since 

8 electricity does not stop at state borders, and 

9 lower net cost for compliance, which benefits 

10 consumers. 

11 In fact, a recent report from the 

12 analysis group found that RGGI has produced in 

13 total $1.6 billion in net present economic value 

14 for the 10 states in RGGI. Such interstate value 

15 might be achieved by linking the three energy 

16 intensive states of Ohio, West Virginia, and 

17 Pennsylvania, for example, and their assets as 

18 I'll outline below, to achieve these benefits at 

19 the lowest cost.

20 In order to facilitate such discussions 

21 amongst states interested in pursuing regional 

22 approaches, we strongly urge the EPA to publish 

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1 and release mass-based targets to accompany the 

2 rates-based targets included in the proposed 

3 rule. Doing so will reduce the uncertainty for 

4 state regulators, giving both the RGGI states and 

5 other state a clearer picture of their mass-based 

6 obligations as they weigh compliance options and 

7 engage in regional conversations.

8 All this brings me to Ohio, the Buckeye 

9 state. In cutting carbon emissions from power 

10 plants, Ohio is already of the game with robust 

11 energy efficiency and renewable energy sector in 

12 place. Ohio's efficiency and renewable's law is 

13 on hold for two years, but the law, once fully 

14 implemented, can be an important part of the 

15 calculus as the state devises a compliance plan. 

16 These energy efficiency investments can reduce 

17 carbon emissions by a conservative 32 million 

18 tons in Ohio, the amount emitted by 6.7 million 

19 cars.

20 Pennsylvania's neighbor to the south, 

21 West Virginia, also has much to gain from its 

22 very achievable and realistic target under the 

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1 Clean Power Plan. The state is the third 

2 windiest east of the Mississippi and already home 

3 to six large wind farms. In West Virginia 

4 there's enough wind power to potentially supply 

5 almost 20 percent of the state's electric needs. 

6 Electric rates that have skyrocketed recently due 

7 to an overreliance on one fuel source, coal, can 

8 be brought down as the state capitalizes on its 

9 largely untapped energy efficiency resources, 

10 saving consumers money on energy and creating 

11 jobs simultaneously.

12 Got it. EPA's proposed plan is an 

13 important step forward for the nation. We must 

14 now work to build on this proposal and adopt an 

15 even stronger final rule next year to benefit not 

16 only Pennsylvanians' but Ohioans', West 

17 Virginians', and economies across the nation. In 

18 the meantime, regulators in these states can get 

19 busy crafting smart compliance plans that will 

20 make them national clean energy leaders. 

21 We look forward to continuing to work 

22 with EPA and state decision makers in 

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1 Pennsylvania and beyond, to strengthen the Clean 

2 Power Plan proposal and pursue smart state 

3 approaches to meeting and beating the required 

4 emissions reductions, doing so will maximize job 

5 creation, bill savings, and public health 

6 benefits. Thank you.

7 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

8 Mr. Bixler, Mr. Morris, thank you both 

9 very much. Thank you both, gentlemen.

10 I'd like to call Jonathan Roberson and 

11 Isa Muhammad. 

12 MR. ROBERSON: Good morning. I am 

13 Jonathan -- attorney Jonathan Roberson, 154 North 

14 Bellfield Avenue, Apartment 66 in the Oakland 

15 neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

16 I am here for two purposes, one, to

17 support the EPA regs, proposed EPA regulations as 

18 a necessary first step to deal with the clean air 

19 economy and also to suggest the most important 

20 potential technological tool to deal with the 

21 environment and energy.

22 On the EPA regs, I want to -- while 

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1 supporting the proposed EPA's regs as an 

2 essential first step to dealing with the species3 threatening danger of global warming, I want to 

4 endorse the -- as the colleague from the National 

5 Resources Defense Council aptly put it, a clean 

6 air economy. And we have to -- I want to express 

7 appreciation and support for my brothers and 

8 sisters in the Mine Workers Union, especially the 

9 coal miners who are present here today, and 

10 appreciate their feelings about -- the love/hate 

11 relationship with being dark as a dungeon way 

12 down in the mines.

13 We must work with the UMW in making sure 

14 the workers are protected economically, and that 

15 any jobs that are lost because of essential 

16 environmental protection must be replaced with 

17 good union jobs. And the union will give us --

18 the Miner Workers Union I'm sure will play an 

19 important role in guiding us in that direction.

20 On the technology issue, the critical --

21 there's one critical piece of technology in not 

22 only providing clean air economy, and stopping 

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1 global warming, and protecting our air -- and 

2 protecting in energy conversation, and it's not 

3 high tech. It's the old-fashioned bus. A public 

4 transit vehicle replaces many, many cars that use 

5 energy, spew exhaust, and take space, valuable 

6 space when they're parked. It is really an 

7 essential part of any planning, not only for the 

8 environment but for our cities, and its increased 

9 use of the public transit system. And I urge us 

10 all, EPA and us all to support adequate funding 

11 and a strong public transit system. 

12 Thank you very much. 

13 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

14 Mr. Muhammad? 

15 MR. MUHAMMAD: Yes, sir. My name is Isa 

16 Mohammed, I-s-a, first name. Last name, M-u-h-a17 m-m-a-d. I am from Akron, Ohio, and I'm here to 

18 give my testimony.

19 As citizens of the United States of 

20 America, we have an obligation to protect fellow 

21 citizens, our children, and our future 

22 generations from the impacts of climate change by 

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1 addressing this main issue, carbon pollution from 

2 power plants.

3 The Environmental Protection Agency's 

4 Clean Power Plan is an answer to this problem. 

5 This plan slashes dangerous carbon pollution 

6 being dumped into our air, land, and water. This 

7 proposal puts investments in energy efficiency 

8 and clean energy that will power the 21st 

9 century. The Clean Power Plan promotes healthy 

10 living in our communities along with a healthy 

11 economy.

12 Citizens should support cutting carbon 

13 pollution because it is driving changes in our 

14 weather that are dangerous to the environment, 

15 and it is costly.

16 Power plants and major industrial 

17 businesses emitted more than 100 million metric 

18 tons of carbon pollution in the environment in 

19 the year 2012. This is too much pollution for 

20 the citizens to suffer from. In the city of 

21 Akron, for example, we have power plants and 

22 industrial businesses in our third, fourth, and 

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1 fifth wards that on a daily basis release 

2 chemicals that are hurting our environment in 

3 urban areas. It is hard to promote healthy 

4 living in our communities when we are breathing 

5 toxins on a daily basis.

6 Smog levels are causing asthma-like 

7 symptoms in our communities, and these numbers 

8 are rising among young children. 

9 Temperature and precipitation patterns 

10 can affect the lifecycle and distribution of 

11 insects that transport diseases to pose health 

12 problems to our citizens. Extreme weather events 

13 are costing the United States hundreds of 

14 millions of dollars to rebuild and to recover 

15 from. FEMA has issued 15 major disaster 

16 declarations in the past 10 years for the Ohio 

17 region that includes heavy rains and major storm 

18 damage, which used to be unheard of.

19 We need the Clean Power Plan to allow the 

20 flexibility of states to develop customized plans 

21 that will keep our energy affordable and reliable 

22 while ensuring the safety of the public. Each 

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1 state will have the ability to create renewable 

2 solutions uniquely to their own success.

3 The Clean Power Plan eliminates carbon 

4 pollution and provides fresh air for the 

5 communities across the country. This will 

6 enhance our facilities and our communities to 

7 provide jobs for the improvement of our land, 

8 air, and water qualities to stimulate the local 

9 economies.

10 This concludes my written testimony. 

11 Thank you.

12 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

13 Next I'd like to call John Ziak, and John 

14 Eich. Again, apologies for any 

15 mispronunciations.

16 MR. ZIAK: No problem.

17 MR. KOERBER: I'm sure you'll correct me 

18 if I'm too far off base.

19 MR. ZIAK: Hello. I'm Dr. John Ziak from 

20 State College Pennsylvania. I'm a statistician 

21 working with social science research at Penn 

22 State. I'm here to express my personal support 

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1 for the EPA's proposed carbon emissions 

2 limitations.

3 Last year I had the amazing opportunity 

4 to visit my dear beautiful children, Freda and 

5 Emily, and their families in their village 

6 Merimonte (phonetic) in the Tharaka district of 

7 Kenya. This is Emily and her grandparents.

8 Tharaka is a hot, dry land, almost 

9 desert, with a few people and their goats, and 

10 chickens, and thorny plants, but the people were 

11 kind and good. One dirt-poor farmer offered us a 

12 beautiful white goat as a present for his 

13 visitors. It was probably the best thing he had, 

14 and I had to apologize for not being able to take 

15 it on the plane.

16 In recent years, Tharaka has been 

17 experiencing unusually severe droughts in which 

18 people were going hungry because they could not 

19 grow enough food. Scientists predict the climate 

20 change will make Africa even hotter and more 

21 vulnerable to deadly droughts. I felt bad that 

22 if we do not change, we will hurt their land and 

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1 people.

2 I spoke about this with a holy priest who 

3 helps look after the children. He said he was 

4 also worried about climate change, but that I 

5 should not feel too bad personally because I 

6 would do something if I could. This is my small 

7 attempt not to let them down.

8 I am also worried about the beautiful 

9 wildlife such as rhinoceros and giraffes, which I 

10 saw in that trip. In past times, wildlife could 

11 sometimes adapt to weather changes by moving to 

12 more fertile areas, but now there are human 

13 cities, farms, and roads in their way; and both 

14 humans and animals will increasingly suffer from 

15 conflict.

16 As Americans, we really want to make the 

17 world better, not worse. Making the way we 

18 produce energy cleaner will be a big help towards 

19 this.

20 Thank you very much.

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

22 Mr. Eich?

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1 MR. EICH: Good morning. My name is John 

2 Eich, and I live in State College. And I want to 

3 thank you for the opportunity to present 

4 testimony here today.

5 I've traveled to speak in support of the 

6 Clean Power Plan. As a community planner, I have 

7 devoted many years to helping communities improve 

8 their quality of life. What's kind of unique 

9 about this area is first we're hearing about 

10 global impacts, and now I'm going to talk about 

11 Pennsylvania.

12 Quality of life is multifaceted and 

13 includes promoting economic development, 

14 protecting environmental resources, developing 

15 infrastructure, providing for public services, 

16 and assuring public safety. One of the charges 

17 given in Pennsylvania's enabling legislation for 

18 planning is to minimize such problems as may 

19 presently exist or which may be foreseen.

20 Scientific research has made a compelling 

21 case that human activity that adds carbon to the 

22 atmosphere is contributing to climate change, but 

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1 beyond science, common sense tells us that if 

2 humans release the carbon which has been stored 

3 in fossil fuels over hundreds of millions of 

4 years in a very short time frame, literally a 

5 couple hundred years, then we are going to have 

6 an impact.

7 The impact of carbon on the atmosphere, 

8 on eco systems, and, hence, on people is a 

9 problem that currently exists. Greater impacts 

10 can be foreseen unless action is taken. 

11 Therefore, planners and community leaders have an 

12 obligation to take action.

13 EPA's Clean Power Plan is a reasonable 

14 response to the identified problem. The primary 

15 focus of the plan is on the largest contributors 

16 to that problem and the targets and methods 

17 described in the plan to address the issue are 

18 reasonable, achievable, and offer a variety of 

19 options for states to utilize in achieving their 

20 portion of a national goal.

21 Many existing power plants are 

22 (inaudible). They're old. They're unpopular and 

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1 operating at or beyond their useful life, and 

2 just like other infrastructure such as roads and 

3 bridges which you hear so much about, our power 

4 plants must be upgraded or replaced. This 

5 renewal of worn out facilities provides the 

6 opportunity for our nation to once, again, create 

7 a cutting edge power system, one that meets the 

8 low carbon goals described in EPA's Clean Power 

9 Plan. 

10 The building blocks described in the plan 

11 are a good start. They encourage the development 

12 of renewable energy sources while providing for 

13 use of other fuels. That ensures an orderly 

14 transition and encourages economic development in 

15 21st century industries, but consideration should 

16 be given to adding another building block. 

17 Here's why. Two-thirds of the energy generated 

18 by a centralized power station is consumed, 

19 moving the power from where it is generated to 

20 the user. The US can reduce the amount of carbon 

21 it puts in the atmosphere by supplementing 

22 centrally produced power with energy produced by 

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1 a distributed power system, solar, wind, and 

2 geothermal systems that serve individual homes 

3 and businesses. While this will not replace the 

4 base load produced by power plants, it may 

5 mitigate the need to build additional capacity to 

6 satisfy peak loads. 

7 A distributed power system has the added 

8 benefit resilient. Homes that would otherwise 

9 lose power when the grid is affected by an 

10 extreme weather event or other disaster may be 

11 able to provide the capability of sheltering its 

12 occupants in place through that disaster, 

13 reducing the need for emergency services.

14 I'd like to thank you for the opportunity 

15 to present testimony today and wish you luck with 

16 this process. Thank you.

17 MR. KOERBER: Thank you both. I'm a Penn 

18 State grad, so thank you both for being here.

19 MR. ZIAK: Thanks.

20 MR. KOERBER: I'd like to call Frank 

21 Kraybill and Jeaneen Zappa. 

22 Mr. Kraybill?

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1 MR. KRAYBILL: Yes. Fred Kraybill, K-r2 a-y-b-i-l-l. I'm a huge fan for this carbon rule 

3 for the EPA. My name again is Fred Kraybill.

4 I'm a resident of Pittsburgh and a 

5 registered nurse. I'm also co-owner of Thomas 

6 Boulevard Group, a business which rents six 

7 apartments here in Pittsburgh.

8 We are a solar powered business. We have 

9 solar panels on our property. I and many of my 

10 friends make an effort to cut our carbon 

11 footprint. We want clean energy because climate 

12 change is a serious threat, and the EPA Clean 

13 Power Plan will help to address it.

14 The top three emitters of carbon dioxide 

15 in the US are, number one, Texas, number two, 

16 California, and number three, Pennsylvania. 

17 Texas is shifting to wind power in a big way. 

18 Last year they generated 10 percent of their 

19 electricity from 12,000 megawatts of wind. Texas 

20 currently has another 7,000 megawatts of wind 

21 under construction. So as you can see, they will 

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1 easily reach 20 percent of their electricity from 

2 wind in the near future.

3 California is even further along in clean 

4 renewable energy. They already get 20 percent of 

5 their electricity from wind, solar, and 

6 geothermal power sources, and California will get 

7 to 33 percent clean energy in six years because 

8 they have a renewable portfolio standard that 

9 will get them there.

10 So this is proof that clean energy can 

11 make the emission cuts we need. Many other 

12 states are taking action on clean energy. We 

13 need the EPA Clean Power Plan because we need all 

14 50 states to take a minimum action to cut carbon 

15 pollution and to fight climate change. CO2

16 pollution doesn't stop at the state border, but 

17 it crosses all borders. CO2 emissions are already 

18 on the decline in the US, but part of that was 

19 the recession of 2009. We need to make sure that 

20 CO2 emissions continue to go down and the EPA 

21 Clean Power Plan will ensure that we continue in 

22 the right direction. 

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1 What about coal power? The coal industry 

2 has a billboard in the Pennsylvania turnpike that 

3 says, "Coal is red, white, and blue, and 

4 increasingly green." If coal is increasingly 

5 green, then it's time to start sequestering your 

6 carbon pollution. It's time to improve the 

7 efficiency or retire the oldest and dirtiest 

8 power plants.

9 Every national academy of science on the 

10 planet has come to the consensus that climate 

11 change is happening. The globe is getting 

12 hotter, and the primary driver is manmade 

13 emissions of CO2. We trust scientific fact in 

14 medicine, technology, and many other fields, and 

15 we should also respect climate science.

16 Increasingly, the climate science 

17 predictions are already happening. We are seeing 

18 more intense heat waves, droughts, rain, and 

19 flooding events worldwide. We are seeing 

20 significant loss of glacial ice and snow. We are 

21 seeing more intense storms. The American 

22 southwest has been particularly hard hit by 

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1 drought, heat waves, and one record-breaking 

2 forest fire after another. We should stop 

3 pretending that all that matters is artificially 

4 lower electricity prices when there is a social 

5 cost to carbon pollution. We should stop 

6 pretending that all that matters is jobs in the 

7 fossil fuel energy when clean energy is one of 

8 the fastest growing jobs sectors.

9 We should make climate action a top 

10 priority because all efforts we invest in the 

11 next generation won't mean much if we've wrecked 

12 the climate.

13 I hope that many of you will join us in 

14 New York City on September 21 for the largest 

15 climate rally in history. I want to thank Gina 

16 McCarthy and the EPA for the Clean Power Plan, 

17 and we want the world to know that America will 

18 take bold action to cut carbon pollution.

19 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. 

20 Ms. Zappa?

21 MS. ZAPPA: My name is Jeaneen Zappa, J22 e-a-n-e-e-n, Zappa, Z-a-p-p-a. 

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1 I am the executive director of a local 

2 nonprofit organization, Conservation Consultants, 

3 Inc. We've been around since 1978, and we visit 

4 more than 4,000 homes every year. We serve the 

5 working poor and those who are just above federal 

6 poverty guidelines.

7 We're here today for a specific reason. 

8 Our mission as an organization is to promote the 

9 responsible use of energy in homes and other 

10 buildings, and we would ask that the EPA consider 

11 its rule establishing a system that employs 

12 something similar to the US Green Building 

13 Council's lead of having prerequisites. 

14 While we respect states' rights, we think 

15 that the notion of not requiring energy 

16 efficiency as a prerequisite is akin to thinking 

17 about a person who's obese not going on a diet 

18 and only choosing healthy foods but continuing to 

19 consume more calories than are necessary. Energy 

20 efficiency is, of all of the options set forth in 

21 the rule, the easiest, the most achievable, and 

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1 significantly proven method to reduce energy, 

2 which directly correlates to carbon reduction. 

3 I wanted to share with you that in our 

4 region in particular the energy consumption per 

5 capita is higher than the national average, per 

6 the Energy Information Administration data that 

7 in our region most of the housing stock was built 

8 before 1956. Energy efficiency standards for 

9 homes didn't come online until the mid-70s, and, 

10 therefore, we see, in the work we do, four 

11 utility companies, through the Pennsylvania 

12 Utility Commission, and the required work for low 

13 income usage reduction programs that utility 

14 provide by published data that is sent out by 

15 Pennsylvania State University each year, on 

16 average for electric companies a 14 percent

17 reduction of electric bills in these homes and 

18 approximately a 20 percent reduction in gas 

19 usage, which obviously helps. So it has a 

20 relationship indirectly to electricity usage. We 

21 think there could be significant reduction on 

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1 grade pressure simply by focusing on energy 

2 efficiency. 

3 We're also concerned that the shifting of 

4 the burden of how this is enacted not create a 

5 new set of working poor of those who are working 

6 in industries that currently generate energy, and 

7 we would ask that the EPA equally give 

8 consideration to requiring that the shift in some 

9 way prioritize job retraining and job replacement 

10 for those who would be most deeply impacted by 

11 these changes so that they are able to continue 

12 to have a solid working living.

13 We are -- and while I do not speak for 

14 them -- a member of the Reenergize Coalition 

15 locally, which is working to drive a market 

16 demand for energy efficiency. We participate in 

17 the 2030 Challenge sponsored by the Green 

18 Building Alliance locally, which is one of three 

19 efforts across the country where, in our region, 

20 more than half of the downtown businesses 

21 commercial property owners have committed to 

22 reducing their carbon footprint by 50 percent by 

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1 the year 2030, the same year named in the EPA 

2 rule.

3 We also are a member of the Diagnostic 

4 Energy Auditors of Western Pennsylvania and the 

5 Solar Unified Network of Western Pennsylvania. 

6 We have solar arrays on our building in addition 

7 to three separate gas-powered systems, a mini 

8 split system. We really try to be source 

9 agnostic and in all things advocate that energy 

10 efficiency should be the first step in what is 

11 done.

12 So that concludes my testimony today. We 

13 ask that you take this into consideration as you 

14 shape the rule moving forward.

15 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you 

16 both.

17 Mr. Court Reporter, you doing fine? You 

18 need a break? No? Good.

19 Well, let me again thank the audience for 

20 listening quietly and being very respectful of 

21 our speakers. I appreciate it, and they very 

22 much appreciate it.

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1 Next I'd like to call Peter Wray and 

2 Melanie Fleck.

3 Ms. Fleck, if you're ready.

4 MS. FLECK: Hello. My name is Melody 

5 Fleck, M-e-l-o-d-y, F-l-e-c-k, and I have 

6 traveled here from State College; and I 

7 appreciate the opportunity to speak.

8 The EPA's Clean Power Plan proposal is a 

9 powerful step in the right direction. High 

10 carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere are 

11 driving climate change, increasing the acidity of 

12 our oceans, causing polar ice melt, increasing 

13 ocean levels, and disrupting fragile eco systems.

14 Power plants cause about 40 percent of 

15 America's carbon pollution. Reducing carbon 

16 dioxide emissions from power plants and stopping 

17 methane escapes from natural gas drilling are 

18 crucial to the fight against climate change.

19 A recent study led by Harvard and 

20 Syracuse Universities found that reducing power 

21 plants emissions will also reduce associated 

22 dangerous chemicals such as sulfur dioxide, 

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1 nitrogen oxides, particulates, and mercury, which 

2 contribute to dangerous acid rain, distribution 

3 of habitat, mercury, and fish, ozone, damage to 

4 trees and crops, and threaten our health with 

5 increased incidents of asthma and heart disease. 

6 Reducing power plants emissions will improve the 

7 health of our children, our parents, and 

8 ourselves.

9 Some politicians deny or ignore these 

10 facts for the benefit of their friends in the 

11 pollution business. The American Lung 

12 Association estimates that up to 100,000 asthma 

13 attacks and 4,000 premature deaths will be 

14 avoided in the first year the Clean Power Plan 

15 regulations are put into effect. Now is not the 

16 time to deny scientific facts.

17 Pollution is cutting people's lives short 

18 and making them sick. This fight for clean air 

19 is not only a fight to protect our communities, 

20 environment, and our health, but it is also a 

21 battle to determine who controls our country. 

22 Every time regulations are proposed that would 

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1 clean up the air, water, and land, powerful 

2 business interest with deep pockets oppose them. 

3 Will the basic rights of citizens to breathe 

4 clean air, drink clean water, and enjoy 

5 democratic representation be recognized, or will 

6 the interest of big energy corporations prevail?

7 Americans need our government to work for 

8 us, protect our health, our communities, our 

9 children, and grandchildren, and our future. 

10 Companies who use their influence to block 

11 environmental protection regulations have no 

12 moral compass. Their purpose is to rake in the 

13 biggest profits while spending the least amount 

14 on pollution control. They spew pollutants into 

15 our air and water and let the taxpayers foot the 

16 bill for clean up, and patients pay the health 

17 cost in staggering medical bills, pain, 

18 suffering, and heart wrenching loss. The human 

19 element cannot be ignored in this decision. Our 

20 future depends on successfully reversing climate 

21 change.

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1 Stiffer regulations to control power 

2 plant emissions is the first step, but we also 

3 need to be proactive as a country and embrace 

4 clean energy technology such as solar, wind, and 

5 hydroelectric. 

6 While natural gas is seen as a bridge 

7 fuel by the Obama administration, in a state 

8 horribly wrecked by hydraulic fracturing, 

9 Pennsylvanians know it is not the answer. 

10 Methane escapes from natural gas drilling have a 

11 significantly greater global warming in the short 

12 term than carbon dioxide, according to NASA. We 

13 need to begin now to subsidize clean renewable 

14 energy and unleash our scientists to devise a 

15 plan to address climate change. Thank you.

16 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

17 Mr. Wray?

18 MR. WRAY: Good morning. Thank you for 

19 holding this Clean Power Plan hearing in the 

20 livable city of Pittsburgh. My name is Peter 

21 Wray. That's W-r-a-y, and I am chair of the 

22 conservation committee of the Allegheny Group of 

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1 the Sierra Club with over 5,000 members in 

2 southwest Pennsylvania.

3 The EPA is to be commended for proposing 

4 these guidelines to cut carbon pollution from 

5 existing power plants. We wholeheartedly support 

6 these measures because they will provide 

7 healthier air in our region as well as across the 

8 country.

9 We also support these guidelines because 

10 they are the biggest step yet taken to curtail 

11 climate change. Pennsylvania contributes 

12 approximately four percent of the greenhouse 

13 gases emitted in the United States, primarily 

14 from power plants, and many of those power plants 

15 are close to Pittsburgh. In 2012, Pennsylvania's 

16 emission of CO2 from the power plants covered by 

17 the proposed guidelines amounted to 106 million 

18 metric tons, 106 million metric tons that the 

19 planet could do without. 

20 While we welcome these guidelines, we 

21 believe that the agency should incorporate 

22 consideration of a possible consequence of the 

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1 guidelines. In an effort to reduce costs and 

2 perhaps in anticipation of CO2 regulations, power 

3 plants operators have already begun to shift from 

4 coal to natural gas that is produced by fracking. 

5 With the proposed guidelines in place, we expect 

6 this shift to accelerate. The environmental 

7 concerns regarding the use of fracked natural gas 

8 are numerous and deserve the agency's attention 

9 in conjunction with adoption of these guidelines. 

10 Let me repeat that, in conjunction with adoption 

11 of these guidelines.

12 If the goal is to reduce greenhouse gas 

13 emissions, then the expected increase in 

14 emissions of methane associated with production, 

15 transmission, and burning of fracked gas must be 

16 fully accounted for, and if the goal is to 

17 achieve a healthier environment, then the 

18 increase in air and water pollution associated 

19 with the production, transmission, and burning of 

20 fracked gas must be accounted for and remedied. 

21 A link to a compendium of the scientific, 

22 medical, and media findings that demonstrate the 

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1 risk and harms of fracking -- I have provided the 

2 link to that compendia.

3 A partial alternative to the replacement 

4 of coal with fracked gas is to reduce the 

5 consumption of electrical energy. Unfortunately, 

6 the national effort to improve energy efficiency

7 has not received the support it deserves. In a 

8 recent analysis, the measures taken to reduce --

9 of the measures taken to reduce energy 

10 consumption, the American Council for an Energy 

11 Efficient Economy found that the US was ranked 

12 number 13 amongst 16 of the world's major 

13 economists, with Germany number one. I have also 

14 given a link to that analysis.

15 We understand that the EPA has developed 

16 a national action plan for energy efficiency, but 

17 how many people in this audience are aware of 

18 that plan and its accomplishments. I would guess 

19 very, very few. Clearly, there is a need to 

20 significantly bolster this action plan that EPA 

21 has developed and bolster it with an accelerated 

22 time table and incentives for energy efficiency 

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1 in buildings, homes, manufacturing plants, et 

2 cetera, just as Jeaneen has just expounded upon.

3 In conclusion, the Allegheny Group of the 

4 Sierra Club supports aggressive implementation of 

5 the Clean Power Plan. We do, however, urge the 

6 agency to protect the environment from an 

7 expected shift from coal to fracked gas and to 

8 pursue the action plan for energy efficiency with 

9 greater vigor and effect. Thank you.

10 I do have a question, and that is whether 

11 these proceedings, these testimonies, which are 

12 really impressive, will be made public?

13 MR. KOERBER: There will be a transcript, 

14 I believe, provided in our record.

15 MR. WRAY: Okay. Thank you.

16 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you both 

17 for being here today.

18 MS. FLECK: Thank you. 

19 MR. KOERBER: Next I'd like to call John 

20 Bechtel and Steve Todd.

21 When you're ready, sir.

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1 MR. BECHTEL: Good morning. My name is 

2 John Bechtel. I'm 66 years old, retired, and 

3 live in Harrisburg. I'm an active member in two 

4 environmental groups, one secular, one faith 

5 based and both working hard for the cause of 

6 clean air in Pennsylvania.

7 But I'll speak in my own voice today, and 

8 I'd like to do that by first telling you a short 

9 story from my personal life. It's sort of a 

10 metaphor for why I put so much time into the 

11 climate change movement.

12 A few years ago when I was still teaching 

13 a fourth grade Sunday school class, one of the 

14 kids' parents, an active duty Army sergeant, gave 

15 me what was, for him, an urgent call. It had 

16 nothing to do with Sunday school or his fourth 

17 grader, for she was away on a church mission trip 

18 with his wife at the time. Rather it was about 

19 the urgent need to put his family's living 

20 quarters on the military base into spick and span 

21 shape ASAP. The departure date for his next post 

22 of duty in Hawaii was closing in fast, but with 

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1 his wife and daughter out of town and unable to 

2 help, he had fallen behind schedule with the 

3 cleanup work and needed to catch up fast.

4 As I swept, dusted, and scrubbed 

5 alongside my friend on that Saturday, it slowly 

6 dawned on me that his all-out effort was 

7 motivated in large part by what you might call a 

8 code of honor among military families. You have 

9 a duty to those who follow you. You owe it to 

10 the next family to restore your living quarters 

11 to tip-top shape before you go on to your next 

12 post of duty.

13 Now at 66 I can't say what or where God 

14 has in mind for my next post of duty. Unless I 

15 clean up my act soon, I may be going someplace 

16 that looks and feels a lot more like God's idea 

17 of Afghanistan than Hawaii, but while this story 

18 may work well enough for me, it's actually a very 

19 poor metaphor for the gravity of the threat of 

20 climate change, which really goes far beyond the 

21 threat that soot, ash, and trash pose to our 

22 environment and our health. But as long as I'm 

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1 still around, I'll do my part to restore our 

2 corner of mother Earth to somewhat the same shape 

3 as I found her upon my arrival way back in 1948 

4 at the dawn of history.

5 That's what I feel is a duty I owe to 

6 those who follow, and that's why I pray that you 

7 will put in place, monitor, and above all enforce

8 a strong Clean Power Plan to limit industrial 

9 carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants.

10 Science is settled; climate change driven 

11 by global warming poses an existential threat to 

12 all Americans. We have a sacred duty to leave 

13 our children with a safe climate, and I have in 

14 mind the young people who came into the room just 

15 a couple minutes ago. But like my friend in the 

16 story, we are falling behind schedule in our 

17 cleanup job, and we really do need to catch up 

18 fast.

19 Carbon emissions are the primary cause of 

20 global warming, and coal-fired plants are the 

21 primary cause of carbon emissions in the USA. 

22 Your Clean Power Plan is a great start, but 

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1 please press on and ensure that it's only the 

2 beginning of our honorable cleanup job. For it's 

3 fair to say the entire world will be watching us 

4 very closely today to see how well we do, and 

5 something tells me that God will be watching too.

6 Thank you very much for the opportunity 

7 to speak today.

8 MR. KOERBER: Thank you very much, sir.

9 Mr. Todd?

10 MR. TODD: Yes. Thank you. My name, as 

11 you said, is Stephen. I am resident of 

12 Hummelstown, Pennsylvania. That's in Dauphin 

13 County. I am a municipal engineer by trade and 

14 an environmental engineer by training.

15 The EPA's proposed standard should be 

16 adopted as soon as possible without being changed 

17 in any way. As the science has now proven beyond 

18 any reasonable doubt, the effect of manmade 

19 global climate change, it is imperative to leave 

20 a livable planet for future generations, not only 

21 for but estate planning for my 12-year-old son 

22 Derrick, but also for children of those of lesser 

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1 means worldwide, who really have no chance to 

2 affect climate change.

3 Lakota grandmother, Debra White Plume, 

4 recently said, "We must protect our sacred water. 

5 For us this is spiritual work." I feel the same 

6 way, no less sacred though than the water we 

7 drink, of course, is the air we breathe.

8 Here in Pennsylvania we create nearly 1 

9 percent of the entire world's total heat trapping 

10 emissions, far disproportionate to our 

11 population, and Dauphin County, where I live, had 

12 210 asthma attacks, 27 heart attacks, and 15 

13 deaths in 2012 caused by power plants pollution, 

14 according to research of the Clean Air Task 

15 Force.

16 Statistics like these are all the reason 

17 the EPA needs to implement the proposed standard. 

18 Implementing the standard will be a start to 

19 addressing carbon dioxide emissions problems. It 

20 will not magically scrub our atmosphere of its 

21 excess carbon dioxide, but it is a sound and 

22 admirable beginning.

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1 The EPA should consider what will happen 

2 if it decides not to implement the standard or to 

3 water it down. Power plants will continue to 

4 dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into 

5 all of our air for free. They, the American 

6 public, and the world will receive the message 

7 from the EPA that the US has no interest in 

8 adopting reasonable carbon pollution safeguards 

9 to slow climate change. That is, of course, a 

10 disastrous outcome, and it would doom 

11 Pennsylvania, the US, and the planet to a future 

12 with poor air quality, rising temperatures, and 

13 frequent extreme weather.

14 Please implement the standard, again, as 

15 written and as soon as you possibly can, and 

16 remember on your way to doing that that natural 

17 gas-fired power plants are not the total answer. 

18 Clean energy is our only ultimate answer and 

19 natural gas is not clean energy either.

20 Thank you very much for the opportunity.

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you both. And let 

22 me, again, thank all of the speakers who are with 

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1 us today. I really appreciate you being here. I 

2 also want to thank others who came to listen. 

3 Your presence is equally appreciated. So thank 

4 you one and all.

5 Next I'd like to call Michelle Naccarati 

6 and George Ratliff. My apologies for any 

7 mispronunciation.

8 Ms. Naccarati? 

9 MS. NACCARATI-CHAPKIS: Good morning. My 

10 name is Michelle Naccarati Chapkis, N-a-c-c-a-r11 a-t-I, hyphen, Chapkis, C-h-a-p-k-i-s.

12 I am here today on behalf of Women for a 

13 Healthy Environment, located in Pittsburgh. Our 

14 mission is to educate and empower women and those 

15 who love them to act as ambassadors about 

16 environmental risks so that they can make healthy 

17 choices for themselves and their families and 

18 advocate for change for a better tomorrow for 

19 all.

20 We carry out this mission by educating 

21 the public about environmental exposures that 

22 impact human health and by advocating for policy 

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1 solutions that improve the quality of life for 

2 ourselves and for our region.

3 Women for a Health Environment strongly 

4 supports the EPA's proposed emission guidelines 

5 to address greenhouse gas emissions from existing 

6 fossil fuel-fired electric generating units. We 

7 urge EPA to implement these guidelines promptly 

8 and without being weakened in any way. Unlimited 

9 carbon pollution from power plants fuels climate 

10 change, which worsens air quality and threatens 

11 public health.

12 Pennsylvania's air quality has been 

13 diminished for decades, especially in 

14 southwestern Pennsylvania. In fact, southwestern 

15 PA has not been re-designated to attainment 

16 status for ozone exposure by the Environmental 

17 Protection Agency. Over the years there have 

18 been many reports, statistics, and additional 

19 research released documenting the poor air 

20 quality in our region. Below are brief summaries 

21 of these findings.

22 The American Lung Association's 2014 

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1 State of the Air Report ranked Pittsburgh the 

2 sixth worst city in the country for both the 

3 amount of fine particles, PM 2.5 in the air, 

4 known as short-term particle pollution, as well 

5 as year round particle pollution. 

6 From 2011 to 2013, the University of 

7 Pittsburgh Center for Healthy Environments and 

8 Communities released the Pittsburgh Regional 

9 Environmental Threat Analysis, PRETA, which these 

10 reports focus on ozone particulate matter and 

11 hazardous air pollutants. This series of reports 

12 presented information about major threats to 

13 human health in the environment within the 

14 southwestern Pennsylvania region. 

15 Each of these reports consistently refers 

16 to a major industrial source, coal-fired power 

17 plants, as a major contributor to the negative 

18 health effects experienced by residents of our 

19 region. In particular, 65 percent of primary 

20 particulate matter in the (inaudible) region 

21 results from electrical generation.

22 In 2013, the Heinz Endowments released 

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1 Clearing the Haze, Understanding Western 

2 Pennsylvania's Air Pollution Problem. The report 

3 indicates that over time health studies have 

4 found stronger associations between air pollution 

5 and serious health effects with indications of 

6 harm at concentrations previously believed to be 

7 safe.

8 The Post Gazette's Mapping Mortality

9 series that ran in December 2010 referenced 2,833 

10 excess deaths from 2000 to 2008, based on 

11 national death rates in the 14-county region of 

12 southwestern PA for heart, and respiratory 

13 disease, and lung cancer diseases that have been 

14 linked to air pollution exposure, especially 

15 those generated by coal-fired power plants.

16 And then according to the PA Department 

17 of Health, our state has seen an increase from 

18 2004 to 2008 in the hospitalization rate for 

19 people with asthma, ages 5 to 64 and 65 and 

20 older. The report also notes an increase in the 

21 percentage of persons exposed to harmful air 

22 pollutants, up from 62 percent to 81.1 percent.

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1 What do all of these reports and 

2 scientific studies tell us? There is a linkage 

3 between poor air quality and adverse health 

4 conditions, and we must look to the leadership of 

5 the EPA to save our public health and the 

6 environment.

7 The Pittsburgh region fails to meet 

8 current air quality standards for fine 

9 particulate in ozone, which means that the people 

10 living in the region continue to breathe harmful 

11 levels of air pollution.

12 Our regions' health is significantly 

13 impacted by pollution from coal-fired power 

14 plants. We have an increased risk for cancer, 

15 heart attacks, strokes, premature death, asthma, 

16 and other respiratory conditions. Vulnerable 

17 populations, including those with asthma and 

18 COPD, children, the elderly, and those living 

19 within communities where these sources are 

20 located are especially at risk.

21 We support EPA's use of the following 

22 factors to calculate state goals for reducing 

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1 carbon dioxide emissions - improving energy 

2 efficiency at fossil fuel plants and operating 

3 existing low greenhouse gas-emitting sources more 

4 frequently. We would also encourage EPA to take 

5 into consideration the progress made from zero 

6 low emission electric generating units in energy 

7 demand through consumer efficiencies.

8 I have more, but I'm at red. So I'll 

9 just submit my comments. Thank you.

10 MR. KOERBER: All right. Thank you so 

11 much. 

12 MR. Ratliff?

13 MR. RATLIFF: That's R-a-t-l-i-f-f.

14 The proposed 30 percent reduction in 

15 greenhouse gas emissions cannot stop climate 

16 change; that would require a 90 percent 

17 reduction, which is impossible with the exiting 

18 renewable energy technology. Before the EPA can 

19 mandate 90 percent, we need either cheaper 

20 batteries for windmills and solar panels or a 

21 cheaper way to concentrate sunlight for 

22 concentrated solar power; that's called CSP for 

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1 short. 

2 I have patented a cheaper way to 

3 concentrate sunlight for CSP. Compared to 

4 recently completed CSP plants in California and 

5 Nevada, which use mirrors on heliostats, plants 

6 with this new solar concentrator would produce 

7 twice as much power per mirror, eliminating 95 

8 percent of the mirrors and gear boxes, and 

9 increase the precision of focusing sunlight.

10 CPA plants with heliostats have never 

11 been never been successful, including the first 

12 one tried near Barstow, California, 35 years ago. 

13 For example, those new plants in California were 

14 completed a year ago and cost $3 billion, and 

15 it's my understanding that they still do not 

16 produce nearly enough power to justify their 

17 cost.

18 I submit that the world's fixation on 

19 heliostats for CSP during the past 35 years has 

20 been the principle obstacle to the control of 

21 climate change. To make CSP plants economically 

22 feasible, it will take a drastic reduction in 

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1 cost, such as I am claiming. 

2 Here are the details of my proposed solar 

3 concentrator. Sunlight is focused with mirrors 

4 on a receiver on a tower, but instead of being 

5 attached to stationary heliostats, the mirrors 

6 move on concentric tracks around the tower 

7 synchronized with the sun's movement across the 

8 sky to keep the mirrors on the opposite side of 

9 the tower from the sun. Each morning, the 

10 mirrors face the rising sun in the East, and by 

11 sunset they are facing west, having rotated 180 

12 degrees about a vertical axis, using the radar of 

13 the tracks for leverage. 

14 Because of this extreme leverage, the 

15 focusing is precise. As the sun's altitude 

16 changes, the mirrors must tilt and yaw to keep 

17 sunlight focused on the receiver. The formulas 

18 for tilting and yawing reveal that this can be 

19 done collectively to eliminate most of the motors 

20 and gearboxes required on heliostats. Guidelines 

21 stabilize the mirrors against wind and also tilt 

22 and yaw the mirrors collectively. The details of 

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1 this are explained in my US patent 7380549.

2 CSP has performed poorly in the past, 

3 even though it has been confined to places with 

4 very intense direct sunlight, places like 

5 California and Nevada, but with this new and more 

6 efficient CSP, there would be enough direct 

7 sunlight for CSP in most states. Therefore, the 

8 EPA should mandate a greenhouse gas reduction of 

9 more than 30 percent and begin phasing in solar 

10 power before it is too late. There is no safer 

11 method of stopping climate change. Thank you.

12 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

13 Next I'd like to call Stacy Wickett and 

14 Anna Berch-Norton.

15 Ms. Wickett?

16 MS. WICKETT: Stacy Wickett, S-t-a-c-y, 

17 W-i-c-k-e-t-t. I'm Stacy. I live in Pittsburgh, 

18 and I'm here to stand in full support of the 

19 EPA's proposal to limit carbon pollution from 

20 power plants. 

21 Over the past few months, I've worked to 

22 help collect public comments from people across 

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1 western Pennsylvania. I've spoken with hundreds 

2 of people and heard directly from the public how 

3 they feel. While the vast majority of those I've 

4 spoken with are in favor of these new carbon 

5 rules, there's only one common problem that gets 

6 brought up, and that's job.

7 As a young person in our rough economy, 

8 I'm certainly concerned about finding a good 

9 career. However, this proposal goes much farther 

10 than just some small threat of losing jobs. This 

11 proposal gives us the opportunity to 

12 revolutionize our economy. Coal industry 

13 executives are concerned about losing out if they 

14 fail to transition, but we can use this proposal 

15 to transform into something bigger and better.

16 In 2011, the solar sector saw record 

17 growth, surpassing almost every other part of our 

18 economy. This creates jobs. Transitioning to 

19 more sustainable energy creates jobs everywhere 

20 from university research centers to administrator 

21 offices and manufacturing plants. Many of these 

22 are union jobs, and they're going to be at the 

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1 forefront of our nation's economy over the next 

2 several decades. 

3 If anything, this proposal is a long 

4 overdue step towards moving our economy into the 

5 21st century, and I'm proud of the EPA for taking 

6 that step. But it is absolutely shameful that 

7 these corporations that have never once looked 

8 out for their workers best interest are now 

9 trying to manipulate the facts as a scare tactic, 

10 as though their only concern is for the jobs. 

11 Their concern is their margin profit, and it's 

12 about time we put those profits behind the 

13 concerns for the health and safety of all of us. 

14 Thank you.

15 MR. KOERBER: Thank you very much.

16 Ms. Berch-Norton?

17 MS. BERCH-NORTON: My name is Anna Berch18 Norton. That's spelled B-e-r-c-h, hyphen, N-o-r19 t-o-n. Thanks.

20 I live in Pittsburgh, and I'm here to 

21 stand fully in support of the EPA's proposal to 

22 limit carbon pollution from existing power 

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1 plants. Growing up, I've always known the 

2 dangerous effects of pollution. My dad, a 

3 lifelong non-smoker, has lung cancer that was 

4 most likely caused by the terrible air quality in 

5 this area.

6 Pennsylvania is the third worst state for 

7 carbon pollution, and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette

8 has reported in the past on cancer requesters in 

9 many areas of western Pennsylvania. In addition, 

10 nearly 7 million children nationwide suffer from 

11 asthma, and every single day 36,000 children miss 

12 school due to asthma. Air pollution has been 

13 proven to trigger asthma attacks, causing these 

14 kids to suffer. 

15 Of course I support this proposal, but 

16 when I look at the long-term health effects of 

17 pollution and how much worse we're making it 

18 through completely unregulated carbon emissions, 

19 I have to wonder what took us so long. Why do we 

20 even have to argue that it's our nation's 

21 responsibility to look out for the health and 

22 safety of all of us? Why has it been acceptable 

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1 for us to care more about the profits of 

2 multibillionaires than those 7 million children 

3 with asthma?

4 The United Nations has reported that 

5 nearly 1,000 children worldwide die every day 

6 because of global warming. If left unchecked, 

7 climate change could be a health and humanitarian 

8 crisis beyond anything humanity has ever seen.

9 I'm more than willing to pay a bit more 

10 on my monthly electric bill if it means we can 

11 start to save all those lives. Thank you.

12 MR. KOERBER: Thank you both.

13 Next I'd like to call Barbara Pace and 

14 John Nagle.

15 MS. PACE: Do you want to go first.

16 MR. NAGLE: No. You were called first.

17 MS. PACE: Okay. I'm glad you 

18 remembered. It's easier for me to stand, if you 

19 don't mind.

20 As he said, my name is Barbara Pace. 

21 It's P as in pickle, a-c-e. I am so pleased that 

22 there's young people here. Even though they're 

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1 playing games and reading and not listening to 

2 everything we're saying, the impact as they grow 

3 up, they'll be able to remember that. So that's, 

4 dad, for bringing them, and those two young 

5 girls. That was very encouraging.

6 Obviously being old and gray, I've been 

7 living with this pollution for a long, long time, 

8 and I really value you guys coming to Pittsburgh. 

9 I hope you get to see the city and not just these 

10 boring walls. It's a gorgeous city.

11 I value your efforts to conduct these 

12 hearings, specifically in these regions where a 

13 lot of pollution is being generated that is 

14 affecting everybody's health, not just in these 

15 United States but globally.

16 I have tried to research and discover 

17 exactly what the differences are between your 

18 peers at Environmental Protection Agency, the 

19 Department of Environmental Protection, and even 

20 our Allegheny County Department of Health. There 

21 appears to be so many overlapping 

22 responsibilities and lack of accountability.

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1 I'm part of Clean Water Action Committee 

2 member, and we have repeatedly questioned all the 

3 aforementioned agencies asking who can accomplish 

4 enforcements to make our air, water, land free of 

5 carcinogens. I'm the daughter, sister, niece of 

6 local iron workers. My father and brother worked 

7 on a erecting power plants in Beaver County and 

8 throughout this tri-state area.

9 My efforts to obtain clean environment 

10 have caused me to take verbal abuse from those 

11 who do not truly understand the long-term costs 

12 of our health. 

13 Our group was formally called Neville 

14 Island Good Neighbor. We're in the process of 

15 finding and changing our name to represent more 

16 accurately who and what we are about. Shenango 

17 Chemical resides on Neville Island. They are 

18 owned and operated by DT based in Detroit. Our 

19 committee believes that Shenango has blanketly

20 ignored the clean air guidelines and would rather 

21 pay the fines than operate under the letter of 

22 the law. A lot of recent research has discovered 

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1 even the laws we currently have passed are not 

2 enforced or even strong enough, as currently 

3 written, to reach the goals of good health for 

4 the entire planet.

5 Most of our energies as clean water 

6 members, formerly called Neville Island Good 

7 Neighbors, were spent trying to negotiate less 

8 pollution being emitted from Shenango's smoke 

9 stacks on Neville Island. They did a very good 

10 job of courting us for close to two years. They 

11 fed us. Met with us regularly, but the 

12 improvements were not coming along at the pace we 

13 were desiring. They spent thousands of dollars 

14 flying in representatives from Texas and Detroit, 

15 monies that could have been spent on their quench 

16 towers. As their personnel kept changing over 

17 the two years we found it of interest that none 

18 of the managers were living in the vicinity of 

19 their place of employment. Often they had their 

20 families residing in adjoining counties of 

21 Allegheny. 

22 We finally refused to be used as pawns 

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1 anymore and no longer are meeting with Shenango. 

2 They proved not to be good neighbors.

3 Sadly, even our meetings with our 

4 Allegheny County Health Department felt like our 

5 concerns are not being met. When large community 

6 meetings were set up, many of the residents left 

7 angry and frustrated. Their comments were, "We 

8 didn't need slide presentations on how a co-plant 

9 works." 

10 If we break the law while driving, we 

11 lose our driver's licenses. Why is Shenango 

12 paying fines, and there is no accountability for 

13 file actions? Must we have a three-mile island 

14 catastrophe, a love canal disaster to warrant 

15 enough publicity to get these agencies that have 

16 protection and health in their given names to see 

17 the results we can all live with? Will big 

18 industry seeking profits at the expense of our 

19 health always have more power over you and our 

20 elected politicians forwarding our efforts? What 

21 can we little people do effectively to produce 

22 changes in our environment? We write letters. 

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1 We meet with politicians. We attend meetings. 

2 We vote. What will you do with these comments 

3 from these various cities you have been listening 

4 to? 

5 Possibly some of you can remember when 

6 Pete Seeger sang some of the music Woody Guthrie 

7 composed, "Pittsburgh is a smoky old town, and 

8 this land is our land." We might not have dark 

9 skies in the afternoons as we did in the 40s and 

10 50s, but these invisible cancer pollutants are 

11 just as compromising to our existence.

12 Thank you for listening. Please care to 

13 do your best to make changes for the current and 

14 future health of us all.

15 MR. KOERBER: Thank you very much.

16 Mr. Nagle?

17 MR. NAGLE: John Nagle, N-a-g-l-e. I 

18 thank the EPA for giving me the opportunity to 

19 comment on its Clean Power Plan proposal for 

20 greenhouse gas reduction from all the acronyms in 

21 the proposal, EGUs, electrical generating units.

22 MR. KOERBER: I'm sorry. We're 

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1 government. We can't help ourselves.

2 MR. NAGLE: And I thank this panel for 

3 agreeing to, you know, listen to us for this two4 day marathon. It must be -- it must be tough to 

5 pace.

6 MR. KOERBER: It's our pleasure, sir.

7 MR. NAGLE: I appreciate the hard work 

8 and due diligence that the EPA has put into 

9 producing a well-crafted proposal that 

10 continuously asks for specific comments, which I 

11 will get to.

12 I'm a professor emeritus at Carnegie 

13 Mellon University here in Pittsburgh in the 

14 fields of physics and biology. 

15 Ten years ago I taught a course entitled 

16 Energy and Environmental Issues. At that time 

17 one could still make a case, albeit a rather weak 

18 one, that manmade global warming might not be 

19 occurring. So my course encouraged debate among 

20 the students. It was a rather lopsided debate, 

21 even then. I'm very pleased that the EPA 

22 doesn't, you know -- chooses to emphasize the 

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1 scientific consensus and we're beyond that. Most 

2 of us are beyond that debate. 

3 More recently, Carnegie Mellon bestowed a 

4 prestigious $50,000 Dixon prize award on Jared 

5 Diamond for his book entitled Collapse, which I 

6 encourage people to read, because this book 

7 serves as a warning to us today. It describes 

8 several civilizations that collapsed, sometimes 

9 by its people not being able to recognize an 

10 existential threat. 

11 Fortunately, science recognizes the 

12 threat of global warming, and I'm pleased that 

13 the EPA proposal emphasizes that. However, many 

14 of Diamond's civilizations collapsed because they 

15 didn't have the will to deal with the threat that 

16 was staring them in the face. That's the 

17 challenge we have today.

18 It's important to recognize also that it 

19 took hundreds of years for those collapses to 

20 occur. Rather like the impending irreversible 

21 collapse of the western Antarctic ice cap, which 

22 is now considered to be irreversible. The EPA 

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1 document well-appreciates the long-term nature of 

2 the existential climate threat. Action must be 

3 taken to eliminate greenhouse gases before it 

4 becomes too late to prevent the consequences of 

5 global warming mentioned in the EPA document.

6 Now, in response to EPA's solicitation 

7 for specific comments, I have a Baker's dozen. 

8 As there isn't time to read all 13, I will place 

9 my written comments in the record. But the 

10 general thrust of my comments is to urge EPA to 

11 adopt the strongest possible regulations that 

12 will reduce greenhouse gas emissions the most and 

13 the fastest. 

14 So for the BSER, that's the Best Systems 

15 Energy Reduction, again, another acronym, I like 

16 option one because it has the most reduction, but 

17 I also like option two because it has faster 

18 reductions. So I would like to combine the best 

19 in the two. I know that may be politically 

20 impossible, but that's my -- what I would like.

21 Natural gas is not the long-term 

22 solution, even discounting concerns about getting 

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1 fracked. So I definitely concur with the EPA 

2 that the BSER should include building blocks 

3 three and four and not limit it to just building 

4 blocks one and two.

5 Considering that the projected 

6 electricity price increase from this plan is less 

7 than seven percent, I think it's quite 

8 affordable. Indeed, we should be willing as a 

9 society to pay a lot more, especially as EPA's 

10 estimate of health co-benefits is even greater 

11 than the cost of greenhouse gas reduction under 

12 the plan. So it looks like a win-win situation, 

13 frankly.

14 Even though I'm concerned that the 

15 proposal does not go far enough, fast enough, it 

16 is certainly a step in the right direction. It 

17 should encourage more rational planning that 

18 might help avert the collapse of the sort 

19 described in Diamond's book. So I generally 

20 support the EPA proposal and offer my specific 

21 comments on it.

22 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. Thanks for 

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1 the reading tip.

2 Next I'd like to call Robert Baker and 

3 Paul Fischbeck.

4 Mr. Baker, when you're ready.

5 MR. BAKER: Okay. B-a-k-e-r.

6 I'm from the state of Virginia, and I 

7 speak today on the emergency situation in the 

8 United States and other nations suffering 

9 destruction from the low technology, green hoke's 

10 (phonetic) policies, and from looting by Wall 

11 Street and City of London vultures. 

12 We can stop this catastrophe. We must 

13 dump Wall Street. Green policy alternative 

14 energy is a fraud. Overheating Earth is a fraud. 

15 We must cancel the EPA rule and move forward with 

16 a massive economic development. Move forward 

17 with nuclear power to an advanced economic base 

18 with a crash program for fusion energy. That's 

19 what coal is for. Use it. A new alliance of 

20 nations called the BRICS, B-R-I-C-S, Group is 

21 doing just that. 

22 The immediate emergency measures required 

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1 are to launch -- we have a runaway situation 

2 politically. We much impeach the president. 

3 Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act for which bills 

4 stand ready in Congress and then proceed to step 

5 up a traditional American credit system through 

6 which we can initiate great infrastructure 

7 projects and science.

8 People are suffering and dying for lack 

9 of this. Even worse, we face mass annihilation 

10 from thermal nuclear war if the current 

11 administration is allowed to continue its war12 provoking policies in Eurasia, just as the 

13 previous Bush administration did before him.

14 The counter poll to our current doomsday 

15 track of economic breakdown and war is the new 

16 worldwide opportunity presented by the BRICS 

17 nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South 

18 Africa, whose leaders met in mid-July earlier in 

19 South America and put on the world agenda plans 

20 for a new credit system, including a new 

21 development bank, commitments for dozens of 

22 nuclear power plants, new development corridors 

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1 across Eurasia called a New Silk Road, and such 

2 major infrastructure projects as a new Panama 

3 Canal across Nicaragua to connect the Atlantic 

4 and the Pacific; and work on that will start in 

5 January. 

6 When a gang of Wall Street vulture funds 

7 tried to oppose this initiative by hitting 

8 Argentina with wrongful demands of crushing debt, 

9 not only did the BRICS nations who represent 3 

10 billion people, but the group of 77 nations 

11 representing nearly all developing sector nations 

12 defended Argentina's sovereignty.

13 We have the right and responsibility as 

14 nations to develop. That is what our nation 

15 stood for from the very beginning. We settled 

16 new lands. We constantly raised our ability to 

17 produce from our farms, our factories, and our 

18 minds. We grew in population, skills, and 

19 science. We led the world, going from wood, to 

20 charcoal, to anthracite, to bituminous, to coke, 

21 to oil, to gas, and then nuclear. We have 

22 Tennessee Valley Authority in our coal states 

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1 where the Oakridge Center harnessed atomic power. 

2 We had Atoms for Peace and plan for mass nuclear3 powered sea water desalinization for the dry 

4 west, which we need desperately now.

5 We had the first commercial nuclear power 

6 plants in the nation here in western Pennsylvania 

7 in Shippingport in 1957. We went to the moon. 

8 But what happened? 

9 We were hit by a subversion operation 

10 about 50 years ago. The foreign networks of 

11 financial and oligarchic circles of the Neo12 British empire succeeded in imposing floating 

13 world currency rates, implementing a battery of 

14 anti-nation state measures, the WTO and 

15 globalized trade, deregulation of energy, 

16 transportation, healthcare, elimination of farm 

17 parity prices, elimination of the Glass-Steagall 

18 law, which protected banking from speculation and 

19 much more. Bubble economics ensued to the point 

20 of the 2007 blowout, and a monster one, even 

21 bigger, is pending today.

22 In parallel, the green movement was 

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1 cooked up in a British imperial mind-controlled 

2 test tube by the same group. It is a lie that 

3 mans' activities are overheating the Earth. The 

4 CO2 is a pollutant, and alternatives are wind, 

5 solar, and biofuel.

6 MR. KOERBER: Time to wrap up your 

7 testimony, sir.

8 MR. BAKER: First we need to reenact the 

9 Glass-Steagall law, restore a traditional system 

10 of top-down national banking. We need to 

11 initiate a federal credit system to launch 

12 projects for massive infrastructure development 

13 and adopt a crash program for fusion power. 

14 Thank you.

15 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. And my 

16 apologies about the ringing phone. Again, if I 

17 could remind people to put your phones on vibrate 

18 so they don't bother the speakers. Thank you.

19 Mr. Fischbeck?

20 MR. FISCHBECK: Good morning. I am Paul 

21 Fischbeck, F-i-s-c-h-b-e-c-k.

22 I'm a professor at Carnegie Mellon 

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1 University and part of a research team with Hybo, 

2 Jay, and Jeff Anderson. We are studying the 

3 proposed EPA regulation on reducing carbon 

4 emissions from power plants.

5 We concur that any approach with this 

6 goal must be multifaceted, combining reductions 

7 in consumption, increases in generation for 

8 renewables, and changes in how some coal and gas 

9 plants operate. The building blocks concept that 

10 the proposal regulation has captures these 

11 important elements.

12 The EPA has defined specific goals for 

13 each state, and these are constructed from state 

14 and national level statistics. However, a 

15 specific state will have to put together a plan 

16 to meet its defined goal, and they will require 

17 detailed information on specific power plants and 

18 how they operate. This is what we are studying 

19 at Carnegie Mellon.

20 We are developing an engineering-based 

21 analytical approach to compare a range of options 

22 for lowering the carbon intensity of the power 

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1 generation system in the United States, where 

2 carbon intensity is defined as pounds of CO2 per 

3 megawatt hour.

4 At the generating unit level, we have 

5 initial estimates on how expensive and effective 

6 six different carbon mitigation technologies will 

7 be. This is for all the generating units in the 

8 country. The technologies include co-firing with 

9 different amounts of natural gas from 5 to 50 

10 percent, converting to more efficient boilers, 

11 supercritical and ultra-supercritical, 

12 retrofitting existing boilers so that they are 

13 fired only by natural gas, dismantling existing 

14 coal plants and replacing them with new natural 

15 gas combined cycle at the same location, and also 

16 using varying levels of carbon capture and 

17 sequestration (CCS) from 10 to 90 percent.

18 In addition, we have investigated various 

19 ways of modeling possible heat rate improvements 

20 for existing boilers. As we know, the existing 

21 power fleet is made up of a range of different 

22 unit types of different size and ages, and 

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1 different states have different mixes of these 

2 generating resources. 

3 One of the features of the EPA approach 

4 is that it allows states to pursue a range of 

5 techniques to reflect these differences. The 

6 approach that we are taking will allow states to 

7 assess these options in a very systematic and 

8 quantitative way.

9 Some coal plants are already compliant 

10 with knocks and socks regulations and generate 

11 power at low cost. Others are at the opposite 

12 end of the scale. They are dirty, inefficient, 

13 and costly to operate. If these better plants 

14 are near large, known, natural gas pipelines or 

15 perhaps even stable, easily accessible CO2

16 storage formations, then mitigating carbon from 

17 these better plants will be much, much, much more 

18 cost effective and potentially competitive with 

19 other generation options. This is what we found.

20 These factors must be evaluated to 

21 develop a prioritization of options to reduce 

22 carbon intensity cost effectively. To meet the 

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1 specific EPA goals, each state will need a tool 

2 that helps them compare the full range of 

3 available options for making hardware and 

4 operational changes at the individual coal unit 

5 level to relying more heavily on cleaner 

6 resources like energy efficiency and renewable 

7 energy.

8 By emphasizing other resources, perhaps a 

9 state can meet its target without any changes to 

10 its coal fleet. We don't know yet. That’s what 

11 we're looking at. Or will some plants need a new 

12 set of technologies added, and perhaps even 

13 others need to be retired. Tools like the one we 

14 are developing will be very helpful to states as 

15 they make plans to implement these important 

16 standards. Thank you.

17 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you both 

18 for being here today. We appreciate hearing from 

19 both of you.

20 Next I'd like to call Michael Nixon and 

21 Dan Sullivan.

22 Mr. Nixon, when you're ready.

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1 MR. NIXON: Yes. It's Michael Nixon, M2 i-c-h-a-e-l, Nixon, N-i-x-o-n. And this 

3 testimony is being presented today on behalf of 

4 the Center for Biological Diversity, which has 

5 offices nationwide and works collaboratively with 

6 a global perspective.

7 President Obama's proposed limits on 

8 carbon pollution are an important step forward to 

9 mitigate climate disruption are not nearly 

10 adequate to the scale of the problem. Science 

11 demonstrates that the rule is not stringent 

12 enough to avoid the worst impacts of global 

13 climate disruption. This is a draft rule, and 

14 the president and the EPA need to strengthen it 

15 significantly. I will just note that math kids 

16 understand that if you take half steps, you never 

17 get where you're going.

18 The rule builds in way too much delay, 

19 until 2030, before reductions might be achieved. 

20 The rule is right to propose measures beyond the 

21 fence of power plants but wrong in how it goes 

22 about accomplishing that. The current draft 

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1 encourages even more natural gas use and 

2 exacerbates the unfolding fracking disaster, and 

3 the rule is wrong on the math. It undercounts 

4 the danger and leakage rate of methane and 

5 seriously underestimates the costs of climate 

6 change damage.

7 Another defect in this draft rule allows 

8 states to bypass renewables in energy 

9 conservation. Reduction targets are woefully 

10 inefficient and should be increased because, 

11 among other reasons, the targets are too lenient. 

12 State targets add up to a national goal that will 

13 not avert the worst impacts of climate change.

14 Scientists warn developed countries must 

15 reduce their economy-wide emissions 50 percent 

16 below 1990 levels by the year 2020 to have a 

17 medium chance of keeping warming to 2 degrees 

18 Celsius.

19 Overall, progress in reducing greenhouse 

20 gases should be based on emissions in 1990, the 

21 Kyoto Protocol baseline, not emissions in 2012. 

22 The international community has used 1990 as a 

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1 baseline ever since the Kyoto Protocol.

2 Substantial reduction should be required 

3 sooner, by 2020, not a decade later in 2030, with 

4 even much greater reductions required later in 

5 the future.

6 Greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere 

7 from decades to centuries after they are 

8 released, so they have a strong and persistent 

9 cumulative effect. And because emissions must 

10 peak within the next few years and decline 

11 sharply thereafter in order for us to be 

12 successful in this endeavor, waiting 15 years for 

13 meaningful reductions is an unacceptable, 

14 indefensible, and irresponsible delay.

15 The rule encourages even more natural gas 

16 power generation. The EPA claims this would 

17 result in up to 40 percent emissions reductions, 

18 but that is incorrect. Like the earlier rule for 

19 new power plants, this draft rule doesn't require 

20 any increase in efficiency at existing natural 

21 gas plants and, thus, fails to implement the 

22 technology-forcing requirements of the Clean Air 

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1 Act.

2 Now, I'll take just a moment to address 

3 the latest re-looping of the old jobs versus the 

4 environment hokum and scare them tactic, which 

5 has been trot out yet again, this time by the 

6 fossil fuel corporations who are trying to 

7 manipulate their workers and consumers and 

8 prevent the people of this country from doing 

9 something real and substantial in bringing 

10 positive change to the deadly climate situation 

11 currently threatening the United States and the 

12 world.

13 There are 10 times fewer coal miners in 

14 this region now than there were in the previous 

15 generation, fewer miners but more and more coal 

16 was mined by the tons. And the fact that coal 

17 mining jobs are disappearing is not because of 

18 the Clean Air Act. It is primarily because the 

19 coal industry has been replacing coal miners with 

20 giant machines, all the while on a massive scale 

21 destroying our environment, our land, our 

22 aquifers, or drinking water, our rivers, and 

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1 streams, and their headwaters, our rural and 

2 agriculture community life, and the very air that 

3 we all breathe.

4 There is actually a greater future for 

5 employment for people in greener technologies and 

6 alternative energy industries than working for 

7 the desperate fossil fuel corporations trying to 

8 hold their reign over from the previous century.

9 A greater future is one of the ultimate 

10 goals and attributes of the technology-forcing 

11 provisions of the Clean Air Act. The stricter 

12 regulation of carbon emissions will require more 

13 and more people doing the new and critical work 

14 necessary to mitigate the damage brought by our 

15 fossil fuel past and present.

16 Thank you for coming to Pittsburgh and 

17 for heeding these comments. The Center will be 

18 submitting final written comments before the 

19 deadline, particularly emphasizing the menace of 

20 (inaudible) and methane. 

21 MR. KOERBER: Thank you for being here.

22 Mr. Sullivan?

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1 MR. SULLIVAN: Hi. I'm Dan Sullivan. 

2 It's D-a-n, S-u-l-l-i-v-a-n.

3 I am the director of Saving Communities, 

4 and I have been featured in magazines. Fortune 

5 Magazine did an article, Higher Taxes that 

6 promote Development. I've been sent to Ireland 

7 and paid by Irish groups to speak about global 

8 warming and the economics of it there.

9 I am not a global warming denier, nor am 

10 I a member of the apocalypse of the month club. 

11 I am looking at this strictly in terms of the 

12 idea that if CO2 emission is a little bit bad or 

13 very bad, it doesn't much matter because we tax 

14 things that are very, very good.

15 And this complicated regulatory proposal 

16 is not nearly as good as replacing -- in a 

17 revenue neutral kind of way, replacing payroll 

18 taxes with a simple tax on carbon emission. The 

19 increased tax on carbon emission will cost some 

20 jobs but not nearly as many jobs as a decrease in 

21 payroll taxes will create. 

22 There's no more direct way to destroy 

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1 jobs than to tax payroll, and this is one of 

2 those things that's obvious enough that you'd get 

3 support from across the political spectrum. 

4 You've read the writings of Milton Freedman, or 

5 Joseph Stigletts, Martin Luther King, or William 

6 F. Buckley, and you get a classical approach, a 

7 market approach to these things, which is that 

8 you owe rent to the community for putting 

9 something we don't like into our air. You owe 

10 rent to the community for tying up the land, and 

11 you owe rent to the community for polluting the 

12 water. And it's so simple and straightforward 

13 that it's -- it's just obviously politics as to 

14 why we don't take this approach.

15 There is a big problem with any kind of 

16 standard system that grandfathers in existing 

17 technologies in that it actually can slow down 

18 the transition to a cleaner system. If I can 

19 build a power plants that would be very expensive 

20 to build, but it would have half the pollution 

21 per amount of electricity generated, it ends up 

22 that I not only have to meet higher standards, 

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1 but in the way these things usually shake out, I 

2 have to buy pollution credits from somebody who 

3 has got a cheap dirty plant. 

4 So you got the guy the cheap dirty plant, 

5 who, if he was paying a carbon tax, would not be 

6 nearly as competitive with me who has a new clean 

7 plant, but he not only gets his grandfathered 

8 allotment; but he gets to -- if I do steal 

9 business from him, I have to buy pollution 

10 credits from him. 

11 And this works -- you can see this with 

12 the oil refinery in Philadelphia. The oldest oil 

13 refinery in the Eastern United States, the 

14 dirtiest and by far the most hazardous because 

15 it's right next to the highest density population 

16 in Pennsylvania, almost the same as Brooklyn, and 

17 you look at that really dirty plant, and you say 

18 why aren't anybody building new plants. And the 

19 reason is a new plant has to -- is very 

20 expensive. It has to pay itself off. It has to 

21 meet higher environmental standards that are not 

22 imposed on the Philadelphia plant, and they would 

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1 build a new plant if not for the fact that the 

2 Philadelphia plant, as dirty and nasty as it is, 

3 can churn out gasoline a lot cheaper than a new 

4 plant can.

5 So a new plant would only get to sell 

6 gasoline during those peak demand times, and that 

7 grandfathering in is by far the very worst aspect 

8 of these regulations. And rather than try to fix 

9 it because it's very difficult to fix, if you 

10 just said we're going to propose a revenue 

11 neutral shift off of payroll taxes and on to 

12 carbon emissions, you might get fewer coal, but 

13 you would get a lot more jobs overall. Thank 

14 you.

15 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. Thank you 

16 both.

17 Next I'd like to call Jennifer Garrison 

18 and Robert Ciesielski, and my apologies, sir, if 

19 I butchered your last name.

20 MR. CIESIELSKI: No. You did a wonderful 

21 job. 

22 Ms. Garrison, when you're ready.

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1 MS. GARRISON: Thank you. Jennifer 

2 Garrison, J-e-n-n-i-f-e-r, G-a-r-r-i-s-o-n. Good 

3 morning. And thank you for the opportunity to 

4 testify today.

5 My name is Jennifer Garrison. I'm a 

6 former state representative, representing five 

7 counties in eastern Ohio. I was a representative 

8 on the Utility and Energy Committee. I'm also a 

9 democratic candidate for Congress in Ohio 6. 

10 I'm here this morning to testify in 

11 opposition to the EPA's Clean Power Plan proposed 

12 rule. I believe coal is a reliable, abundant, 

13 domestic fuel source that provides us with 

14 affordable energy, and it also provides us with 

15 good paying jobs in eastern Ohio.

16 The families in my part of Ohio rely upon 

17 these jobs. Mine workers, utility workers, 

18 boiler makers, all of these individuals rely on 

19 these jobs, and they will be placed at risk if 

20 these regulations are allowed to be implemented 

21 in their current form. And it's not just these 

22 families livelihood. The proposed EPA regs on 

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1 coal-fired power plants are unrealistic and, 

2 therefore, unfair to impose upon the American 

3 people.

4 There are undoubtedly many exciting 

5 potential advancement in carbon capture 

6 sequestration and other potential technologies 

7 down the road, but we're not there yet. To 

8 comply with these regulations would require 

9 technology that is beyond anything that's 

10 currently feasible. I've listened to utility 

11 company executives express concern about 

12 additional coal-fired power plants being taken 

13 offline. We have to remember, coal still 

14 accounts for nearly 40 percent of the power 

15 generated in the country, and it is extremely 

16 reliable.

17 What if we face a polar vortex like we 

18 did this past winter? If these regulations 

19 hasten the closure of existing coal-fired power 

20 plants, there could be serious consequences. 

21 I do support a diversified energy 

22 portfolio. I want to make certain the rules 

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1 consider the human impact of expensive 

2 electricity costs. There are far better 

3 solutions to the energy and environmental 

4 challenges that our country face than the 

5 regulations we're discussing today.

6 I support West Virginia Senator Joe 

7 Manchin's bill. He has proposed legislation that 

8 would lead to a cleaner energy future on a more 

9 realistic achievable timeline by requiring the 

10 best existing technology while enabling the coal 

11 industry to continue to serve the vital role it 

12 plays in this region and in our country. This 

13 type of measured approach is a more appropriate 

14 solution.

15 Therefore, in closing, I reiterate that I 

16 do oppose the EPA's proposed rule. I urge the 

17 administration to consider all the stakeholders, 

18 which include the families whose livelihoods 

19 would be impacted, the American citizens who 

20 enjoy the comfort of an abundant, reliable energy 

21 source, and to proceed deliberately rather than 

22 hastefully into a safe secure energy future. 

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1 Thank you again for the opportunity to 

2 testify. I will be submitting written remarks.

3 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you for 

4 being here today.

5 MS. GARRISON: Thank you. 

6 MR. CIESIELSKI: Good morning. I am 

7 Robert Ciesielski, C-i-e-s-i-e-l-s-k-I, of the 

8 New York state Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra 

9 Club, and I'm currently serving as a volunteer 

10 chair of the chapter's energy committee. We 

11 represent some 40,000 members New York state.

12 We applaud the efforts of the EPA to curb 

13 emissions of carbon dioxide. The greenhouse gas 

14 is a byproduct of our nation's energy production 

15 system. The EPA has recognized the release of 

16 greenhouse gases as a major cause of climate 

17 change, as has 97 percent of the world's climate 

18 scientists.

19 We would like to make three points, 

20 however, concerning the proposed regulations. 

21 First, it is important that the EPA include the 

22 release of all greenhouse gas emissions, not just 

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1 carbon dioxide and its regulations. Methane gas, 

2 released by high-volume horizontal hydro-fracking 

3 is 80 times more potent a greenhouse gas than 

4 carbon dioxide in the first 20 years of its 

5 release to the atmosphere. 

6 NASA scientists have found that methane 

7 may actually have as much as 105 times more 

8 potency than CO2 in the same period. The EPA, 

9 however, has been using a much shorter 100-year 

10 time frame and, thereby, calculates the effect of 

11 methane as only 20 to 25 times more potent than 

12 carbon dioxide.

13 Due to the potency of methane, any 

14 leakage of the gas of more than two percent makes 

15 it a more dangerous greenhouse gas than carbon 

16 dioxide. Studies by the National Oceanic and 

17 Atmospheric Administration of methane leakage 

18 from high-volume horizontal drilling for gas in 

19 the western United States shows annual leakage of 

20 between 2.3 percent and 17 percent from drilling 

21 and venting along pipelines, compressor stations, 

22 and storage facilities. Besides, the fracking 

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1 industry itself admits that some 5 to 7 percent 

2 of its high volume wells leak in the first year 

3 of their drilling, and that after 30 years, up to 

4 35 percent of its wells leak methane.

5 A recent study from the magazine Science, 

6 finds that the EPA has seriously underestimated 

7 the release of methane from fracking. So to 

8 define methane gas obtained from high-volume, 

9 high-pressure hydro-fracked wells as clean energy 

10 is erroneous. 

11 We, therefore, call upon the EPA to 

12 properly calculate the greenhouse effect of 

13 methane gas over a reasonable timeline, as well 

14 as to measure the release of methane from the 

15 high-volume horizontal drilling technology. This 

16 will permit the establishment of CO2 equivalents 

17 for released methane and to accurately calculate 

18 the greenhouse gas effects of fracked methane. 

19 Proper steps must then be taken to control 

20 methane release and, if necessary, actually to 

21 ban high-volume hydro-fracking.

22 Secondly, the proposed regulations have 

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1 indicated that in certain instances or states 

2 nuclear power can be relied upon as a substitute 

3 for fossil fuel in order to restrict the release 

4 of greenhouse gases. We oppose the use of 

5 nuclear reactors as a dangerous source of energy. 

6 In western New York, as in many other parts of 

7 the United States, citizens are subject to unsafe 

8 and improper storage of radioactive material and

9 waste. The mining or uranium itself subjects 

10 residents of all communities to the effects of 

11 radiation.

12 Third, we would emphasize the need to 

13 develop renewable energy based upon solar, wind, 

14 geothermal, and hydropower as a direction to take 

15 in order to mitigate the effects of climate 

16 change. The development of renewable energy, 

17 efficiency, and conversation are also tremendous 

18 potential sources of economic growth and a 

19 sustainable economy. 

20 Renewables are a successful alternative 

21 to fossil fuel, including methane, and also to 

22 nuclear energy as a source to satisfy our 

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1 countries energy needs. The industrial 

2 powerhouse of Germany currently produces some 27 

3 percent of its electricity from renewables, 

4 mainly wind and solar power and has some 370,000 

5 jobs in the renewable sector, which would be the 

6 equivalent of 1.5 million jobs in the United 

7 States. 

8 Electricity on the German futures market 

9 is priced at only 3.2 cents per kilowatt hour in 

10 2017, showing the economic efficiency of 

11 renewable energy despite conflicting reports from 

12 fossil fuel sources.

13 A November 2013 study by PJM, the 

14 independent system operator for the electric 

15 transmission in all or part of 13 starts, 

16 including Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, found 

17 that if 30 percent of its energy production as 

18 supplied by wind power, its annual production 

19 cost for energy would be reduced by $9 billion, 

20 and its wholesale cost for electricity to 

21 consumers would be reduced by 21 billion. Carbon 

22 emissions would be reduced by 29 percent.

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1 Thank you for your time.

2 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you both, 

3 and I'd like to thank all 38 speakers who 

4 participated in this morning's session. I'd like 

5 to also thank those of you who have sat very 

6 patiently through all of the speakers this 

7 morning. We really appreciate everybody being 

8 here today, and hopefully some of you will come 

9 back.

10 We will be adjourned for lunch. We will 

11 start up again at 1 o'clock. So noon on the dot. 

12 We shall be adjourned and start up again at 1:00. 

13 Thank you.

14 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 12:00 

15 p.m. to 1:06 p.m.) 

16 MR. KOERBER: Well, good afternoon. 

17 Thank you all for being here. My name is Mike 

18 Koerber. I'm with EPA's Headquarters Air Office 

19 in North Carolina, and I'll be chairing the 

20 session this afternoon.

21 Joining me on the panel this afternoon, 

22 we have Donna Mastro with our EPA Regional Office 

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1 in Philadelphia and Meg Victor with one of our 

2 EPA Air Offices in Washington, D.C.

3 We're here today to listen to your 

4 comments on two proposed EPA rules to reduce 

5 carbon pollution from power plants. EPA proposed 

6 announced both of these rules on June 2nd.

7 Power plants are the largest source of 

8 carbon pollution in the United States, accounting 

9 for roughly one-third of all domestic greenhouse 

10 gas emissions.

11 The first rule is EPA's proposed Clean 

12 Power Plan for Existing Power Plants. This 

13 proposal consists of two main parts, state 

14 specific goals to lower carbon pollution from 

15 power plants and guidelines to help states 

16 develop their plans for meeting the goals.

17 The second rule is EPA's proposed rule to 

18 address Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Modified 

19 and Reconstructed Power Plants. This rule would 

20 set emission limits for these two groups of 

21 sources. 

22 If you would like more detail on either 

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1 of these proposed rules, we have fact sheets 

2 available at the table in the back of the room. 

3 Today's hearing is one of four public 

4 hearings across the country this week on the two 

5 proposed rules. There has been tremendous 

6 interest in each of the hearings, and I'd like to 

7 thank you again for being here today to share 

8 your comments.

9 Before we get started, I'd like to go 

10 through a few housekeeping items and ground rules 

11 for today's hearing. First, please be sure that 

12 you have checked in at the registration desk 

13 downstairs, even if you're not planning to speak 

14 today, and if you signed up to speak in advance 

15 but have not checked in at the registration desk 

16 downstairs, please do so. 

17 Second, if you're a speaker and were 

18 given a room letter when you checked in, A or B, 

19 this, of course, is Room B. So if you're a Room 

20 B speaker, you're in the right place. You're, of 

21 course, welcome to listen in either room, but if 

22 you're assigned to speak in Room B, please be 

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1 here at your designated time. 

2 Third, please put your phones on vibrate

3 so as to not bother the speakers, and also don't 

4 hang around in the hall outside. There are a 

5 number of other offices on this floor, and we

6 want to be respectful of their operations. 

7 Here's how today's hearing will work. I 

8 will call speakers up in pairs. When your name 

9 is called, please come to the table at the front 

10 of the room. When I call on you to speak, please 

11 state and spell your name for our court reporter. 

12 Your comments will be transcribed and will be 

13 included in the rule-making record for these 

14 proposed rules. 

15 Each speaker will have five minutes. We 

16 have a light to help you know how much time you 

17 have left to speak. Here's the light. We'll 

18 make sure we turn it so you can see it. Our 

19 first speaker, we had it backwards. It went off, 

20 and he couldn't tell, but we could tell.

21 When the light turns from green to 

22 yellow, that means you have one minute remaining. 

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1 When it turns red, that's the signal to wrap up 

2 your testimony. The light will flash and beep --

3 you'll hear the beep -- when you have spoken for 

4 five minutes and it's time to stop.

5 When you're finished speaking, please 

6 remain at the table until the person next to you 

7 has completed his or her testimony. I will then 

8 call up the next pair of speakers and so on.

9 We are here to listen to you; however, 

10 the panel members may ask you clarify comments 

11 based on your testimony today. And if you 

12 brought a written copy of your testimony, please 

13 give it to the staff at the registration desk 

14 downstairs, or you can give to us here. And if 

15 you have an extra for the court reporter, that 

16 would certainly be appreciated. 

17 Because of the large number of people who 

18 signed up to speak, and to be fair to everyone, 

19 we must enforce the five-minute limit. If you 

20 have additional comments you'd like to make, then 

21 please submit them in writing. Let me assure you 

22 that EPA gives just as much consideration to 

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1 comments we receive in writing as we do comments 

2 we receive at public hearings like this.

3 There's still plenty of time to send 

4 written comments, and there are comment cards

5 available at the registration desk; and I have 

6 some up here too if people would like to use 

7 them. Comments must be received by October 16th. 

8 We will put any written comments submitted today 

9 in the official record for the proposed rules. 

10 Instructions for submitting written 

11 comments in other ways are available at the table 

12 in the back of the room and also at the 

13 registration desk.

14 We're scheduled to go until 8:00 o'clock 

15 tonight. We'll take a dinner break and other 

16 short breaks this afternoon as necessary.

17 If you have any questions during the day, 

18 please see the staff at the registration desk 

19 downstairs and someone will help you.

20 Finally and most importantly, please be 

21 respectful of everyone who speaks today. We have 

22 people here with a wide variety of views, and we 

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1 want to hear from all of you. So to be fair to 

2 everyone, we ask that you listen quietly. Even 

3 applause can slow things down. As I said, we 

4 want to hear from everyone who has signed up to 

5 speak today. 

6 Thank you, again, for taking the time to 

7 share your comments. Now let's get started. 

8 I'll call the first two speakers for this 

9 afternoon, Briget Shields and David Ingrund.

10 Give us just a second to make sure we got 

11 the timer going.

12 MS. SHIELDS: Okay.

13 MR. KOERBER: Excellent. Thank you.

14 Ms. Shields?

15 MS. SHIELDS: My name is Bridgette 

16 Shields, B-r-i-g-e-t, S-h-i-e-l-d-s. I reside in 

17 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I thank you for 

18 being here and for listening to our testimony.

19 And I have read and seen what the EPA 

20 plan is, and I would like to talk a little bit 

21 about what it doesn't do. It explicitly -- it 

22 deals only with the carbon emissions from 

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1 electric-generated plants. Well, these emissions 

2 are significant. They account for less than half 

3 of the US greenhouse gases.

4 In 2030, emission targets are too modest 

5 and too far into the future. A more aggressive 

6 schedule is both needed and technically feasible. 

7 We need stronger and more aggressive regulations, 

8 and we need them now.

9 It addresses domestic consumption of 

10 carbon fuels, but in return it concedes complete 

11 freedom for extraction for natural gas, such as 

12 what is happening in the shale fields of 

13 Pennsylvania. I rewards corporate investments 

14 for extracting carbon fuels here and exporting 

15 and burning them elsewhere. It accelerates 

16 conversion from coal to natural gas by 

17 quantifying only the smoke stack emissions at 

18 generating plants and by disregarding the release 

19 of methane in the natural gas lifecycle.

20 By directing investment to extraction and 

21 export industries, it feeds an even more powerful 

22 and economic political opposition to future 

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1 climate measures.

2 The environmental establishment has 

3 thrown its weight behind the president, as it 

4 must, but who then will press for policies as 

5 this crisis truly requires? When you talk about

6 turning it over to the states, you can just look 

7 at Pennsylvania where we have departments put in 

8 place to protect the tax-paying citizens, such as 

9 the DEP, but instead are promoting the gas 

10 industry, turning a blind eye to the many 

11 violations this industry is guilty of.

12 Look at the recent news where the Auditor 

13 General has found contaminations of people's 

14 water and air, and it has been ignored by the 

15 DEP; and the citizens are left to fend for 

16 themselves.

17 The president's idea that natural gas is 

18 the answer is in so many ways and on so many 

19 levels wrong. Number one, the gas interest rate 

20 is still exempt from the Clean Air Act. How does 

21 the state regulate an industry that controls the 

22 world's economy, our politicians, and our media 

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1 with large donations to the politicians and 

2 limitless advertising?

3 We're being poisoned by the industry the 

4 president is promoting is the answer to our 

5 energy needs. There is plenty of science now to 

6 show that this carbon-based fuel is no better 

7 than, and in many cases, worse than the coal 

8 industry. This is the reason France has banned 

9 the practice of fracking. Germany has 

10 reinstituted their moratorium, and communities 

11 across the nation continue to fight or a ban.

12 We need more protections in place now to 

13 protect us from this toxic industry. In 

14 southwestern PA, there is plenty of proof that 

15 the shale fields are a threat not only to climate 

16 change but to the tax-paying citizens of this 

17 commonwealth, threats to our climate system. A 

18 range of studies have shown high level of methane 

19 leaks from gas drilling and fracking operations, 

20 undermining the notion that natural gas is a 

21 climate solution or a transmission fuel.

22 Major studies have concluded that early 

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1 work by the EPA greatly underestimated the 

2 impacts of methane and natural gas drilling on 

3 the climate. Drilling and fracking expanded the 

4 use of natural gas, threatened not only to 

5 exacerbate climate change but also to stifle 

6 investments and expansion of renewable and 

7 sustainable energy.

8 I would suggest that you all get your 

9 hands on a copy of the New York Physician's 

10 Compendium on Health Impacts from the natural gas 

11 industry. I can go -- there are like 15 pages 

12 just on air pollution alone in Texas, Utah, 

13 Colorado, Pennsylvania, everywhere that fracking 

14 is taking place. There is peer-reviewed studies 

15 now that prove that it is extremely harmful.

16 If you look at this photo, this was just 

17 in Pennsylvania in July of last year where this 

18 burned for weeks while the industry told us it 

19 was just a hiccup in their manufacturing process

20 at their cryogenic plant. Nobody was told for 

21 children not to go outside.

22 We have put out a book, which I have a 

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1 copy for you, of firsthand testimonies where 

2 donations we, as citizens, have provide air 

3 scrubbers to families living in southwestern PA 

4 who cannot breathe the air in their own home. 

5 This is the reason why I ask you to, please, do 

6 not use natural gas as the answer to our energy 

7 needs, and we need to take a better look at this 

8 situation. Thank you.

9 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. I'd be happy to 

10 accept any materials you like to leave with us 

11 today.

12 Mr. Ingrund?

13 MR. INGRUND: Yes. My name is David 

14 Ingrund. That's D-a-v-i-d, I-n-g-r-u-n-d. And 

15 I'm here to voice my support for the proposed EPA 

16 carbon limits.

17 I'm someone who enjoys all things 

18 outdoors. I hunt and fish, hunt, bike, bird 

19 watch. All these things that I enjoy are at risk 

20 unless we adopt new limits on carbon emissions.

21 There have been a lot of things said 

22 about climate change in the past 20 years, and a 

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1 lot of time and money has been spent in trying to 

2 convince the public that there is no crisis. 

3 There are only Chicken Little environmentalists 

4 crying the sky is falling.

5 I did a little research into those in the 

6 denying camp and found out something very 

7 interesting. The men and tactics involved in 

8 climate change denial were the same men and 

9 tactics use in defending the tobacco industry, 

10 denying acid rain, and denying CFC ozone 

11 depletion, William Nierenberg, Frederick Seitz, 

12 and Fred Singer have been in the (inaudible) when 

13 it comes to denial, creating doubts where none 

14 should exist and cynically repeating things are 

15 demonstrably false. Apparently in their world 

16 view, any regulation of any industry is 

17 unnecessary and smacks of socialism. 

18 In my world view, regulations are 

19 necessary for one very good reason, regulations 

20 that are enforced work and work well, and 

21 industry has repeatedly shown that it prefers to 

22 continue polluting until forced to stop. Isaiah 

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1 Berlin said it well, "Freedom for wolves has 

2 often meant death to the sheep."

3 It would seem that these regulations 

4 would be anything but controversial. The 

5 opponents of climate change have done their work 

6 well. Our national leads the world in climate 

7 change ignorance, and they have succeeded in 

8 politicizing the debate to a point where I can 

9 reliably tell which side of the aisle a 

10 politician is from by his belief or disbelief in 

11 climate change. We need to get past this 

12 partisan nonsense and do something now, not 

13 later, and fear that we as a nation have allowed 

14 best of interest to continue down an 

15 unsustainable path for far too long as a benefit 

16 from a debate on climate change they manufactured 

17 and nurtured.

18 The economic argument is one that is 

19 tried every time an environmental regulation is 

20 proposed. In most cases the economic impact has 

21 been negligible or nonexistent. Tailpipe 

22 emissions, banning CFCs, these were going to 

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1 cripple the economy. They didn't, and these 

2 regulations won't either. 

3 We can't ignore the cost we already are 

4 paying for climate change. Increased food cost 

5 caused by more severe weather and the cost 

6 associated with weather-related disaster relief. 

7 To complain about potential costs from proposed 

8 regulations while ignoring already occurring 

9 costs is disingenuous.

10 No one is happy about someone losing 

11 their job, but to oversimplify these regulations 

12 as a war on coal is wrong. Instead of being 

13 proactive in developing new technology to make 

14 coal truly clean, the industry has chosen to do 

15 very little in this regard, preferring public 

16 relations campaigns to research and development. 

17 If the product you provide is polluting the 

18 planet, isn't it common sense to think that the 

19 regulation of the pollutant is in the best 

20 interest of the citizen range.

21 The right of a corporation to make a 

22 profit doesn't supersede the right of the 

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1 apocalypse to have a healthy environment. Many 

2 believe that we can have both a healthy economy 

3 and a healthy environment. They're not mutually 

4 exclusive. American ingenuity is unparalleled. 

5 We can solve the problem of carbon pollution. We 

6 can stop global climate change, but we need to 

7 act now; and these common sense regulations are a 

8 step in the right direction. 

9 Thank you for listening to me.

10 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. Thanks to 

11 both of you for being here today.

12 Next I'd like to call Matt Walker and 

13 Sherri Smith.

14 MS. SMITH: I'm going to let him go 

15 first.

16 MR. KOERBER: That would be fine.

17 MS. SMITH: Thank you.

18 MR. KOERBER: Mr. Walker?

19 MR. WALKER: My name is Matt Walker, M-a20 t-t, W-a-l-k-e-r, and I'm the Community Outreach

21 Director with Clean Air Council.

22 Clean Air Council is a nonprofit 

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1 environmental health organization, headquartered 

2 in Philadelphia. The council has over 8,000 

3 members throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and 

4 Delaware, and for more than 40 years the council 

5 has fought to improve air quality across the 

6 region and protect everyone's right to breathe

7 clean air.

8 Clean Air Council supports the 

9 Environmental Protection Agency's historic 

10 pollution reduction standards that limit the 

11 amount of carbon existing power plants can dump 

12 into the air.

13 Climate change is here now, and it is 

14 having devastating impacts in our communities. 

15 Warmer temperatures resulting from climate change 

16 are causing an increased number of bad ozone 

17 days. Pennsylvania counties had a combined 485 

18 dangerous ozone days in 2013. Ground level ozone 

19 is linked with many respiratory diseases, cancer, 

20 stroke, and premature death.

21 The Clean Power Plan has a great 

22 potential to cut the pollution that drives 

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1 climate change. In order to achieve this 

2 potential though, the EPA should make the 

3 percentage reductions for states much more 

4 ambitious in order to accelerate the switch from 

5 using almost all fossil fuels for energy to using 

6 primarily renewable energy and energy efficiency, 

7 the lowest emitting energy sources.

8 Pennsylvania has already made major cuts 

9 in carbon emissions and would likely reach its 32 

10 percent target reduction goal under a business11 as-usual scenario, relying on upgrades at coal 

12 plants and conversion to natural gas-fired power 

13 plants. As a result, Pennsylvania Department of 

14 Environmental Protection officials aren't 

15 pursuing renewable energy or energy efficiency; 

16 that would truly be a missed opportunity.

17 In order to set stronger goals, the 

18 council strongly urges EPA to greatly increase

19 the assumption for possible increases in 

20 renewable energy development used in setting 

21 state reduction targets. The formula used to set 

22 state goals to the plan currently only includes a 

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1 conservative average of regional renewable energy 

2 policies. The council believes the EPA should 

3 use the assumption of at least 30 percent 

4 renewable energy deployment in line with more 

5 progressive renewable portfolio standards such as 

6 New York, which set that goal for 2015, 15 years 

7 before the end date for the Clean Power Plan.

8 Similarly, energy efficiency is the 

9 cheapest and fastest way to cut carbon emissions 

10 and should also be prioritized much more on EPA's 

11 plan. States have the policies, technology, and 

12 workforce available to achieve more energy 

13 efficiency gains right now. Accordingly, EPA 

14 should increase energy efficiency targets in 

15 their goal-setting formula to much more than the 

16 1.5 percent annually after 2017.

17 If the ultimate goal of the EPA's new 

18 standards is to curb the effects of climate 

19 change, EPA must revised the proposed rule to 

20 ensure that the standards do not merely phase out 

21 one fossil fuel, coal, just to replace it with 

22 another fossil fuel, natural gas for power 

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1 generation. The market is already pursuing 

2 pushing the switch from coal to gas, but this 

3 rule may assist in accelerating that trend if it 

4 isn't carefully designed.

5 The EPA must account for increases in the 

6 amount of methane emissions from gas-fired power 

7 plants which result from coal-fired power plants 

8 converting the gas or from new gas-powered 

9 plants. 

10 EPA's estimates for methane contribution 

11 to climate change still lag far behind scientific 

12 consensus, which deemphasizes the impact that the 

13 natural gas sector will have on climate change. 

14 A recent study published in the (inaudible) of 

15 the National Academy of Sciences found that 

16 emissions rates of methane from active gas fields 

17 were 1,000 times higher than EPA estimates.

18 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 

19 Change recently reported that methane is 86 times 

20 more potent at warming our planet than carbon 

21 over a 20-year time period, while research by a 

22 NASA scientist shows that methane is 105 times 

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1 more potent when including aerosol effects. 

2 EPA's global warming potential of 25 is 

3 inadequate for studying regulations. The 

4 lifecycle emissions from the gas industry may 

5 already be worse for the climate than coal.

6 The EPA could create disincentives for 

7 the use of natural gas power generation in 

8 qualifying for the reduction under a state's 

9 plan. For instance, the agency could include a 

10 provision that certain achievements and 

11 percentage reductions would be canceled out if 

12 the state also increased CO2 equivalent by a 

13 certain amount during the duration of the plan as 

14 a result of increased natural gas-fired power 

15 plants.

16 In addition, EPA must move quickly on 

17 setting ambitious methane reduction targets or 

18 regulations for the oil and gas industry.

19 In addition, EPA should ensure that the 

20 rule includes protections to ensure that states 

21 like Pennsylvania cannot exempt dirty energy 

22 sources under the plan's framework. These 

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1 exemptions would severely undermine the purpose 

2 of the EPA plan. DP is considering exempting 

3 coal waste plants from the program, even though 

4 they emit large amounts of carbon pollution.

5 Lastly, EPA should include safeguards in 

6 the rule to protect environmental justice 

7 communities living near the power plants that may 

8 be subjected to disproportionate health impacts 

9 from power plants that don't undergo the 

10 upgrades.

11 The council urges EPA to develop a 

12 stronger suite of options that truly represent 

13 the best system of emission reductions and that 

14 the reduction targets are ambitious enough to 

15 drive the strides in renewable energy and 

16 efficiency we need to combat climate change.

17 Thank you for prioritizing public health, 

18 and thank you for your time.

19 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

20 Ms. Smith?

21 MS. SMITH: Okay. You said someone is 

22 recording this, right?

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1 MR. KOERBER: We have a court reporter --

2 MS. SMITH: Okay. Thank you, sir.

3 MR. KOERBER: -- taking down every word. 

4 MS. SMITH: Okay. Do I start now?

5 MR. KOERBER: Whenever you're ready, 

6 ma'am.

7 MS. SMITH: Okay. First of all I'd like 

8 to say ditto to Matt because he has stated 

9 everything that I feel, and I so I don't feel a 

10 need to reiterate. But I'd like to tell you what 

11 it means to me in terms of clean air, clean 

12 water, and just to have an environment that is 

13 healthy.

14 I am a mother. I am a grandmother, and I 

15 brought these two items here to represent my two 

16 sons. One son is a Columbus police officer in 

17 Columbus, Ohio. He is a sergeant, and I'm very 

18 proud of him.

19 And just real quick, my name is Sherri 

20 Smith, S-h-e-r-r-I, Smith, S-m-i-t-h, Columbus, 

21 Ohio.

22 My other son is Christian, Christian 

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1 Smith-Hughes. He is my youngest son, and he's a 

2 pilot; and he also does collections. I'm sorry.

3 But I'm proud of these boys, and I will 

4 do everything I can to make sure that this Earth 

5 is going to be around for them. That they're 

6 going to have water that is clean to drink; that 

7 they're going to have air that's clean to 

8 breathe. That they're going to have air that's 

9 clean to breathe; that they are going to have

10 what I had. I feel so blessed that I had what I 

11 had growing up, and for me to think that they 

12 wouldn't have -- I thought it was a privilege --

13 I thought it was something we were 

14 allowed to have, but now I'm realizing, this is 

15 really a luxury to have clean air, to have clean 

16 water, to have fish not be dead because of 

17 pollution from the fracking waters -- the waters 

18 used in fracking. I thought, hey, we're going to 

19 be okay, but now I see I got to step up to the 

20 plate.

21 Now that's Christopher and Christian. 

22 Christopher has two children, Jasmine and 

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1 Christopher Jacob, 7 and 3. I love them just as 

2 much as I love my sons, and every time I think 

3 about them not being able to go fish like I did 

4 or be able to go swim or not be able to breathe 

5 clean air, I feel as if I've got to do something.

6 And the reason I'm really feeling 

7 intensely about this is because I don't see a lot 

8 of African-Americans coming up in here doing 

9 anything, and I'm honest. I even wanted to go to 

10 Aretha Franklin concert at the fair in Columbus, 

11 Ohio, today and not come to this, but I knew 

12 there wasn't going to be a whole bunch of faces 

13 like me here; and my face is a face of a person 

14 who has asthma.

15 I've had asthma since I was a child. 

16 Every day my mother came home from work, I was 

17 puffing on an inhaler because my mother was a 

18 smoker. She smoked when she got home. The 

19 babysitter didn't smoke. My mother smoked, and 

20 as soon as she got home, she was a chain smoker. 

21 And she started smoking, and I started not 

22 breathing. And so every day she took me to 

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1 Children's Hospital, and on the weekends I lived 

2 in Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. 

3 And I think about this inhaler. Anybody 

4 else got an inhaler, anybody? Well, I'm going to 

5 tell you something. You never want one of these. 

6 If you don't believe that clean air is important, 

7 I assure you, use one of these. Have your heart 

8 race like it's going to beat out of your chest. 

9 Have it so that you think you're not going to get 

10 that last breath; that you think you are about to 

11 die because you can't breathe. 

12 This is so important. Air is so 

13 important. We think that we just have this 

14 unlimited supply of something. We don't. We 

15 don't. I don't, and it's real important to me 

16 that I'm able to breathe. I ain't going to lie 

17 to you. Yes. I'm a little selfish. I want 

18 clean air, okay, but I'm also selfish for my 

19 children and my grandchildren, pray to God I have 

20 great grandchildren. But that won't happen if we 

21 don't have an Earth for them to live on. 

22 The rich are buying tickets for $600,000 

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1 to take a plane off of this Earth and get on some 

2 other planet. You have 600,000 to get off this 

3 planet? I don't. I'm one of the poor folks, 

4 okay, but I care. I care about you. I care 

5 about the coal miners. I want them to have jobs. 

6 I just want it to go in another direction. 

7 Let's do something. Let's do something 

8 like solar, wind, renewables. We don't have to 

9 do coal. We can do something different. 

10 Jasmine, CJ, Christopher, and Christian are 

11 counting on you like they're counting on me.

12 God bless you. Thank you.

13 MR. KOERBER: Thank you so much, both of 

14 you for being here today.

15 Take your time.

16 MS. SMITH: Thank you.

17 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

18 MS. SMITH: Have a blessed day.

19 MR. KOERBER: You too.

20 Next I'd like to call Jen Quinn and Anne

21 Caruso.

22 Ms. Quinn? 

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1 MS. QUINN: Good afternoon. My name is 

2 Jennifer Quinn, J-e-n-n-i-f-e-r, Q-u-i-n-n, and 

3 I'm a resident of Tamaqua, Pennsylvania.

4 I spend as much time as I can outdoors. 

5 As a forester, I spent most of my working life 

6 outside and my free time hiking and mountain 

7 biking all over the country and in my home state 

8 of Pennsylvania.

9 I believe we have an obligation to 

10 protect our outdoor and wildlife heritage from 

11 climate change by addressing its causes, 

12 including carbon pollution from power plants. 

13 Therefore, I fully support the EPA's proposed 

14 standard. It should be implemented promptly and 

15 without being weakened in any way. Failing to do 

16 so will mean increasingly disastrous impacts on 

17 our wildlife, including habitat loss, out of 

18 control pests such as ticks and bark beetles, and 

19 species extinctions.

20 It's no longer acceptable for us to waste 

21 time debating the validity of climate science. 

22 The science is clear, whether you want to believe 

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1 it or not. Carbon pollution causes climate 

2 change resulting in more frequent and extreme 

3 weather events, drought, wildfire, and sea level 

4 rise that devastate our communities, threaten 

5 public health, destroy and degrade wildlife 

6 habitat, and irreversibly harm our outdoor 

7 recreational activities. Whether you're hunting, 

8 fishing, hiking, or wildlife watching, climate 

9 change is a threat.

10 Here in Pennsylvania, many species are on 

11 the front lines of the climate change battle. 

12 The brook trout, an economically and culturally 

13 important species, requires clean cold waters to 

14 thrive, but their populations will decline with a 

15 warming climate.

16 The black duck, whose populations are 

17 already low will lose important nesting sites due 

18 to sea level rise, and sea grass, due to sea 

19 level rise, will be devastating for species that 

20 rely on aquatic vegetation for food, including 

21 the American widgeon, northern pintail, 

22 canvasback, and the black duck. 

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1 Many endangered species recovered in the 

2 20th century through programs paid for by 

3 sportsmen through excise taxes and stamp fees. 

4 The climate change is putting these success 

5 stories and America's outdoor legacy at risk.

6 For those who don't hunt or fish, you 

7 might not care about the fate of trout or ducks. 

8 However, climate change does not discriminate 

9 based on species. Humans are threatened by 

10 drought, violent and deadly weather events, and 

11 disease-carrying insects such as ticks and 

12 mosquitos that are thriving in a warming world. 

13 Mosquito-borne diseases like Dengue Fever and 

14 Chikungunya found in the tropical regions of 

15 Africa and Southeast Asia have found their way to 

16 the US and will continue to spread to states that 

17 never thought they'd have to deal with such 

18 outbreaks.

19 If we want our children and grandchildren 

20 to have the same opportunities to enjoy the 

21 outdoors that we've had and to not deal with the 

22 consequences of an ever-warming world, we owe it 

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1 to them to act now to cut climate-altering carbon 

2 pollution.

3 This rule to limit carbon pollution has 

4 been called by some a war on coal and an attack 

5 on coal miners and their families, words and 

6 phrases most likely developed by a large well7 paid marketing firm meant to scare and anger. 

8 Having just heard some of my testimony, 

9 some of those in attendance might easily brand me 

10 as one of those environmentalists, but I'm also 

11 from a long line of coal miners. My great 

12 grandfather and grandfather were both 

13 Pennsylvania coal miners. My father followed in 

14 their footsteps and mined coal for decades in the 

15 anthracite region northeastern Pennsylvania doing 

16 underground and surface mining. I can assure you 

17 I am neither frightened nor angered by EPA's 

18 carbon pollution limits, and I would urge others 

19 not to be either. 

20 Unfortunately, industries have a history 

21 of overreacting to regulations. During the mid22 70s, the EPA began requiring the use of catalytic 

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1 converters on new automobiles to dramatically 

2 reduce air pollution. The big automakers claimed 

3 these new regs would cause the auto industry to 

4 collapse and would devastate the economy, 

5 dramatic claims that were entirely false.

6 If anything, history has shown us that 

7 regulations have spurred innovation, increasing 

8 fuel efficiency and reducing pollution from our 

9 vehicles. The clean carbon plan can also drive 

10 innovation by spurring investment in energy 

11 efficiency and clean energy technologies.

12 Despite our differences, we are all in 

13 this together, whether we like it or not, and we 

14 owe it to one another to do the right thing. 

15 Please implement the proposed standard 

16 without any changes as soon as possible. Thank 

17 you.

18 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

19 Ms. Caruso.

20 MS. CARUSO: My name is Anne Caruso, A-n21 n-e, C-a-r-u-s-o. I live in Cleveland Heights, 

22 Ohio. I'm the fracking representative from the 

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1 northeast Ohio Group of the Sierra Club, which is 

2 a volunteer position. I'm submitting comments 

3 that represent my own view and not necessarily 

4 the views of the Northeast Ohio Sierra Club. 

5 My comments pertain to promoting natural 

6 gas as a clean alternative to coal in the Clean

7 Power Plan. By not including limits on methane 

8 emissions as well, I believe the EPA is diluting 

9 its efforts to reduce global warming.

10 Methane, like carbon, is a greenhouse 

11 gas. It is a more potent greenhouse gas than 

12 carbon, 100 percent more potent because of the 

13 way it works in the atmosphere over a 20-year 

14 period.

15 Fracking for natural gas results in 

16 releasing unburned methane at all stages of the 

17 fracking process. Experts tell us that if total 

18 methane emissions throughout the lifecycle of 

19 fracked natural gas reached three percent and has 

20 a fuel that is equal to burning coal in terms of 

21 global warming. The most conservative average 

22 for methane released during the lifecycle of 

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1 fracking is 5 percent to 7 percent, well above 

2 the 3 percent. 

3 The EPA's own study entitled Improvements 

4 Needed and EPA Efforts to Address Methane 

5 Emissions from Natural Gas Distribution 

6 Pipelines, issued on July 25, 2014, cautions that 

7 methane emissions from pipelines have been 

8 grossly underestimated.

9 I know the president plans to address 

10 this problem through executive order and through 

11 voluntary efforts by the natural gas industry, 

12 but will this be enough?

13 A study entitled Methane Leakage from 

14 North American Natural Gas Systems, published in 

15 the February 14, 2014, issue of the Journal of 

16 Science synthesizes diverse findings for more 

17 than 200 studies ranging in scope from local gas 

18 processing plants to total emissions from the US 

19 and Canada. "People who go out and actually 

20 measure methane pretty consistently find more 

21 emissions than we expect," says the lead author, 

22 Adam Brandt. 

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1 "Atmospheric tests covering the entire 

2 country indicating emissions around 50 percent 

3 more than the EPA estimates," said Brandt, and 

4 that is a moderate estimate. The EPA estimates 

5 are based on voluntary reporting of methane 

6 emissions from the natural gas industry.

7 Promoting fracking in the Clean Power 

8 Plan is unfortunate, not just because it 

9 contributes to climate change but because it 

10 threatens Americans' air and water quality. 

11 Studies by Theo Colburn in 2010 and later by the 

12 Colorado School of Public Health found that 

13 fracking releases volatile organic compounds into 

14 the air. These VOCs combine with diesel 

15 emissions and form ground level ozone due to the 

16 high truck traffic which accompanies fracking.

17 We have much work to do to study water 

18 contamination also from fracking, but the EPA's 

19 initial findings of water contamination in 

20 Pavilion, Wyoming, found that the contamination 

21 there was likely due to fracking. Sadly, the EPA 

22 turned the study over to the state to complete, 

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1 the very state which had initially refused to 

2 investigate the complaint of ruined water.

3 Similarly, in Dimock, Pennsylvania and in 

4 Parker County, Texas, the EPA began studies of 

5 contaminated water, but turned those studies over 

6 to the states to complete. In these instances, 

7 the states had also initially dismissed the water 

8 problems as insignificant. 

9 Luckily though, in Parker County, Texas, 

10 the University of Texas at Arlington agreed to 

11 take on the investigation and did find that the 

12 water was contaminated with an unacceptable level 

13 of methane from fracking nearby. The level found 

14 was 83 with 10 being the acceptable level for 

15 methane and water.

16 Scientists have also linked the disposal 

17 of toxic fracking waste in injection wells to 

18 earthquakes in many states, including my own 

19 state of Ohio.

20 EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy said in 

21 her July 23, 2014, testimony last week to the 

22 Senate Environment Public Works Committee that, 

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1 "Climate change is the biggest challenge of our 

2 time." I agree with her, but is an all-of-the3 above approach the best approach to the biggest 

4 challenge of our time?

5 If a patient is in need of a heart 

6 transplant, do we send a medical student in to 

7 operate? No. We call in a specialist. In the 

8 same way, we need to identify what will best 

9 address the problem of climate change. It seems 

10 to me that energy conservation and beginning to 

11 replace fossil fuel with renewable energy sources 

12 addresses the problem best.

13 We have 15 years before 2030. Let's use 

14 those precious years to address the problem head 

15 on and not dilute our efforts by trading one 

16 fossil fuel for another.

17 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Appreciate you 

18 being here today.

19 MS. CARUSO: Thank you.

20 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

21 Next I'd like to call Robert Altenburg 

22 and Rachel Mark.

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1 MR. ALTENBURG: Thank you. My name is 

2 Robert Altenburg, A-l-t-e-n-b-u-r-g.

3 I'm a senior energy analyst with the 

4 PennFuture Energy Center. We're a nonprofit, 

5 membership-based, environmental advocacy 

6 organization focusing on land, water, and energy 

7 issues that impact Pennsylvania.

8 I appreciate the opportunity to be here 

9 today to provide testimony and support of EPA's 

10 Clean Power Plan rule.

11 PennFuture will provide detailed 

12 technical comments on a number of aspects of the 

13 proposal, but I'd like to focus my testimony 

14 today on a few broad points.

15 First, the EPA's proposal is a balanced 

16 approach. Giving individual states the 

17 flexibility to craft the best solution for their 

18 particular situation is often better than a one19 size-fits-all federal directive. But with 

20 flexibility comes the need for fair standards and 

21 careful oversight.

22 Acceptance of relatively weaker standards 

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1 in different states effectively subsidizes 

2 dirtier power plants and risks creating a race to 

3 the bottom. To avoid this, the EPA has proposed 

4 fair and achievable targets with individual goals 

5 that are tailored to each state's particular 

6 situation and provide a level playing field.

7 We also recognize that federal standards 

8 in oversight make it easier for environmental 

9 professionals in the states to do their jobs and 

10 implement the most effective programs. It's an 

11 unfortunate reality that the weaker the 

12 oversight, the more politicized the decision13 making is likely to be. Since no state wants to

14 be subject to a federal implementation plan, the 

15 fact that EPA is committed to implementing such a 

16 plan if states are unable to is one of the best 

17 ways to ensure meaningful state action.

18 EPA's goals for Pennsylvania are 

19 achievable. Pennsylvania has the tools to 

20 achieve the proposed goals and to grow its 

21 economy and without the need to retire additional 

22 power plants. Low energy prices have forced a 

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1 number of older coal plants to retire since the 

2 2012 base year, and a number of others are 

3 scheduled to retire in the next few years. This 

4 is in part the result of our aging fleet.

5 While coal-fired power plants nationwide 

6 tend to last 48 years, most of our plants are in 

7 their 60s when they close. This is also the 

8 natural result of our competitive energy markets 

9 combined with low natural gas prices.

10 First Energy President, James Lash, 

11 recognized this in testimony last year before a 

12 state Senate when he admitted that even without 

13 the EPA, his plants that were closing would still 

14 be losing money.

15 Fortunately, newer and cleaner sources of 

16 power are already making up for the lost capacity 

17 and more is on the way. Because of this, we are 

18 on track to exceed EPA's expectations for re19 dispatch of coal generation to cleaner sources.

20 Pennsylvania is also likely to exceed 

21 expectations related to our nuclear resources. 

22 All five of our nuclear generating stations are 

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1 currently licensed until after the 20/30 

2 compliance period. We may also see additional 

3 nuclear capacity from uprates at existing 

4 facilities. Such uprates, like any additions to 

5 nuclear capacity, will offset reductions needed 

6 from other sources.

7 Our alternative energy portfolio 

8 standards are all also currently providing more 

9 renewable energy than EPA expected, and data 

10 suggests that EPA's goals could be met with 

11 modest additional effort.

12 New solar and wind capacity will not only 

13 bring more clean domestic energy to the market, 

14 but recent modeling has shown that construction 

15 of these resources creates more jobs than 

16 building the equivalent fossil fuel capacity.

17 Energy efficiency, however, may be the 

18 star of the show. Our Act 129 program sets 

19 specific targets for energy efficiency 

20 improvement across the state. All electric 

21 distribution companies ultimately have met their 

22 phase one goals and are now working on phase two. 

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1 That success is good news, but the best news is 

2 that an independent evaluator, using a total 

3 resource cost test, found that these programs 

4 return $3 in direct economic benefits to 

5 consumers for every $1 spent; and that doesn't 

6 include health and environmental benefits.

7 The evaluator also examined 579 energy 

8 efficiency measures and found that Pennsylvania 

9 could more than double the reductions EPA expects 

10 and do so and still save money.

11 EPA also correctly takes a system-wide 

12 approach. PennFuture supports the EPA's decision 

13 to look beyond the fence line of individual 

14 plants in identifying the best system of emission 

15 reductions. Because of the integrated nature of 

16 the electric grid, reductions in generation at a 

17 particular fossil fuel facility must be balance 

18 with either increased generation or with demand 

19 reduction elsewhere on the grid. 

20 Because of this, the carbon intensity of 

21 generation cannot be considered in isolation. 

22 Setting goals and ultimately determining 

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1 compliance should rightly consider the entire 

2 system. 

3 This is also consistent with the plain 

4 language of the Clean Air Act, where Congress has 

5 intended to limit measures to technological or 

6 Bolton measures at plants. They have been 

7 specific, as in the case of racked or backed. 

8 Here Congress mandated a system-wide approach as 

9 opposed to a technology.

10 As the D.C. Circuit Court said in Sierra 

11 Club v. Coastal back in 1981, "The EPA has the 

12 authority to weigh costs, energy, and 

13 environmental impacts in the broadest sense at 

14 the national and regional levels at overtime as 

15 opposed to simply at the plant level in the 

16 immediate present." Thank you.

17 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

18 MS. MARK: My name is Rachel Mark, R-a-c19 h-e-l, M-a-r-k. I live in Hummelstown, 

20 Pennsylvania and I am here to support the 

21 proposed regulations on CO2 emissions.

22 These regulations are an essential first 

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1 step to reduce pollution and carbon emissions in 

2 the United States. I am a member, a board member 

3 of Pennsylvania Unified Power and Light, a faith4 based organization that addresses climate change 

5 as a moral issue. 

6 Members of all faith traditions consider 

7 their moral and ethical values as essential and 

8 integral to their faith. The ethics of all 

9 traditions mandate that their faith members care 

10 for, or at the very least, do no harm to others, 

11 especially the poor, the aged, the children, and 

12 the most vulnerable, yet that is what we do when 

13 we pollute the air and water which are necessary 

14 for life. 

15 To argue in terms of economics alone does 

16 not include the critical ethical considerations. 

17 Our obligation to those we love, to our global 

18 neighbors, and to the health and stability of our 

19 world truly matter. Carbon pollution is not an 

20 inconvenience to our life; it is life21 threatening.

22 Greenhouse gas emissions are problematic. 

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1 There is nothing we can substitute for a stable 

2 climate, clean water, or breathable air. The 

3 impact that CO2 regulations will have on jobs can 

4 be addressed. Even now, there are more jobs in 

5 clean energy than in fossil fuels. The 

6 implementation of a carbon tax would additionally 

7 spur many more jobs in the energy sector and 

8 would boost the economy. 

9 Setting limits on greenhouse gas 

10 emissions is about moderation, about monitoring 

11 and limiting our use of fossil fuels. Decades 

12 ago, we did not know about the harms of carbon 

13 pollution; now we know. We can no longer act as 

14 if we did not know. Living lives of immoderation 

15 without limits is harmful and we know that 

16 excessive and wasteful use of fossil fuels is 

17 causing enormous harms to our health and to our 

18 environment. 

19 Our freedoms are precious, but they come 

20 at a price with a budget. At some point, we all 

21 learn that overspending our freedoms does not 

22 lead to health or wellbeing. We can drive where 

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1 we want, but driving too fast may cost our life. 

2 We can eat what we choose, but too much is 

3 destructive to our health. Our choices on what 

4 to buy are endless, and we value the many choices 

5 we have, but too many leads to bankruptcy. We 

6 understand the need for limitations and 

7 regulations on our freedoms. We respect them as 

8 a part of living responsibly.

9 Our overuse of fossil fuels is causing 

10 harm to others and we need to significantly 

11 reconsider our budget. That is what the EPA is 

12 doing and I appreciate and support this urgent 

13 and timely action. Thank you for allowing me the 

14 opportunity to offer my opinion.

15 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you for 

16 being here today. Thanks to both of you.

17 And my thanks to the audience for 

18 listening quietly and being respectful of our 

19 speakers. They appreciate it and I also 

20 appreciate it, so thank you all very much.

21 Next I’d like to call Deb Nardone and 

22 Lois Hornbostel. And I probably butchered both 

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1 names. My sincere apologies. Feel free to 

2 correct me.

3 MS. NARDONE: My name is Deb Nardone, D4 e-b, N-a-r-d-o-n-e. 

5 Good afternoon. My name is Deb Nardone. 

6 I’m director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Natural 

7 Gas campaign where I reside in central 

8 Pennsylvania and State College. 

9 I wanted to speak today on why the Sierra 

10 Club supports the EPA’s first ever carbon 

11 pollution standards for power plants, but also on 

12 why the rule has to be improved or amended at the 

13 state level to meaningfully combat climate change 

14 by committing to clean energy and not more fossil 

15 fuels. 

16 Scientists have warned that irreversible 

17 climate catastrophe cannot be avoided without 

18 dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 

19 especially over the next couple of decades. We 

20 cannot afford to have baby steps or 

21 counterproductive measures, so instead of 

22 adopting a strategy that perpetuates fossil fuels 

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1 and more fracking, the proposed rule should be 

2 improved so that it ensures states are pursuing 

3 renewable energy and energy efficiency as the 

4 first priority. 

5 EPA should not undersell what states can 

6 do with renewable energy or energy efficiency, 

7 nor should they approve compliance measures that 

8 would incentivize the construction or utilization 

9 of new fossil fuel generation. Renewable energy 

10 and energy efficiency will help the state reach 

11 its target more effectively, it’s economic and it 

12 provides good green jobs as well.

13 This rule, however, will increase gas 

14 generation in the short term, potentially an 

15 increase by almost 180 percent by 2020, as was 

16 predicted in the EPA’s own regulatory impact 

17 analysis. No clean power plan should incentivize 

18 the expansion of fracked gas in the electricity 

19 sector. 

20 We feel that the EPA’s model 

21 significantly underrates the potential growth of 

22 renewable energy and energy efficiency. We’re 

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1 also skeptical about the analysis and the models 

2 that the EPA used which shows that net emissions 

3 will drop even though we will see significant 

4 increases in production of fracked gas. We 

5 should make all of that modeling and that 

6 analysis available to the public.

7 We do have an opportunity, though, in 

8 this country to turn the page on antiquated 

9 technologies that make our children and families 

10 sick, tend to lean into technologies that spark 

11 innovation. We must hold polluters accountable 

12 for the pollution they cause, both at the burner 

13 tip and at the wellhead, and during 

14 transportation. 

15 So we have to pass a string -- we have to 

16 pass a strong clean power plan, but at the same 

17 time, there is a whole number of things that the 

18 EPA must also be doing simultaneously. We have 

19 to close the exemptions that the oil and gas 

20 industry enjoys; basic protections from things 

21 like the Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking 

22 Water Act. The EPA also has to step up and 

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1 directly regulate methane, both from oil and gas 

2 and coproducing wells, during gas production, 

3 during gas processing, and during transport on 

4 new and existing wells.

5 Fracking presents real threats to the way 

6 of life and our societal wellbeing, from fueling 

7 climate change to polluting our air and water, to 

8 jeopardizing my child’s health, to destroying the 

9 places that my family likes to hunt and bike and 

10 hike and fish and recreate in general. It’s time 

11 that we really move beyond all fossil fuels in 

12 favor of clean energy.

13 This Clean Power Plan has the chance to 

14 make that happen with some needed improvements. 

15 So in closing, I do want to thank the EPA for 

16 stepping up at a critical time, for acknowledging 

17 that the climate crisis is real, and that it 

18 comes with significant costs. Now is the time to 

19 strengthen this role to minimize our reliance on 

20 fossil fuels, including dirty, dangerous fracked 

21 gas so our communities, our landscapes, our 

22 children and our planet should not be fracked 

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1 when clean energy and energy efficiency can fit 

2 the bill. Thank you.

3 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, Ms. Nardone.

4 Ms. Hornbostel?

5 MS. HORNBOSTEL: Yes, my name is Lois 

6 Hornbostel and I am pleased to be here today. 

7 I support the US EPA’s proposed Clean 

8 Power Plan, and if I had my druthers, I’d 

9 increase it to 50 percent because I am 75, and I 

10 worked as a clinical laboratory scientist for 

11 over four decades, mostly in hospitals and 

12 chemistry immunology, and the rest of the 

13 departments and nuclear medicine. And I 

14 attribute my bronchitis to my exposure to harmful 

15 polluted air resulting from coal soot. I know --

16 I'm sorry, am I close enough?

17 MR. KOERBER: You’re fine, ma’am.

18 MS. HORNBOSTEL: I know that each year 

19 the harmful effects from burning coal contribute 

20 billions to the cost of providing healthcare to 

21 those exposed to toxic pollutants in our air. 

22 This harmful pollution and burning forests, 

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1 accepted as a reality by 97 percent of all world 

2 scientists, it contributes greatly to global 

3 warming now accepted by 97 percent of all world 

4 scientists. 

5 The United States must be aggressive in 

6 reversing global warming because failure to do so 

7 will result in the extirpation of many species of 

8 both land and in our oceans. The major way we 

9 can address this crisis is by cutting carbon 

10 emissions.

11 Methane from fracking is even more 

12 dangerous as a greenhouse gas. Global warming is 

13 the direct cause of rising sea levels; year-round 

14 wildfires are the new normal; droughts over much 

15 of the western US; and in other parts of the 

16 country, heavy rains -- where I live, our street 

17 has experienced flooding for the first time in a 

18 recent heavy rainfall; loss of our glaciers 

19 around the world; and the loss of productive 

20 agriculture are effects of the global warming. 

21 These and other negative impacts are directly 

22 correlated to our continued reliance on coal to 

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1 fire our power plants.

2 Dr. Lonnie Thompson from Ohio State 

3 University, and Dr. Richard Alley from Penn State 

4 have both pointed out the enormous costs -- and 

5 I’ve heard them both lecture live -- cleaning up 

6 after these unnatural disasters attributing to 

7 global warming if we do not move to speedily 

8 adopt alternative forms of energy production. 

9 And I’m not including nuclear or fracking. The 

10 IPCC has said that the next 15 years will be 

11 critical for pursuing affordable climate change 

12 action.

13 I find two arguments most compelling in 

14 support of the proposed US EPA rule. First, the 

15 United States must set a powerful example for 

16 other first world nations in developing 

17 alternative energy solutions. If we do not, how 

18 can we expect China and India to take these 

19 issues seriously? I saw all the segments of 

20 years of Living Dangerously, which included 

21 Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford, and in 

22 third -- talking about carbon pollution. It’s a 

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1 good series.

2 Second, the proposed rules give states 

3 flexibility in meeting reduction target of 30 

4 percent -- I said 50 percent -- while still 

5 allowing the US EPA to hold states’ feet to the 

6 fire. This is important because my home state, 

7 at the behest of the largest utility company, 

8 First Energy, has recently rolled back its 

9 alternative energy standards adopted just a short 

10 time ago in 2008. 

11 Already two large producers of wind 

12 energy have announced that they are suspending 

13 plans to further develop this resource in Ohio. 

14 Not only that, but the state legislature has just 

15 passed a new siting requirement for wind energy 

16 producers. Seventy percent of our existing wind 

17 turbines would not meet the new siting 

18 requirements. If Ohio, which is one of the top 

19 five states in production of CO2, is left without 

20 standards or oversight, I fear that clean energy 

21 production is doomed. I really have a fear about 

22 this because I worked in healthcare.

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1 Some opponents of the proposed rule will 

2 say that Ohio needs the jobs provided by the coal 

3 industry. To that argument, I say that states, 

4 including Ohio, should devote the funds necessary 

5 to retrain these workers -- I just saw them; they 

6 can be retrained -- for green industry, as much 

7 as the state has already committed to retraining 

8 workers displaced by the disclosure -- the 

9 closure of a large aluminum smelter in southeast 

10 Ohio. 

11 I fully support strengthening the 

12 proposed rules and am very concerned about any 

13 efforts to weaken them. Thank you so much.

14 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. 

15 Next I’d like to call Charlotte Owens and 

16 Thomas Radecki.

17 MS. OWENS: I’m Charlotte Owens, C-h-a-r18 l-o-t—t-e, O-w-e-n-s. 

19 Thank you for this opportunity to speak 

20 to you. I am Charlotte Owens. I’m from 

21 Lithopolis, Ohio, just outside of Columbus, Ohio. 

22 I support the EPA’s regulations to put 

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1 limits on the carbon emissions of existing fossil 

2 fuel plants. 

3 Producing electricity from fossil fuels 

4 has many costs to our health, as Lois talked 

5 about. Shortened life expectancy, reduced 

6 productivity, plus the cost to our environment, 

7 species’ habitats lost, whether those habitats 

8 are cleaned up or not. And then, of course, 

9 climate change. And all these costs we end up 

10 paying, but what misleads people is that they 

11 don’t come out of our electric bills; and so 

12 people are often deluded about the actual cost of 

13 fossil fuel power plant and electricity. So when 

14 electric bills more accurately reflect the cost 

15 of fossil fuels, the economic benefits of 

16 renewable energies will become clear.

17 Also, the flexibility allowed to states 

18 to meet their reduction goals is very important. 

19 States can use this flexibility to do some 

20 creativity to encourage efficiency and foster new 

21 clean energy industries and clean energy jobs, 

22 while helping communities and families dependent 

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1 on coal find a new economic pathway.

2 I used to live on the Ohio River right 

3 across from West Virginia where coal is very 

4 powerful and some people think there’s a war on 

5 coal, and as we saw today, they’re saying our 

6 kids are important too, and they are. So we who 

7 seek to reduce global warming will fail if we 

8 fail to convince people dependent of fossil fuel 

9 jobs that they matter and that their creativity 

10 and efforts are a part of the solution.

11 Protecting the planet is good for all 

12 living things. We need to make sure it’s good 

13 for all people. What we do know though is that 

14 climate change already and will certainly more --

15 be more disastrous for all sorts of living 

16 things, but especially for the poorest people, 

17 whether it’s, you know, people of the Maltese 

18 need to evacuate their island -- their 

19 disappearing islands or people flooding in 

20 Bangladesh or in other places who did not cause 

21 the global warming, or people having insufficient 

22 food or water, or people who already, as a result 

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1 of climate disasters, the poorest people are the 

2 ones who have the least ability to escape Katrina 

3 and rebuild. So if we -- so thank you.

4 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

5 Mr. Radecki?

6 MR. RADECKI: Tom Radecki, R-a-d-e-c-k-i. 

7 I’m a retired physician from Clarion, 

8 Pennsylvania. Thank you very much for this 

9 opportunity. 

10 The proposed EPA standards are nowhere 

11 near enough, but they are a step in the right 

12 direction. The world must be carbon neutral by 

13 2050, if not sooner. We’ve already waited too 

14 long. The future looks very grim, but rapid 

15 action will help. 

16 The EPA grossly underestimates the cost 

17 of carbon pollution. The carbon bullets fired 

18 into the air by power plants this year won’t stop 

19 killing in 2030, but on the average will keep 

20 killing for another 384 years. Their killing, 

21 even now, doesn’t stop at the US border. Per 

22 capita, our country spews far more deadly carbon 

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1 into the air than any other major country. The 

2 social cost of carbon is much, much higher than 

3 the US government admits. 

4 Projections from our National Center on 

5 Atmospheric Research are that by 2060, the 

6 Midwest will have near desert conditions. By 

7 2090, desert will extend from Illinois to Oregon 

8 and southward except for Florida. Pennsylvania 

9 is more fortunate, but we won’t be able to feed 

10 the rest of our great nation. Droughts in Texas, 

11 Kansas and the Southwest are already semi12 permanent. California is having the worst 

13 drought in its history. The Midwest just had a 

14 record drought. Australia, Mediterranean and the 

15 Middle East are having steadily increasing 

16 droughts. 

17 Spain, France, Italy, Turkey, Mexico and 

18 Venezuela are all projected to become deserts, 

19 although areas that get rain are often getting it 

20 in stronger and more destructive thunderstorms, 

21 cyclones and hurricanes as seen recently in the 

22 UK, Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines, New 

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1 York, Boulder, Nashville, Pensacola, and many 

2 other locations. Glaciers in western Antarctica 

3 are now certain to melt, raising sea levels 13 

4 feet within 200 years. The recent discovery of a 

5 large section of the Greenland’s ice sheets rest 

6 on deep valleys below sea levels means that they, 

7 too, will melt much faster.

8 The State of the Climate report found 

9 another small acceleration in the rate of sea 

10 level rise in 2013. The IPCC report is already 

11 out of date, seriously underestimating the risks 

12 to life. Southern Florida is as good as gone. 

13 Many recently purchased homes will likely be 

14 chronically flooded and unsellable by the time 

15 their mortgages are paid off. New Orleans, 

16 Norfolk, New York, Boston, and many others will 

17 go underwater as well, some sooner, some later. 

18 But vigorous action now will reduce 

19 global warming gases to cut this destruction. 

20 Carbon dioxide pollution is the greatest threat 

21 to life on our planet. Some knowledgeable 

22 scientists estimate that billions of humans will 

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1 die from global warming. Starvation will be the 

2 number one killer. 

3 One conservative estimate is that one 

4 person will die this century for every 150 tons 

5 of carbon dioxide which we emit. By that, the 

6 average American is killing one person every 10 

7 years. The typical fossil fuel power plant is 

8 killing 10 or more people every day. Most of 

9 these people won’t die until later this century, 

10 but the carbon bullets that will kill them are 

11 being shot out of smoke stacks and tailpipes as 

12 we speak.

13 During the Great Dying 250 million years 

14 ago, 96 percent of all species went extinct. 

15 Life at the latitude of the contiguous US was 

16 only microbial, no plants, no animals due to 

17 intense global warming from levels of carbon 

18 dioxide caused by massive volcanic eruptions; 

19 plants and animals only did well at the poles. 

20 We are now entering the Earth’s sixth mass 

21 extinction with power plants and human sources as 

22 our volcanoes. One expert states that it now 

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1 appears, without serious action, we are moving 

2 into a period which will be most similar to the 

3 Great Dying.

4 Carbon capture is an expensive delusion. 

5 EPA regulations on new power plants still allow 

6 massive carbon emissions. We can’t afford that. 

7 Coal, petroleum and natural gas must be left in 

8 the ground. Solar and wind have become very 

9 inexpensive. Their cost is trivial compared to 

10 the massive destruction that carbon dioxide will 

11 cause. 

12 Sadly, we Americans are helping to 

13 destroy our planet. Our emissions will kill 

14 hundreds of millions. Are we guilty of murder? 

15 I’m sure that it is a crime against humanity if 

16 we don’t stop. The proposed regulations are a 

17 step in the right direction. Thank you.

18 Anybody want any handouts, I’m happy to 

19 share them.

20 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. If those 

21 are extra copies of your testimony, you can leave 

22 those with us or with the reporter, if you wish.

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1 Again, my thanks to both of you and our 

2 other speakers, and really everybody who’s here 

3 today for helping us on this rule. We do 

4 appreciate you being here today.

5 Next I’d like to call Tom Rodd and George 

6 Hoguet. I did a really bad job on that one.

7 MR. HOGUET: That’s all right.

8 MR. RODD: Should I go?

9 MR. KOERBER: Mr. Rodd, if you’re ready.

10 MR. RODD: Good afternoon. My name is 

11 Tom Rodd, T-o-m, R-o-d-d. I’m from Moatsville, 

12 West Virginia, M-o-a-t-s-v-i-l-l-e.

13 I’m here as the director of the Friends 

14 of Blackwater Allegheny Highlands Climate Change 

15 Impacts Initiative. Friends of Blackwater is a 

16 West Virginia-based conservation group that works 

17 in the mid-Atlantic Allegheny Highlands region of 

18 the Appalachian Mountains. 

19 The Allegheny Highlands region includes 

20 parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia 

21 and Virginia, and hundreds of thousands of people 

22 live and work in town and forests and fields of 

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1 the Highlands region. Each year, also tens of 

2 thousands of visitors enjoy our distinctive high 

3 mountain climate, our rushing rivers, our scenic 

4 trails, our ski slopes, our vacation resorts, and 

5 magnificent scenic landscapes like West 

6 Virginia’s Blackwater Falls in Canaan Valley 

7 State Park. 

8 The Allegheny Highlands’ economy and 

9 ecology have enriched many generations of 

10 residents and visitors, but unless the current 

11 pace of human-caused global warming and climate 

12 change is dramatically slowed, the future of the 

13 Highlands ecology and economy is on the chopping 

14 block.

15 Today, human-caused global warming and 

16 climate change are already having significant 

17 impacts in the Allegheny Highlands. Scientific 

18 research is confirming the observations of 

19 farmers and foresters and gardeners and anglers 

20 and hunters. Spring is coming early, frosts are 

21 coming later, severe weather events like 

22 devastating flooding are growing. Important 

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1 plant, tree, fish and animal species are losing 

2 their habitat, threatening species like the brook 

3 trout, which a previous speaker mentioned, which 

4 happens to be the West Virginia state fish, and 

5 it’s predicted to go extinct in the state under 

6 normal greenhouse gas emission scenarios. The 

7 sugar maple, the West Virginia state tree, is 

8 similarly predicted to be extinct in the state as 

9 a result of global warming if it’s not checked.

10 These climate change impacts in the 

11 Allegheny Highlands are no surprise, of course, 

12 because the impacts of human-caused global 

13 warming and climate change are evident across 

14 America and all around the world. Glaciers are 

15 melting, forests -- the last speaker gave us 

16 quite a picture, but I’ll just say how I 

17 summarized it -- forests are burning. They’re 

18 succumbing to insect invasions, dangerous heat 

19 waves and droughts are spreading, and sea levels 

20 are rising. 

21 Unless humanity rapidly reduces 

22 greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth is on track 

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1 to become a grim, hot, dangerous place more 

2 suited to dinosaurs than humans. 

3 Now, many people in West Virginia see the 

4 issue of human-caused global warming and climate 

5 change through the lens of coal, and rightly so. 

6 Coal is a magnificent fuel. For generations, the 

7 bravery and the sacrifice of people who mine coal 

8 all over the world has powered the creation of 

9 our very modern world. 

10 But even the most ardent spokesperson for 

11 the people who mine coal, our late great senator 

12 from West Virginia, Robert C. Byrd, called on his 

13 fellow West Virginians and on the people who run 

14 the coal industry to stop denying the reality of 

15 human-caused global warming and climate change 

16 and to embrace the future. Senator Byrd 

17 recognized, and many West Virginians do too, that 

18 until the citizens of the United States of 

19 America, where we have already built so much, 

20 unless -- using fossil fuels, unless we in 

21 America step up to the plate and put a serious 

22 national carbon emissions limitation system in 

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1 place, we have no hope of getting a global 

2 agreement that reigns in carbon emissions in the 

3 developing world from people who have so far to 

4 go, and unless we get that global agreement, 

5 humanity and our beloved Allegheny Highlands 

6 included, are in the crosshairs. It won’t just 

7 be maple trees and brook trout and a ski industry 

8 that we’re saying goodbye to on an overheated 

9 planet, it will be our security and our way of 

10 life.

11 Of course, the EPA’s proposed carbon 

12 emissions limitation rules are not perfect, and 

13 it is good and it’s important that people are 

14 strongly criticizing those proposals. This is 

15 the American way. It would be better if we had 

16 rules set by Congress, but that’s not in the 

17 cards. So we expect EPA to take every comment it 

18 receives into account and we expect major 

19 improvements to the proposed rules. 

20 I have three more paragraphs. Can I give 

21 them to you?

22 MR. KOERBER: We do need to cut it off at 

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1 this point.

2 MR. RODD: All right. Really quickly.

3 MR. KOERBER: If you want to take a 

4 second to wrap up.

5 MR. RODD: Most experts say these rules 

6 will give states quite a bit of flexibility and 

7 time. West Virginians will expect our unions and 

8 our community leaders and elected representatives 

9 and businesses and public officials to take 

10 advantage of that flexibility and time. Thanks 

11 for your attention. Despite differing 

12 perspectives, we are truly, as a previous speaker 

13 said, all in this together. Too much is at 

14 stake, too much is at risk for any further delay. 

15 Thank you.

16 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

17 Mr. Hoguet?

18 MR. HOGUET: Hoguet.

19 MR. KOERBER: Hoguet.

20 MR. HOGUET: Yes.

21 MR. KOERBER: My apologies.

22 MR. HOGUET: Thank you. Thank you for 

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1 this opportunity to speak. My name is George 

2 Hoguet; that’s H-o-g-u-e-t. 

3 I live in the Pittsburgh area, as do 

4 several of my children and my six grandchildren, 

5 and I’m here, frankly, on their behalf. 

6 On Father’s Day in 1992, I wrote a poem 

7 to my dad that began, in part, “Dad, you’ve 

8 always been a great planner, you quietly build 

9 the dams and dikes that protect us all from the 

10 unexpected floods of life. That is what being a 

11 father means to you. Thank you.”

12 I realize that that is what being a 

13 father and a grandfather means to be me also. 

14 Looking ahead, protecting, and that’s why I’m 

15 here today.

16 From 2002 to 2011, I as involved with 

17 community-based clean energy project, six of 

18 which are methane digesters on family-owned 

19 dairies here in Pennsylvania. From those multi20 generational farms, one of them established in 

21 1774, I heard about the erratic changing weather 

22 that they were seeing and how it was affecting 

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1 their businesses. They would never use the words 

2 “global warming,” but they said that the rains 

3 were coming too early and too heavy, and there’d 

4 be no rain for a period of weeks -- well, it was 

5 coming too heavy, and they couldn’t get the corn 

6 in the ground to feed the cows on time; and then 

7 there’d be no rains for weeks and weeks, stunting 

8 the corn’s growth. 

9 They said that they never remember having 

10 to deal with the levels of heat and humidity 

11 either, which were affecting the cows and the 

12 milk production directly. These farmers needed 

13 to add fans and cooling systems in their barns to 

14 cool their cows. 

15 I also spoke with others from rising --

16 about rising temperatures affecting then the 

17 Maple Sugar producers, the few remaining in PA as 

18 the maples moved north, and members of Trout 

19 Unlimited who were concerned about rising stream 

20 temperatures -- and I thought it was 

21 Pennsylvania’s brook trout.

22 In the midst of that period, with the 

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1 arrival of my third grandchild, I became a 

2 volunteer member of the Climate Reality Project, 

3 an educational organization founded by former 

4 Vice President Al Gore. Since 2007, I have given 

5 dozens of climate education presentations for 

6 many audiences, including the senior management 

7 of Dannon Yogurt and other corporations. And I 

8 will present tonight at Carnegie Mellon.

9 What scares me and brings me here today 

10 is that in the last two years, I can hardly 

11 finish preparing these presentations when some 

12 new weather event or study shows up I feel like I 

13 need to address, like the unprecedented fires in 

14 the northwest last week, scorching more than 

15 800,000 acres, burning 300 homes, or the news 

16 that 100 percent of California, the state from 

17 which we receive 90 percent of all the fruits and 

18 vegetables grown in this country, has been in 

19 severe or exceptional drought since May. 

20 Now relatedly, the USDA retail price 

21 report on fruits and vegetables dated July 25th 

22 shows retail prices in June on most items up 11 

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1 to 20 percent over a year ago, 33 percent up on 

2 plums. NPR reported in March that the wholesale 

3 price of coffee has doubled since January, due in 

4 large part to the continuing drought in Brazil 

5 and Vietnam. These costs are above and beyond 

6 even the health costs that other speakers have 

7 spoken about from carbon pollution, and they’re 

8 already affecting my family. And these affects 

9 are tied to just a one degree C rise in global 

10 temperatures over the last 100 years.

11 As I look at CO2 rates now steadily above 

12 400 parts per million since May, and the IPCC and 

13 other forecasting an additional one degree C or 

14 two degree C rise by mid-century, when my 

15 grandson Ethan will be about 40 years old, it 

16 gives mid-life crisis a whole new and frightening 

17 meaning. So I’m looking for those dams and dikes 

18 that my dad spoke about that I can support to 

19 protect Ethan and others, and your Clean Power 

20 Plan is one of them.

21 On July 14th, the UN released an injury 

22 report called Pathways to Deep Decarbonization, a 

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1 report which looks at what it is going to take 

2 around the world to stay below a two degree C 

3 rise this century. When it looks into the United 

4 States, that path comes directly through the 

5 electrical power generation industry. 

6 Electrical power generation is both the 

7 largest part of the problem, generating 40 

8 percent of the emissions, and a major solution. 

9 We need conservation and we need energy 

10 efficiency, but we actually also need to use more 

11 electricity, clean electricity to power engines, 

12 automobiles, and other machines that normally 

13 would use fossil fuels, so there is a great 

14 opportunity for investment and jobs related to 

15 solar, wind, and other renewables.

16 So I thank you again for this opportunity 

17 to speak and I urge you to move forward on your 

18 Clean Power Plan as one of the first steps in 

19 these dams and dikes that not only protect our 

20 children, but also offer new opportunity for that 

21 generation. Thank you.

22 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. Appreciate 

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1 your testimony.

2 MR. HOGUET: Thank you.

3 MR. KOERBER: How’s everybody doing? 

4 Temperature okay in here, too hot, too cold? 

5 Everybody good? Okay. I’d say we could open a 

6 window, but I’d be kidding you.

7 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I’m just impressed 

8 that you guys are taking notes, which is 

9 excellent. Thank you.

10 MR. KOERBER: Yeah. There’s some very 

11 good thoughts today. And again, I really 

12 appreciate everybody helping us on this rule. We 

13 learn a lot from these sessions, so thank you.

14 Next I’d like to call Seamus McGraw and 

15 Judy Roseman.

16 No. Did you sign in at the desk 

17 downstairs? Okay.

18 Okay. He went down to go check the desk. 

19 So we'll get you on the next card. My 

20 apologizes.

21 Mr. McGraw?

22 MR. MCGRAW: Good afternoon. My name is 

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1 Seamus McGraw, S-e-a-m-u-s, M-c-g-r-a-w.

2 I am a writer by trade, not a 

3 particularly good one, a father of four. I'm not 

4 terribly good at that either. I'm a 

5 Pennsylvanian.

6 MR. KOERBER: We all try, sir.

7 MR. MCGRAW: I'm a Pennsylvanian. I'm a 

8 lousy hunter and a worse fisherman. It's because 

9 I'm all of those things that I'm grateful to have 

10 the opportunity to speak to you today in support 

11 of the Clean Power Plan.

12 For years now I've been raising my 

13 children in the lush woods of northeastern 

14 Pennsylvania trying to teach them to fish, 

15 prepare them to hunt, and in recent years I've 

16 spent hours trying to explain to them, as best I 

17 can, the changes that they see around them.

18 In their short lifetimes, they've noticed 

19 the hotter summers, the more erratic winters, the 

20 more violent storms that rage later in the 

21 season, the mutations we increasingly see in the 

22 fish in the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers.

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1 I've shown them that less than 70 miles 

2 to the east of us, the whiting that used to 

3 gather so thickly in the Raritan Bay that you 

4 could almost use them as stepping stones are no 

5 longer there. They understand that much of that 

6 may be due to our rapacious consumption of 

7 everything, but particularly energy, and 

8 specifically the dirty energy we use to produce 

9 electricity.

10 What I've been unable to explain to them 

11 is why until now so little has been done to curb 

12 that profligate consumption of coal, the 

13 filthiest of the fossil fuels, or why little has 

14 been done to reduce the amount of precious water 

15 consumed in the process. Frankly, that's why I 

16 leaped at the opportunity to ride out here and 

17 speak to you today. Thank you for giving me an 

18 example I could point to and show my kids that 

19 there are people who are trying to make a 

20 difference to restore some measure of balance to 

21 our injured lands.

22 The Clean Power Plan you are considering 

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1 will, if properly implemented, take a big bite 

2 out of the amount of CO2 we pour into the 

3 atmosphere, reducing it by 30 percent by the time 

4 my youngest child in 26. It can, by steps, move 

5 us away from the dirtiest forms of fossil fuel to 

6 cleaner sources, including wind, which has made 

7 great strides here in Pennsylvania, and solar.

8 It will do more than that, of course. It 

9 will, in all likelihood, reduce mercury 

10 contamination of our waterways, which is a 

11 problem that continues to plague my state and 

12 other and sometimes makes us fear eating the fish 

13 we catch by reducing our dependence on coal, the 

14 single largest source of that contamination.

15 Equally importantly, the plan balances 

16 the need for reliable energy for a robust economy 

17 with the need for conservation and preservation, 

18 and it does it in a way that is familiar to 

19 anyone who’s spent time in our woods. It’s an 

20 exercise in using what you already have to make 

21 what you need. I can tell you, as the father of 

22 four nearly feral children, there is no more 

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1 critical skill for a young hunter or angler to 

2 develop.

3 It is not a perfect plan. No plan ever 

4 is. Especially in its early years, it relies 

5 heavily on the development of our newly unleashed 

6 bounty of natural gas, much of it coming from 

7 this state, some of it from my own land. And 

8 that naturally carries with it its own specific 

9 risks. Some, perhaps many of those risks may be 

10 manageable, but that will require vigilance from 

11 the landowners themselves, the states, and the 

12 EPA, and I trust that there will be other 

13 opportunities to discuss those necessary 

14 safeguards. But for the moment, this plan is a 

15 groundbreaking step in the right direction, and 

16 as a bad hunter, a worse fisherman, and a 

17 mediocre father, I thank you for taking that step 

18 for me and my children and I urge its prompt 

19 adoption. Thank you.

20 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

21 Ms. Roseman?

22 MS. ROSEMAN: Thank you very much. And I 

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1 want to thank you all very much for having the 

2 patience to sit through person after person and 

3 opinion after opinion listening to all of us, and 

4 I’m so grateful to have the ability to speak with 

5 you myself. I’m a businesswoman. I have my own 

6 company, a $2 million company I’m proud to say I 

7 built by myself from scratch while raising my two 

8 kids, so I understand the importance of 

9 protecting jobs; and I understand the importance 

10 of creating new types of industries and new jobs 

11 and new opportunities for all of our people.

12 My name is Judy Roseman. I live in 

13 Moreland Hills, Ohio. I’m the proud mother of 

14 Hillary, age 16, and Evan, age 13. And although 

15 I am a businesswoman, I am here as a mother. I 

16 am taking the day off from supporting my ability 

17 to make payroll for my employees and to take care 

18 of my kids to fight for a safe and habitable 

19 planet for my children and for all of our 

20 children. 

21 I am sure each of you, at some point, has 

22 witnessed a mother take action when she believed 

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1 to her core that someone or something was 

2 threatening her children, and that is me. I am 

3 asking you to reduce carbon emissions as 

4 aggressively as possible. The proposed draft 

5 that you all have is very thoughtful. I support 

6 any effort to reduce carbon emissions, including 

7 what you have proposed, but it is not strong 

8 enough to do what we know we need to do as a 

9 society to protect our children and their 

10 children. Strengthen it, please, if you at all 

11 can.

12 Also, please protect us against harmful 

13 methane and fracking. Natural gas is not the 

14 answer. Clean, renewable energy is the answer. 

15 I have a 16-year-old daughter dying to go into 

16 the renewable energy field who could not be here 

17 today because she is in a laboratory at Case 

18 Western investigating new solvents to use in 

19 creating organic solar cells, and her big worry 

20 is that there is not enough incentive in this 

21 country to create markets for solar energy even 

22 if she gets into Stanford or University of 

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1 Pennsylvania, the schools of her dreams, she 

2 might not be able to find a great job in the 

3 renewable energy industry, and we need jobs in 

4 renewable energy for our young people, our young, 

5 motivated people. 

6 Now here we find climate change deniers 

7 and representatives from oil companies and coal 

8 companies arguing often that we cannot 

9 conclusively prove that climate change is caused 

10 by our relentless burning of fossil fuels. I 

11 would have thought that this debate would have 

12 been well settled. 

13 So here you have a mom to remind everyone 

14 that if the burden of proof that we must meet 

15 before making a real, significant change is that 

16 we must be absolutely 100 percent certain that we 

17 are causing a catastrophic problem by burning 

18 fossil fuels, we will be too late to save 

19 ourselves. By the time 100 percent certainty 

20 could exist, if it could ever exist, the path 

21 towards destruction of the beautiful life22 sustaining climate that we have all enjoyed will 

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1 be irreversible unless we are then able to create 

2 some amazing leap of technology for carbon 

3 capture and removal that does not exist today. 

4 And while I value and respect our engineers and 

5 inventors, I would not dare to bet the future of 

6 the safe and easy inhabitability of our planet on 

7 some innovation that does not yet exist, 

8 especially when I cannot consistently get even my 

9 iPhone to work.

10 Humans swim in a river of denial every 

11 day, myself included. I would like to attribute 

12 my extra 10 pounds to my bad genes passed on to 

13 me by my mother and ignore my affection for ice 

14 cream, which is probably the cause. But here, 

15 when it comes to climate change, the stakes are 

16 too high for us to be in denial. We have been 

17 given a gift, a beautiful gift of this planet 

18 which I was born into and I enjoy every day. 

19 It’s a planet where everything works together in 

20 a way that allows us to live and breathe and 

21 drink and eat so easily, and just the opportunity 

22 to live here and have it support us so 

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1 effortlessly is a gift. And the sense of 

2 entitlement and privilege on the part of the oil, 

3 coal and gas companies is infuriating to me as a 

4 mother. They think it is their right, their 

5 privilege, and their entitlement to pollute our 

6 air with as much carbon and methane as they want 

7 with little or no responsibility to clean it up 

8 and pocket the profits, leaving any problems 

9 caused by their pollution for the rest of the 

10 world to deal with, for my children and your 

11 children to deal with.

12 If climate change is catastrophic, they 

13 will have pocketed their profits for decade with 

14 hardly a worry and the consequences will be for 

15 others to have to fix, and they think -- I thank 

16 you very much for your time.

17 MR. KOERBER: Okay. Well, in response to 

18 your comment earlier about thanking the EPA for 

19 being here, let me say that we, of course, are 

20 your government and it is certainly an honor and 

21 a privilege for us to be here and to hear from 

22 all of you today, so really thanks to all of you 

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1 for taking the time to be with us. And thank you 

2 both for your testimony today.

3 MS. ROSEMAN: Thank you.

4 MR. KOERBER: I appreciate it.

5 I’d like to call Tom Mullaney and Dr. 

6 Alan Lockwood.

7 Thank you, sir.

8 MR. MULLANEY: Good afternoon. I am Tom 

9 Mullaney, T-o-m, M-u-l-l-a-n-e-y, a resident of 

10 Glenside, Pennsylvania. I am a high school 

11 history teacher. I am fully supportive of the 

12 EPA’s proposed standard. It should be 

13 implemented promptly and without being weakened 

14 in any way. 

15 As a history teacher, I hope that as I 

16 approach retirement in the early 2040s I will 

17 teach my students about a time when Americans 

18 were concerned about carbon emissions in the 

19 atmosphere. I want to explain to students that 

20 the problem is considered history and not a 

21 crisis in their lives because in 2014, our 

22 government took action resulting in reduced 

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1 carbon in the atmosphere and increased 

2 willingness from other countries to follow this 

3 example. I am looking forward to my lesson how 

4 the United States got carbon emissions under 

5 control.

6 As a history teacher, I look back as 

7 well. To understand why we are here today, we 

8 need to know that the EPA has the authority 

9 granted by a bipartisan vote of Congress, signed 

10 in to law by a Republican president, and 

11 confirmed by a Supreme Court decision written by 

12 conservative Justice Antonin Scalia to set 

13 standards for industrial carbon pollution from 

14 power plants. Setting reasonable carbon 

15 pollution standards for power plants will cut the 

16 primary driver of climate change. 

17 Carbon dioxide traps heat. This is a 

18 scientific fact. Since the dawn of the 

19 Industrial Age, we have increased carbon 

20 emissions, something that has irrefutably been 

21 measured and documented. In that time, 

22 temperatures have consistently risen so much so 

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1 that globally we’ve now had 351 consecutive 

2 months above the long-term average. That means 

3 that a 29 year old has never lived through a 

4 cooler than normal month on a global scale.

5 This fuels extreme weather such as super

6 storm Sandy, which closed my school for three 

7 days in October 2012. When southeast 

8 Pennsylvania students miss three days of school 

9 for inclement weather in October, the problem is 

10 not theoretical. It is real and already 

11 impacting our daily lives. 

12 Please take action by implementing the 

13 proposed standard. I want my students in the 

14 2040s to know about this problem because I teach 

15 it to them, not because they experience it. 

16 Thank you.

17 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

18 Dr. Lockwood?

19 DR. LOCKWOOD: Thank you. Good 

20 afternoon. My name is Alan Lockwood, A-l-a-n, L21 o-c-k-w-o-o-d. I’m a board certified neurologist 

22 and an emeritus professor of neurology at the 

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1 University of Buffalo where I live. I’m a member 

2 of the board and a senior scientist at Physicians 

3 for Social Responsibility. 

4 PSR consists of about 25,000 members and 

5 activists in chapters and medical schools 

6 throughout the US. Our mission is to, quote, 

7 protect human life from the gravest threats to 

8 health and survival, close quote. There is no 

9 doubt in our mind that climate change is the 

10 greatest public health threat we face as a 

11 civilization. This conclusion is based on the 

12 Fifth Assessment by the IPCC that summarizes the 

13 work of some 600 scientists from 39 countries, 

14 the Third National Climate Assessment, and 

15 numerous papers published in leading peer16 reviewed medical and scientific journals. 

17 It is also clear that uncontrolled 

18 emissions of carbon largely from burning fossil 

19 fuels are the major driver of climate change, 

20 therefore, PSR supports EPA’s Clean Power Plan 

21 that seeks to reduce these emissions from 

22 existing electricity generating units. However, 

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1 based on these same reports, we conclude that 

2 although this is an important step in the right 

3 direction, it will not be sufficient to prevent 

4 many of the most severe impacts of climate 

5 change. More is needed and needed soon.

6 Here is a partial glimpse of what must be 

7 avoided. Heat related illness such as heat 

8 stroke and heat exhaustion, already the leading 

9 cause of weather-related deaths in the US, will

10 become even more common. This is particularly 

11 true in our large heat island cities where 

12 children, the poor, the elderly, and those with 

13 chronic diseases are increasingly vulnerable to 

14 the heat. 

15 Changes in rainfall will increase the 

16 risk for serious floods in North America. 

17 Droughts and mega droughts such as the one that 

18 gripped most of the nation in 2012 and currently 

19 affects large parts of the southwest will also 

20 become more common, more severe, and last longer. 

21 Yields of food crops, including corn, soybeans 

22 and rice that are already depressed by climate 

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1 change will fall even more. Crop failures will 

2 drive up the prices beyond the 20 percent spike 

3 seen in July 2012 due to the Midwestern drought. 

4 Food shortages will exacerbate under5 nutrition everywhere. Here at home, more than 40 

6 million citizens rely on the supplemental 

7 nutrition assistance program, and in some 

8 nations, under-nutrition affects almost half of 

9 the kids. Further weakened by starvation, 

10 children will fail to grow normally and they will 

11 be more susceptible to diseases. 

12 Mosquito-borne illnesses such as malaria, 

13 dengue, and viral encephalitis will become even 

14 greater problems. Some predict that almost half 

15 of the world’s inhabitants, including those along 

16 the Gulf Coast and southern Unites States will be 

17 at risk for dengue by 2085. Water-borne 

18 diarrheal illnesses such as cholera will pose 

19 additional risk in flooded areas. 

20 Storms such as super storm Sandy and 

21 other forms of more localized severe weather will 

22 become more common, damaging property, and 

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1 killing and injuring those unable to flee. Sea 

2 levels will continue to rise due to thermal 

3 expansion of the oceans and melting ice. 

4 Inhabitants of major river deltas will become 

5 environmental refugees due to flooding. Rising 

6 oceans combined with storm surges already 

7 threated areas that were previously safe. 

8 Unstoppable, a term recently applied to melting 

9 Antarctic ice will apply to other threats. 

10 PSR strongly supports EPA’s mission to 

11 protect human health and the environment. We 

12 appreciate the enormous health benefits that have 

13 already been the result of the Clean Air Act. It 

14 is past time to expand these benefits by reducing 

15 carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants 

16 and move on to the greater and more important 

17 task of reducing these emissions from existing 

18 sources, encouraging energy efficiency, and 

19 expanding our inventory of renewable energy 

20 sources by working closely with states, public 

21 health officials, and other stakeholders. This 

22 is the only way to slow, stop and reverse the 

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1 public health threats posed by global warming. 

2 The time for waiting has passed. We urge the EPA 

3 to finalize the proposed limit to carbon 

4 emissions as soon as possible, and then move on 

5 to additional protections needed to curb methane 

6 and other greenhouse gas emissions. As the 

7 world’s most advanced nation, we owe this to our 

8 children, grandchildren, and generations to come. 

9 Thank you very much.

10 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, Dr. Lockwood. 

11 Thank you both.

12 I’m sorry, sir. What’s your name again?

13 MR. MILLER: My name is Scott Miller.

14 MR. KOERBER: Yes. Scott Miller is –

15 MR. MILLER: Chris Miller made the 

16 appointment for me to speak.

17 MR. KOERBER: Can you go check him in?

18 Next I’d like to call Cindy Dunn and 

19 Gretchen Dahlkemper. Ms. Dunn, do you want to go 

20 first?

21 MS. DUNN: Sure. Today I’m actually 

22 going to read testimony from Dr. Michael Mann 

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1 instead of my own testimony, if that’s okay.

2 MR. KOERBER: Sure.

3 MS. DUNN: And just for those in the 

4 audience who don’t know him, he wrote a book The 

5 Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, and I’m just 

6 going to read his testimony in the first person. 

7 That feels very humbling and an honor to do that.

8 MR. KOERBER: I’m sorry. So are you 

9 offering this on your behalf or –

10 MS. DUNN: On his behalf.

11 MR. KOERBER: Oh his behalf, okay.

12 MS. DUNN: Yes, yes.

13 MR. KOERBER: To be -- just to be clear. 

14 Thank you very much.

15 MS. DUNN: And again, my name is Cindy 

16 Dunn, D-u-n-n. Okay.

17 “My name is Dr. Michael Mann. I am 

18 Distinguished Professor of Meteorology and 

19 Director of Earth System Science Center at Penn 

20 State University. 

21 I have spent most of my academic career 

22 studying climate science, and like the vast 

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1 majority of climate scientists in every major 

2 scientific organization in this country that 

3 deals with the underlying science, I recognize 

4 the overwhelming evidence for the conclusion that 

5 our planet is warming up and our reliance on 

6 fossil fuels is the cause. 

7 There’s no real debate about that 

8 anymore. The only debate is how fast the change 

9 will occur and how serious the consequences will 

10 be. The science is in, and except for a few 

11 outliers, nearly all scientists view global 

12 warming as a threat to our economy, our national 

13 security, our food supply -- our very way of 

14 life. 

15 We have a fundamental scientific 

16 understanding of the cause of the warming of our 

17 planet -- the escalating concentration of 

18 greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to fossil 

19 fuel burning and other human activities. And we 

20 understand the impact this is having on other 

21 aspects of our climate, including ocean and wind 

22 currents, rainfall and drought patterns, the 

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1 melting of ice, and the rise in sea levels. There 

2 are uncertainties in our projections of the 

3 future. Yet, uncertainty is hardly our friend. 

4 In many respects, the changes are faster and 

5 larger than predicted by the climate models of 

6 just a decade ago. For instance, the rate of 

7 loss of sea ice in the Arctic and accelerated 

8 melting and the breakup of the Greenland and 

9 Antarctic ice sheets, leading to upward revisions 

10 in the projected sea level rise.

11 Given the potential adverse impacts to 

12 our global society that these will cause, 

13 prudence dictates that we make every effort to 

14 reduce carbon pollution, the driving force behind 

15 climate change. Yet some of our elected 

16 representatives seem willing to perform a grand, 

17 uncontrolled and unprecedented experiment on our 

18 planet by refusing to support efforts to reduce 

19 our warming-caused carbon emissions. They seem 

20 to want to wait until the full effects of climate 

21 change are undeniably present before considering 

22 taking action. Unfortunately, by then, it will 

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1 be too late. 

2 And that is why the president’s Clean 

3 Power Plan and EPA rules to reduce carbon 

4 pollution from major sources are so important. 

5 Because Congress seems unwilling to act, we must 

6 rely on the president’s use of administrative 

7 actions to reduce carbon pollution. No president 

8 has done more to tackle global warming, and this 

9 new rule for existing power plants should be only 

10 a first step. Further reductions will likely be 

11 necessary. 

12 I cannot emphasize enough how important 

13 it is to act now. Global warming is not some 

14 distant future phenomenon. It’s happening here, 

15 now, and already affecting weather patterns, 

16 agriculture, water supplies, and critical 

17 ecosystems. I urge you to take the strongest 

18 possible actions to limit greenhouse gas 

19 emissions so that future generations do not look 

20 back at us and wonder why we failed to act in 

21 time to avert catastrophic impacts on our 

22 planet.”

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1 Thank you.

2 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Ms. Dahlkemper?

3 MS. DAHLKEMPER: Good morning. My name 

4 is Gretchen Dahlkemper, G-r-e-t-c-h-e-n, D-a-h-l5 k-e-m-p-e-r. I’m the national field manager of 

6 Moms Clean Air Force, the force of over 340,000 

7 parents across the United States. 

8 We banded together three years ago in 

9 support of your agency’s mercury and air toxic 

10 standards, and today I want to thank you for 

11 being here, and Administrator McCarthy for once 

12 again taking an important step in protecting 

13 America’s children, including my own three from 

14 the devastating effects of toxic air pollution. 

15 I dropped a banner downstairs from all the kids 

16 across Pennsylvania that couldn’t be here today, 

17 and I know that it will go to Mr. Garvin’s office 

18 after today.

19 MR. GARVIN: Thank you.

20 MS. DAHLKEMPER: Climate change is the 

21 greatest public threat we face as a civilization, 

22 and it is also the greatest challenge that I face 

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1 as a mother. Children and other vulnerable 

2 populations worldwide are already suffering from 

3 the health effects of a changing climate. 

4 Without aggressive action to limit the air 

5 pollution that causes climate change, we will see 

6 increased suffering among children on a global 

7 scale.

8 To turn the tide on the coming public 

9 health catastrophe, we need prompt action to 

10 sharply limit carbon dioxide emissions, one of 

11 the major drivers of climate change. However, 

12 many moms like me, we don’t think that the Clean 

13 Power Plan goes far enough. 

14 EPA’s goal proposed is to reduce 

15 emissions by 30 percent, quite frankly, does not 

16 protect our children. Moms and dads want 

17 stricter limits on the carbon dioxide pollution 

18 that is harming our children and threatening 

19 their future. Today I ask you to move ahead and 

20 finalize the rule that reduces our carbon 

21 emissions by 40 percent by the year 2020.

22 Why, some of you may ask, do moms care 

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1 about a 640-page highly technical proposed rule 

2 on power plants? Because our current path of 

3 unchecked carbon, it harms our kids. I 

4 sympathize with the families who are outside 

5 today. I’m ever concerned about their families’ 

6 jobs. I grew up in western Pennsylvania. I know 

7 that the fear that comes with uncertainty and 

8 change. However, I don’t sympathize with their 

9 bosses, the people who lie to us about what their 

10 product is doing to children and to people across 

11 the globe.

12 Just like the tobacco industry, the 

13 fossil fuel industry continues to lie to the 

14 American people, they continue to -- they refuse 

15 to admit that their product is directly 

16 responsible for deaths. 

17 I am a mom to three small children, two 

18 of which suffer from chronic illnesses that are 

19 directly impacted by a changing climate. 

20 Fiona is a feisty three-year-old. She 

21 loves to play outside and she suffers from 

22 asthma. I’m no stranger to going to the ER at 

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1 midnight when she can’t breathe after being 

2 outside playing. When the air quality is bad.

3 Declan is only one. He suffers from a 

4 rare form of a mast cell disease. Extended and 

5 intense allergy seasons, coupled with high heat 

6 cause his tiny body to become severely inflamed, 

7 and causes my husband and I to miss work and for 

8 him to miss time outside.

9 If industry voices have their way and 

10 EPA’s Clean Power Plan is weakened or scuttled, 

11 we can be sure that climate-related health 

12 impacts will continue. Dr. Lockwood listed what 

13 those health impacts would be, and I will tell 

14 you, when I hear that list as a mom, I simply 

15 cannot look away without raising my voice. The 

16 scope of these problems will make the worst flu 

17 epidemic look like a case of sniffles. That’s 

18 why parents are coming together to protect 

19 children and future generations from the health 

20 effects of climate change.

21 Power plants are required to limit 

22 emissions of harmful industrial pollutants such 

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1 as sulfur oxides, mercury, and the chemical 

2 precursors of asthma–producing ground level 

3 ozone. In the past few decades, such limits have 

4 paved the way for air quality improvements and 

5 the health benefit of millions. It is past time 

6 to use the Clean Air Act once again to safeguard 

7 the health of our children by limiting the amount 

8 of carbon dioxide plants are allowed to emit. 

9 Moms know that kind of pollution is 

10 harming our families and our communities, and 

11 this proposed rule is an important first step in 

12 addressing greenhouse gases. No, the Clean Power 

13 Plan will not solve climate change and isolation. 

14 As a nation, we will have to tackle methane leaks 

15 from oil and gas. As a planet, we will have to 

16 forge unprecedented systems of international 

17 cooperation. But all journeys, much like my one18 year-old’s, begins with the first step. As the 

19 world’s most advanced nation, we owe it to our 

20 children, to our grandchildren, and the 

21 generations to come to take that step boldly and 

22 fast. Thank you.

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1 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you both 

2 for being here today.

3 MS. DUNN: Thank you.

4 MS. DAHLKEMPER: Thank you.

5 MR. KOERBER: Next I’d like to call Pat 

6 Smead and Ariana Nelson.

7 MS. SNEAD: It’s Snead.

8 MR. KOERBER: Snead?

9 MS. SNEAD: S-ne-a-d. 

10 MR. KOERBER: Oh, okay. Either I have a 

11 bad card or I can’t read. Take your pick, 

12 probably both.

13 MR. KOERBER: Whenever you’re ready, Ms.

14 Snead.

15 MS. SNEAD: Okay. My name is Patricia 

16 Snead, P-a-t-r-i-c-a, S-n-e-a-d. I live in 

17 Charleston, West Virginia, and I want the EPA to 

18 enforce these rules as far as not only -- well, 

19 they’re already in law, but they need enforced. 

20 This past winter, I didn’t have any water 

21 in my house for 10 days. And, you know, it’s 

22 fine. Everybody came, they brought us bottled 

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1 water, but after a few days you think, you know, 

2 I kind of need a bath. We’re used to being 

3 clean. 

4 So I had already -- I’m concerned about 

5 the environment. I had already -- the previous 

6 summer had installed a rain barrel at my 

7 downspout, but I’d already cleaned it out for the 

8 wintertime because you don’t want it to freeze 

9 your rain barrel. So I’d already cleaned it out, 

10 but our weatherman said, “It’s going to rain 

11 tomorrow.” So I went out and hooked my rain 

12 barrel back up. 

13 It was like I was living in my granny’s 

14 house up in the holler. I had to go get a bucket 

15 of water out of my rain barrel, take it into the 

16 house. I was lucky I had electricity to heat the 

17 water. The power hadn’t gone off. Then I took 

18 it into my bathtub. I had a little dishpan, and 

19 I had me a little bath in my -- just because I 

20 had my rain barrel. 

21 But we need to know that we can’t take 

22 advantage of our planet. I know you think you go 

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1 turn the faucet on, you think, oh, I’m going to 

2 have water. If it’s gone, it’s not there. 

3 So my father was a coal miner. I do 

4 sympathize with the coal miners, but I do think 

5 we need to try to see if we can have other 

6 sources of energy, clean energy that will not 

7 affect the health of the community. But you need 

8 to have the enforcement too because when I walked 

9 out of my house that day when there was water and 

10 I could smell the licorice smell -- my daughter 

11 and I were going to dinner -- the reason why that 

12 was there was because there was not regulations

13 enforced on that industry, which was a chemical 

14 for the coal industry leaked into our water 

15 source for Canal (phonetic) Valley. 

16 So just having the laws is one thing, but 

17 you have to have enforcement; and you can’t go 

18 and start giving exemptions, exceptions, or 

19 “Well, we need more time.” 

20 We’re running out of time. A few years 

21 ago, I went up to Alaska because I wanted to see 

22 the glaciers before they all melted, and they are 

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1 melting. I took a tour out through the -- in the 

2 ocean, and I saw all of these glaciers coming 

3 down. And the captain just said, “Wow, here’s 

4 your entertainment.” And there I am, I’m 

5 watching the fresh water of the earth melting 

6 into the ocean. You know what the ocean is? 

7 Salt. So we’re losing fresh water. So that’s 

8 part of my thing as far as the planet for my 

9 children. 

10 Now, the other thing is, as far as the 

11 mining of coal, I’ve seen the results of the 

12 flooding from the mountaintop removal. I have a 

13 cousin that had no idea -- you know, it had 

14 rained and he had no idea, he stepped out of his 

15 house, the creek had swept under his house and he 

16 stepped into a hole up to his chest. They were 

17 able to get out of his house. I know other 

18 stories down in the area -- this was in Raleigh 

19 County, where I’m originally from -- but where 

20 the floodwaters come up so fast, people don’t 

21 know it’s coming and, you know, they try to -- to 

22 try to -- to get out and run; and one girl died. 

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1 So thank you.

2 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, ma’am. Ms. 

3 Nelson?

4 MS. NELSON: My name is Ariana Nelson, A5 r-i-a-n-a, and Nelson the original way. I’m here 

6 as a part of Pittsburgh Citizen Climate Lobby. 

7 I’m also a prospective nursing student, so one of 

8 the issues I want to touch on is how climate 

9 carbon affects health as well. 

10 Burning fossil fuels is making us sick 

11 and costing us money. The burning of fossil 

12 fuels contributes to four out of five leading 

13 causes of death in the United States, including 

14 the heart disease, the cancer, the stroke, and 

15 lung diseases, while putting children at risk for 

16 asthma and delayed mental development. 

17 All of these missed work days, hospital 

18 visits, and deaths not only cause suffering, but 

19 they handicap our economy increased insurance 

20 premiums and contribute to the unsustainable 

21 growth in health care costs.

22 Fossil fuels only seem cheap because we 

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1 pay the price, the poor health and higher 

2 insurance premiums. Coal plants alone cause more 

3 than 13,000 deaths each year in the United 

4 States. According to the National Academy of 

5 Sciences, the burning of fossil fuels causes 120 

6 billion annual in mostly health-related damages. 

7 Healthcare costs are expensive. I’d go to my 

8 doctor before I had health insurance and, I mean, 

9 if it’s something serious, you got the medication 

10 cost, you have the visit cost. So, I mean, for 

11 anybody, it could rack up. You could have all 

12 the insurance in the world, but it’s still going 

13 to cost you a lot of money.

14 The market of fossil fuels do not reflect 

15 their true costs. Your electricity bill does not 

16 reflect the cost of your asthmatic daughter’s 

17 visits to the emergency room. Your price at the 

18 pump does not reflect the financial and emotional 

19 cost of your father’s heart attack. 

20 My grandfather just had a heart attack 

21 because his whole life, he did work in coal 

22 mining as a younger man, but he mostly did truck 

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1 driving, and just the stress of being out working 

2 really hard in the heat doing labor, it causes a 

3 lot of stress. It ages you. Anybody that I know 

4 that works in any of those fields, they look a 

5 lot older than they are. He’s got fingers 

6 missing. He has a lot of healthcare costs he had 

7 to pay. He was in a fire explosion that happened 

8 and half of his face was burned. He had to pay 

9 for them to graft skin from other parts of his 

10 body to cover the scarring. 

11 He’s not a rich man. These are things he 

12 can’t afford. Not to mention, it cuts into costs 

13 of other things he should be affording like food. 

14 You have to – the whole argument that was in the 

15 news a couple years ago, pills, food, I mean, 

16 that really does happen with families, and it 

17 happens to a lot more people than I think people 

18 imagine. They think it’s just the poor people, 

19 but it’s cutting into the middle class. I mean, 

20 the middle class is getting smaller. So it’s

21 cutting into more people.

22 Carbon fee, with CCL, the Citizen Climate 

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1 Lobby, we’re asking the EPA to -- the Carbon Fee 

2 and Dividend Legislation would make fossil fuel’s 

3 market reflect their true costs to society, 

4 thereby leveling the playing field for healthier 

5 energy sources. This simple transparent revenue6 neutral step will prevent your father’s stroke or 

7 your child’s asthma attack while saving money and 

8 slowly climate change -- slowing climate change. 

9 You can contact them about that.

10 But we’re asking the EPA to include 

11 recommendations for how states might satisfy EPA 

12 rules, a revenue-neutral carbon tax using a fee 

13 and dividend approach similar to the legislation 

14 CCL advocates. They were in Washington D.C., I 

15 think, about last month talking about that. I 

16 believe that if this form of carbon tax is 

17 implemented on a state by state level, the 

18 economic benefits would push other states and 

19 nations to pursue it. It’s pretty much what it’s 

20 stating is if you increase the tax that you place 

21 on carbon, obviously, eventually that would level 

22 it out so that people aren’t having to pay extra. 

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1 It would help slow climate change and that would 

2 contribute to healthier people, healthier 

3 community, and healthier planet. So thank you.

4 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you both 

5 for being here today.

6 We have just a few more speakers then we 

7 are going to take a short break. And Mr. Nelson, 

8 we do have you -- or Mr. Miller, we do have you 

9 so we’ll get to you.

10 Just a reminder, if you have signed up to 

11 speak in advance and you were assigned to Room B, 

12 make sure you do check in downstairs so we don’t 

13 miss you.

14 Next I’d like to call Christina Zhou and 

15 Arlene Mercurio.

16 MS. ZHOU: All right. Good afternoon. 

17 I’m Christina Zhou, C-h-r-i-s-t-i-n-a, N-a-z-h-o18 u, and I’m another voice speaking out for Climate 

19 Solutions. 

20 Once again, thank you all for organizing 

21 this really great opportunity for all of us to 

22 speak today. My parents are immigrants from 

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1 China, and that’s not really something you can 

2 imagine happening over there.

3 I just graduated from Stanford University 

4 in environmental engineering, and I’ll be going 

5 back next -- this fall for another master’s 

6 degree in the same engineering department. 

7 Currently I am working as a summer fellow with 

8 the Natural Resources Events Council back home in 

9 New York to further analysis of this Clean Power 

10 Plan. 

11 As a student, I learned about the 

12 processes by which pollutants change our 

13 atmosphere and affect our health, as well as 

14 realistic and cost effective ways to bring about 

15 a cleaner environment. And as a recent graduate, 

16 I often think about how I can support myself and 

17 eventually my family, when they can no longer 

18 work while contributing to the public good.

19 My parents came to this country with 

20 almost nothing. And to provide me with a better 

21 future, they worked me – they worked their way up 

22 from odd jobs to running their own small 

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1 business. From this struggle, I’ve gained a real 

2 appreciation for the importance of creating 

3 opportunities for future generations, and I’m 

4 thrilled to have this chance to push for a 

5 cleaner and more resilient America.

6 We shouldn’t have to choose between the 

7 economy and a clean energy future. Workers 

8 shouldn’t have to choose between lifelong health 

9 impacts of jobs in dirty industries and putting 

10 food on the table. For this reason, and many 

11 others, I support the Clean Power Plan, which 

12 will move our nation forward and foster our 

13 technological leadership in the energy field. 

14 This groundbreaking regulation will provide 

15 opportunities for people to keep America strong 

16 and at the forefront of innovation while cutting 

17 harmful pollution and creating jobs.

18 As an engineer, I do trust in the power 

19 of technology, but I’ve learned that it is 

20 actually policy and regulations that drive 

21 innovation. Studies have found that flexible 

22 standards like the Clean Power Plan will drive 

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1 businesses to be more competitive globally and at 

2 home. The Industry Studies Association, actually 

3 based here in Pittsburgh, found that strict car 

4 pollution standards for carbon monoxide and 

5 hydrocarbons in the 70s incentivized US auto 

6 makers to innovate, making them more competitive 

7 than many overseas manufacturers.

8 Additionally, recent fuel economy rules 

9 are estimated to provide around half a million 

10 jobs by 2030. We’ve seen in this example and 

11 many others that moving actively on new standards 

12 will benefit both companies and their workers. 

13 The Clean Power Plan is flexible, giving 

14 states many opportunities to meet their goals. 

15 Each state gets a target based on its existing 

16 resources and progress to date, but can comply by 

17 selecting from many of various different options. 

18 This flexibility lets each state choose the most 

19 economical approach for its electricity customers 

20 considering available resources, economic 

21 potential, and more human impacts such as jobs, 

22 environmental justice, and the enormous public 

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1 health benefits of reducing carbon and other air 

2 pollutants. 

3 As it turns out, the opportunities 

4 offered in the Clean Power Plan benefit both the 

5 economy and its people. Here in Pennsylvania 

6 there exists incredible potential for creating 

7 well-paying jobs in fields such as renewable 

8 energy, and our cheapest energy resource, 

9 efficiency. 

10 According to an NRDC analysis, the 

11 proposed standards could create over 5,000 new 

12 efficiency jobs in Pennsylvania alone, though 

13 even more are possible depending on how the state 

14 meets the goal because the state can meet the 

15 goal however it chooses.

16 Pennsylvania, especially Pittsburgh, 

17 already leads in clean energy and new 

18 technologies. A 2010 study by the Brookings 

19 Institute ranked Pennsylvania as the state with 

20 the fourth largest green economy based on over 

21 100,000 jobs in fast-growing segments such as 

22 energy efficient lighting, solar, and wind. Jobs 

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1 in this clean economy pay well, about 2,300 more 

2 than the state average.

3 In addition, states like Ohio are also 

4 already in the lead with their renewable energy 

5 portfolio standards, which is saving the state 

6 millions of dollars from energy efficiency and 

7 renewable energy and generating almost 9,000 

8 jobs. West Virginia as well has very much 

9 potential, especially in the wind industry, to 

10 move to renewable energy, which is estimated to 

11 be able to provide up to 20 percent of the 

12 state’s energy. 

13 The Clean Power Plan gives states the 

14 opportunity to choose policies that increase and 

15 improve American jobs while cutting hidden costs 

16 to our children and communities like hospital 

17 visits for respiratory illnesses and other 

18 pollution-related health effects. The EPA’s 

19 analysis of reduced greenhouse gas and other 

20 toxic pollutant levels show that the benefits 

21 massively outweigh the cost of the program. 

22 Based on our research, we find this estimate 

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1 conservative and that real benefits will be even 

2 higher, especially if states go above and beyond 

3 the standards.

4 I stand for the Clean Power Plan with the 

5 majority of Americans in all states as a way to 

6 encourage a clean and brighter future. It’s hard 

7 to imagine what we are waiting for. Thank you.

8 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. And 

9 congratulations.

10 MS. ZHOU: Oh, thank you.

11 MR. KOERBER: Ms. Mercurio?

12 MS. MERCURIO: Hello. My name is Arlene 

13 Mercurio. I’ll spell it, M-e-r-c-u-r-i-o. I live 

14 in New Kensington, Pennsylvania and I’m -- I 

15 wasn’t prepared to speak, I’m filling in, but I 

16 can speak from my heart even though I have a 

17 master’s degree in public policy, I worked for 

18 years at the Graduate School of Public and 

19 International Affairs. 

20 I have been a long-time Sierra Club 

21 member who’s been talking about climate change 

22 since the 80s, and it wasn’t the Sierra Club that 

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1 brought this hearing and all these people here. 

2 It’s Mother Nature, that people can no longer 

3 deny what the Sierra Club’s been screaming about 

4 for years. 

5 But the biggest reason I’m here and the 

6 biggest reason I can talk from my heart is 

7 because I’m a grandmother, and I’m embarrassed by 

8 my generation’s inability to deal with climate 

9 change. 

10 This hour is way too late. This proposal 

11 is great, obviously, and you know, it should have 

12 been done 20 years ago. It’s a first step, but I 

13 mean, we’ll take what we can get. So thank you. 

14 My big concern about this particular plan 

15 is, though, enforcement and that you’re giving 

16 the states way too much flexibility. 

17 Pennsylvania is a perfect example of a state that 

18 cannot be trusted to enforce this -- these 

19 regulations. If you know anything about 

20 fracking, our government has given our state over 

21 as a sacrifice zone to the natural gas industry, 

22 and I hope at some point you guys will also 

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1 regulate methane, which is a much more powerful 

2 gas than CO2. 

3 The auditor general of Pennsylvania has 

4 just validated what the people have been 

5 experiencing and seeing in Pennsylvania, and that 

6 is that our DPA is not protecting our 

7 environment. Our Department of Environmental 

8 Resources is giving away our public lands, our 

9 parks and our state forests to the gas industry, 

10 and the industry hasn’t been regulated. So I 

11 don’t know why you think Pennsylvania would do a 

12 good job on trying to enforce or put forth a plan 

13 -- you’re going to have to keep a much closer eye 

14 on the states.

15 I’m not only speaking for my 

16 grandchildren now. I’m speaking for all the 

17 other creatures that we share this planet with, 

18 and we’re losing them at such an un-historic 

19 rate. I’m very concerned about the oceans. 

20 They’ve become so acidic from all the CO2. It 

21 supports life in so many ways. Nobody’s speaking 

22 for the oceans, for the corral, for the fish, the

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1 water, the droughts, the food, food security. 

2 I mean, all I can say is thank you for 

3 doing this. I wish my elected officials -- I 

4 wish my government didn’t have to depend upon the 

5 EPA and the regulators. I appreciate you guys 

6 doing what you can do. 

7 The policies that need to be put in place 

8 like carbon taxes, et cetera, that really could 

9 make a difference have to be done legislatively. 

10 If you have any pull, I certainly don’t anymore -

11 - they talk about carbon capture. Well, I’ll 

12 tell you who carbon has captured, my government. 

13 Thanks.

14 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, ma’am. Thank 

15 you. Thanks to both of you.

16 Next I’d like to call Scott Miller --

17 finally, sir -- and Court Gould. And after the 

18 next two speakers, we’ll take a five-minute 

19 break.

20 MR. MILLER: Hi. 

21 MR. KOERBER: Mr. Miller?

22 MR. MILLER: Thank you. I am Scott 

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1 Miller. I’m director of sustainability and 

2 product affairs at Knauf Insulation in 

3 Shelbyville, Indiana. We very much -- and I’m 

4 here representing the North American Insulation 

5 Manufacturers Association as well. 

6 We appreciate EPA providing this 

7 opportunity for testimony on 111(d) and we 

8 appreciate the EPA for understanding the 

9 importance of energy efficiency. I also am an 

10 engineer. We are a ridiculously pragmatic lot. 

11 We make fun of ourselves quite a bit, but to the 

12 pessimist, the glass is half empty, the optimist, 

13 the glass is half full; to an engineer, it’s a 

14 wrong size glass. That’s the way we think. 

15 So energy efficiency seems like an 

16 underlying fundamental thing that needs to be 

17 done to give anything a snowball’s chance in hell 

18 of succeeding from a renewable standpoint. So we 

19 strongly urge the EPA to give credit for early 

20 action for greenhouse gas reductions achieved 

21 through energy efficiency, measures such as 

22 insulation, and this provides immediate ongoing 

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1 energy savings and carbon reduction.

2 We strongly urge the EPA to adopt 

3 insulation incentives that are simple and easy to 

4 validate, and to quantify the energy savings and 

5 pollution reductions achieved through insulation. 

6 These incentives should apply to installation of 

7 insulation on both new and existing structures. 

8 Energy savings achieved through insulation is the 

9 most cost effective deep reduction strategy 

10 available. 

11 We urge the EPA to give credit for 

12 adoption, enforcement or upgrades to building 

13 energy codes as well. Studies conducted by 

14 Harvard, as well as Boston University which is 

15 underway to update the Harvard study, 

16 demonstrates significant energy savings and 

17 pollution reduction through the improvement of 

18 energy codes, and buildings account for 

19 approximately 40 percent of the greenhouse gas 

20 emissions in this country. 

21 We encourage the EPA in establishing the 

22 best system of emission reduction, BSER, under 

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1 Section 111(d) to go beyond just recognizing 

2 energy efficiency, but indeed promote end use 

3 energy efficiency enhancements, specifically 

4 insulation as the most important and cost 

5 effective method for states to achieve greenhouse 

6 gas emissions at existing power plants.

7 EPA should give states wide latitude 

8 under 111(d) to take such actions which will 

9 achieve significant reductions in energy demand 

10 and emissions at a low cost to the benefit of the 

11 state’s utilities and public.

12 Buildings are woefully under-insulated in 

13 this country. Everybody in this room, I almost 

14 guarantee your house is under-insulated, and you 

15 probably have a 30-inch hole in your house. And, 

16 you know, you’re asking for the EPA to do 

17 something about emissions and you could do 

18 something if you just fixed your home.

19 So improving energy efficiency 

20 performance in building is truly low-hanging 

21 fruit. It’s fundamental. Based on calculations 

22 from an authoritative resources, insulation 

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1 currently in place in US buildings reduces the 

2 amount of carbon dioxide emissions by 780 million 

3 tons per year. That’s equivalent of about 150 

4 coal-fired power plants. And the electricity use 

5 of about 90 million homes a year is saved through 

6 insulation.

7 We believe that a comprehensive 

8 insulation strategy could reduce energy and 

9 associated greenhouse gas emissions by 20 to 30 

10 percent. Insulation products save more energy 

11 than it takes to manufacture them. Insulation 

12 that goes in a home, the amount of energy it took 

13 to manufacture that insulation is recovered in 

14 about 30 days in the home. On the 31st day, it’s 

15 paying back the environment. Insulation saves 

16 over 600 times more energy than compact 

17 fluorescent bulbs, Energy Star appliances, and 

18 windows combined on an annual basis.

19 This also applies to industry. Energy 

20 efficiency opportunities in steam systems, for 

21 instance, can deliver significant energy savings 

22 without incurring substantial implementation 

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1 costs using publicly available software like the 

2 NAIMA 3E software that is available in a public 

3 domain on the internet. Thickness computer 

4 programs can actually calculate carbon reduction 

5 as a result of applying insulation. 

6 We appreciate this opportunity to 

7 comment. Thank you.

8 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. 

9 MR. GOULD: That was great. I learned a 

10 lot.

11 I'm I’m Court Gould, C-o-u-r-t, G-o-u-l12 d. I’m executive director of Sustainable 

13 Pittsburgh, and like all the rest, appreciate 

14 this opportunity to give thoughts.

15 Sustainable Pittsburgh is in favor of 

16 EPA’s precedent-setting Clean Power Plan. We 

17 concur with the agency’s authority to limit CO2

18 pollution from power plants and the practicality 

19 that giving states flexibility in determining how 

20 best to reduce emissions in ways that are 

21 tailored to the interests of the local regional 

22 economies to protect existing jobs while reducing 

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1 emissions to create opportunities to grow good 

2 new jobs, to encourage investment, and to 

3 catalyze innovation.

4 Going on 17 years, the mission of 

5 Sustainable Pittsburgh is to accelerate the 

6 policy and the practice of sustainability in 

7 southwestern Pennsylvania. Our charge is as much 

8 about the environment as it is economy and social 

9 equity. We see sustainability as being 

10 responsible to mitigate that which impedes 

11 progress and to duly maximize innovations in 

12 favor of that which is repeatable, replenishes, 

13 creates abundance, and is just.

14 Matters of energy systems are core to the 

15 process of sustainable development, and 

16 southwestern Pennsylvania is continuing its 

17 global case study of innovation in this area. In 

18 between the assailing of the plan as too much or 

19 too little is the base rationale of catalyzing US 

20 innovation toward a cleaner and healthier energy 

21 future. 

22 Long-existing federal regulation to put 

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1 limits on a myriad of pollutants emitted by power 

2 plants knowingly has had positive social, 

3 environmental and economic effects here at home, 

4 and importantly has set the bar of standards high 

5 for the rest of the world. With the ill effects 

6 well-established of carbon dioxide concentrations 

7 on a global scale impacting all species 

8 everywhere on the planet, it’s common sense that 

9 EPA promulgate strong and effective standards as 

10 an important first step to cutting CO2 pollution 

11 and its costly impacts, while also demonstrating 

12 US leadership in inviting other nations to follow 

13 suit.

14 Right here, southwestern Pennsylvania has 

15 had a long-recognized history as a global leader 

16 in innovations and we are recognized as having 

17 extraordinarily rich natural resources. With 

18 that abundance of that wealth comes 

19 responsibility. Our region has the ingenuity to 

20 not only meet the challenges of the proposed 

21 Clean Power Plan targets, but to best them in 

22 development of clean technologies, energy 

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1 efficiency technology, insulation, market 

2 programs that support workers and communities 

3 through job creation, and also sustaining the 

4 integrity of our electric grid upon which our 

5 region’s and the nation’s economy depends. 

6 Our region has shown time and time again 

7 that we have the capacity to anticipate and act 

8 in ways to get in front of predicted future 

9 economic changes, to mitigate risks, and to be at 

10 the leading edge of advantage through innovation. 

11 We urge progress in advancing this plan, as well 

12 as other measures, to provide a road map for 

13 reducing carbon pollution in order to support 

14 sustainable prosperity in the US and to catalyze 

15 strong global actions to curb the costly and 

16 harmful effects of global warming and climate 

17 disruption.

18 States, and increasingly our regions, are 

19 called upon to lead the way to a cleaner, 

20 healthier, and community-sustaining energy 

21 economy. The southwestern Pennsylvania region 

22 stands to be a key partner in modeling the public 

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1 and the private sector collaboration that’s going 

2 to be required to craft implementation plans to 

3 advance these goals. 

4 The Clean Power Plan indeed is a long5 overdue federal framework for accelerating 

6 innovation, and we will thrive in meeting the 

7 challenge. Thank you very much.

8 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you both.

9 And once again, I want to really think 

10 all of the speakers for being here today, for 

11 sharing your thoughts, your knowledge, your 

12 feelings with us. This is very important for us,

13 and it’s really helping us in putting together a 

14 good rule.

15 We’re going to take a five-minute break 

16 just to give the court reporter and the panel a 

17 chance to stretch and all of you. Some of you 

18 have been sitting for a couple hours now. We’ll 

19 reconvene in five minutes. 

20 Just to let you know who’s on deck, I 

21 have cards for Patrick Grenter, Francis Reco, Jim 

22 Egged, and Mike Kamandulis. So those are the 

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1 next four up on deck. But five-minute break and 

2 then we’ll get going.

3

4 (Whereupon a recess was taken from 3:18 

5 p.m. to 3:25 p.m.)

6

7 MR. KOERBER: It felt good to stand up 

8 after sitting for a couple hours, so I really do 

9 appreciate it.

10 I'd like to call our next two speakers, 

11 Patrick Grenter and Francis Reco.

12 Mr. Grenter?

13 MR. GRENTER: Thank you. My name is 

14 Patrick Grenter. I'm an attorney and the 

15 executive director of the Center for Coalfield 

16 Justice. 

17 I'd like to thank you all for the 

18 opportunity to present comment on the US EPA's 

19 Clean Power Plan for Existing Power Plants and 

20 Carbon Pollution Standards for Modified Sources 

21 here today.

22 The Center for Coalfield Justice is a 

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1 Pennsylvania, Incorporated, not for profit 

2 organization, 184 South Main Street in 

3 Washington, PA. We are a membership organization 

4 with a mission to improve policy and regulations 

5 for the oversight of fossil fuel extraction and 

6 use, to education, empower, and organize 

7 coalfield citizens, and to protect, and to 

8 protect public and environmental health.

9 We have individual members and we have 

10 just about 2,000 members and supporters, most all 

11 of whom live in the coal fields of Washington and 

12 Greene County, the two most southwestern counties 

13 of Pennsylvania.

14 We were formed as a tri-state citizens 

15 mining network in 1994, the coalition of 

16 grassroots groups and individuals concerned about 

17 the effects of long wall coal mining on their 

18 coal mining on their communities. We changed our 

19 name in 2007 to the Center for Coalfield Justice 

20 and expanded our work to cover fossil fuel 

21 extraction generally, which is increasingly 

22 covered being an incredible rate of hydraulic 

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1 fracturing that's also occurring in these 

2 communities.

3 The Center for Coalfield Justice supports 

4 the Clean Power Plan to help clean up our 

5 environment and keep our children healthy. In 

6 fact, the EPA should strengthen the standard by 

7 prioritizing renewable energy and energy 

8 efficiency standards. (1:57)

9 Communities like those in southwestern 

10 Pennsylvania coal fields should also have a 

11 significant role to play in this process now and 

12 in the future because they are the ones that 

13 stand to be among the most impacted through this 

14 transition to a coal-free generation. 

15 Long wall coal mining has devastated 

16 Washington and Greene Counties for decades, and 

17 development continues at a torrid pace to this 

18 day. Greene County is the single largest coal 

19 producing county in the United States. It is 

20 home to the largest underground coal mine in 

21 North America. Entire communities and ecosystems 

22 are sacrificed wholesale for the benefit of 

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1 international and energy conglomerates looking to 

2 sell their coal for both international and 

3 domestic use in coal-fired power plants. 

4 The entire industry has thrived for years 

5 with a business model contingent on the 

6 internalization of profit and the externalization 

7 of harm. 

8 Duke Lake and Horizon Station State Park 

9 in Greene County has been dry for nine years 

10 because of subsidence damage from the Bailey 

11 Mine. A recent mine expansion from that same 

12 mine allows for the destruction of up to four 

13 streams and a reduction of flow of 10 others.

14 A recent coal refuse disposal area from that mine 

15 sought to bury 57,000 feet of streams under tons 

16 of toxic coal waste. 

17 The clean power plant is one very 

18 small step on the path towards achieving true 

19 accountability for the destruction that coal 

20 causes in the communities in which it operates. 

21 However, we must not relent in our pursuit of 

22 true environmental justice. 

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1 All too few of us can count on any 

2 meaningful enforcement or regulation from our 

3 state agencies. Each moment spent waiting is a 

4 new opportunity for a child to get sick.

5 I hope the EPA takes the time to listen 

6 to the thousands here today supporting meaningful 

7 environmental protection and continue all efforts 

8 to protect human health and the environment. 

9 Thank you. 

10 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. 

11 Mr. Reco? 

12 MR. RECO: Yes. Good afternoon and 

13 welcome to Pittsburg. 

14 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

15 MR. RECO: My name is Francis Reco, and I 

16 live at 1187 Arrow Wood Drive in Mount Lebanon, 

17 Pennsylvania. 

18 I am here today to express my full 

19 support for the proposed EPA admission guidelines 

20 that enable states to reduce greenhouse gas 

21 emissions from existing fossil fuel power and 

22 electric generating plants.

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1 The electric power sector amounts for 32 

2 percent of US total greenhouse gas emissions. 

3 These emissions have increased by 11 percent 

4 since 1990 as our electricity demands have grown 

5 and fossil fuels have remained the dominant 

6 source of generation. 

7 As a resident of Pennsylvania, I was 

8 shocked to find out the state of Pennsylvania 

9 creates more heat-trapping emissions than all but 

10 two other states, Texas and California, each of 

11 which has much larger populations.

12 I do not represent any specific 

13 organization but represent like-minded 

14 individuals who want to make a difference in this 

15 country by using alternative energies to reduce 

16 our own carbon footprints.

17 In my house, I use a rechargeable 

18 lawnmower, drive an electric hybrid car, and have 

19 nine solar panels on our roof creating what we 

20 like to call a hybrid house. Even though 

21 Pittsburgh is one of the cloudiest cities in the 

22 United States, my solar installation has produced 

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1 over 10 million watts of electricity since June 

2 of 2010 resulting in a 40 percent reduction in 

3 the need for power from fossil fuel-fired power 

4 plants. 

5 There is no doubt in my mind that this --

6 there is substantial scientific evidence that 

7 carbon pollution causes climate change resulting 

8 in more frequent forest fires, floods, and 

9 extreme weather events like heat waves, droughts, 

10 and heavy rainfall. A day does not go by without 

11 news of some catastrophic weather event somewhere 

12 in the world.

13 I have personally seen the destruction 

14 one of these extreme storms can cause when our 

15 son was displaced from his home in New York City 

16 due to extreme flooding from Hurricane Sandy. 

17 Not only will unchecked carbon 

18 pollution lead to long-lasting changes in 

19 climate, it also pose public health risks such as 

20 worsening allergies and asthma. Any immediate 

21 action needs to be taken. Our children and 

22 future generations deserve a safe and stable an 

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1 environment as we can possibly provide for them.

2 For this reason, I feel we have a moral 

3 obligation to reduce our country's greenhouse gas 

4 emissions and set an example for the world to 

5 follow. It is essential that individual citizens 

6 continue to do their part to reduce carbon 

7 pollution by becoming energy efficient using 

8 alternative energies, creating hybrid houses, and 

9 driving hybrid cars. 

10 But individual action is not enough. 

11 Therefore, I applaud President Obama for 

12 announcing his series of executive actions to 

13 combat climate change by reducing carbon 

14 pollution in this country. As part of the 

15 climate action plan, the EPA has worked to 

16 complete carbon pollution standards for power --

17 for the power sector. I fully support the use of 

18 the EPA Guidelines in their entirety. 

19 We cannot wait. Action must be taken 

20 now. And one thing I'd to say, just think if 

21 everybody just added one solar panel to their 

22 house what a cleaner world this would be. And 

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1 thank you again for letting me speak at this.

2 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. Thank you 

3 for both being here today.

4 MR. RECO: Thank you.

5 MR. KOERBER: Next I'd like to call Jim 

6 Egged and Mike Kamandulis. 

7 MR. EGGED: My talk will be the 

8 Reader's Digest version. 

9 MR. KOERBER: Great. Thank you. We look 

10 forward to reading the full version. 

11 MR. EGGED: Thanks. My name is Jim 

12 Egged, E-g-g-e-d, and I want to thank you very 

13 much for this opportunity. 

14 I'm a retired firefighter, and I was 

15 placed on the County Mutual Aid Hazardous Instant 

16 Response Team during my tenure on the department. 

17 My retirement has been a continuation of my 

18 dedication to public safety through environmental 

19 advocacy. 

20 Without a habitable environment, the 

21 public safety cannot be assured. Gridlock in 

22 Washington has been an effort to undermine the 

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1 legitimacy of this presidency. Those setting up 

2 deliberate road blocks to the progress, both 

3 environmentally and economically, care not for 

4 the life of this country. Long-term benefits are 

5 forsaken for short-term gains. It is obvious to 

6 the most casual observers where the obstruction 

7 to a functional government lies. This ship is 

8 seriously listing to the starboard. 

9 President Obama has made every effort to 

10 put this country on a true course towards the 

11 seas of prosperity and sustainability. Oh 

12 captain, my captain, our fearful trip is not yet 

13 done. Your presidency has not fallen cold and 

14 dead. My captain does answer. 

15 The Clean Power Plan can help clean up 

16 our air and maintain a healthy environment for 

17 our children and their children only the EPA 

18 needs to strengthen the standards by prioritizing 

19 renewable energy. 

20 Climate scientists tell that developed 

21 countries like the United States must reduce 

22 emissions 25 to 40 percent below the 1990 levels 

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1 by 2020 to avoid tipping the scales further 

2 toward a climate catastrophe. 

3 CO2 is not the only climate carbon 

4 molecule -- climate change molecule. Methane 

5 presents problems as well. The IPCC recognizes 

6 that methane is 86 times more potent than CO2 over 

7 a 20-year time frame at trapping heat. 

8 The seas turn so dark that you know it's 

9 time we see the sign and it's me that is saying 

10 how long, how long to the point of know return; 

11 and it's spelled k-n-o-w because that's how the 

12 song goes. You guys know that? Right. Okay.

13 I'm not a doomsday prognosticator. You 

14 know, we do have to prepare for the worst and 

15 intercede to prevent disaster. We know that 

16 doing nothing will lead to disaster. History has 

17 borne that out. 

18 As a firefighter, I can tell you that 

19 safety measures are not from a proactive effort. 

20 School drills, for example, didn't come about 

21 until 92 children and three nuns lost their lives 

22 in the Our Lady of Angels fire in 1958. 

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1 See that sign right there? Yet that 

2 didn't come about until 492 people died in the 

3 Coconut Grove fire in Chicago in -- I mean in 

4 Boston in 1942. Okay. 

5 Now, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 

6 1911, the fire killed 146 women. Okay. Two 

7 young girls of 14 were also killed which led to 

8 workplace safety standards and laws. 

9 The Iroquois Theater fire killed 605 

10 people in 1903. This unnecessary loss of life 

11 could have been prevented. My chronology goes 

12 backwards in time to demonstrate that there was 

13 already evidence of impending disasters. 

14 We have just had a year of extreme 

15 weather. The most recent episode appears to be a 

16 trend. Do we ignore these installments of 

17 climate change and play them off as merely 

18 anecdotal and not evidentiary?

19 Let's not wait for disaster to strike 

20 before we say if we would have or we should have, 

21 but, because if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, 

22 it would be Christmas every day, wouldn't it?

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1 Now, taking too little action would be a 

2 gamble with the future. My future grandchildren 

3 should enjoy the same beautiful planet that I 

4 have. They should not have to fight for the 

5 environment in order to survive. 

6 This tiny orb that floats about on the 

7 fabric of space time is the only home we know. 

8 There are no lifeboats on this ship. And the

9 only argument against these changes, these rules 

10 and standards, is it will cost money. 

11 Well, the cost of conducting our business 

12 as usual could prove to be much more dear. Let 

13 us obtain a little insurance for the future, hey? 

14 There's no dollar sign on peace of mind. 

15 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir.

16 MR. EGGED: Mm-hmm. 

17 MR. KOERBER: Mr. Kamandulis?

18 MR. KAMANDULIS: My name is Mike 

19 Kamandulis, K-a-m-a-n-d-u-l-i-s. I live in 

20 Kersey, Pennsylvania, up in Elk County, and I'm a 

21 retired earth science teach; and I taught a Penn 

22 State Dubois for a couple years. 

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1 Thank you very, very much for having 

2 these hearings, and thank you very much for this 

3 proposed legislation. It would be wonderful if 

4 it starts to make some serious changes. 

5 These are some things we know. Our 

6 modern civilization is very highly adapted to the 

7 Earth's present climate. The Earth's climate 

8 changes through time naturally. 

9 Today the use of fossil fuels is powering 

10 the global economies and benefitting all of us 

11 and we should be thankful to the men and women 

12 who work in those industries. Yet, there is 

13 growing confidence by many climate scientists 

14 that the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in 

15 the earth's atmosphere caused mainly by burning 

16 fossil fuels poses a potentially very serious 

17 threat to our planet's climate. And if they're 

18 right, there will be very, very dire 

19 consequences. Indeed, it's already starting to 

20 happen.

21 Therefore, I believe that it is now time 

22 that we make serious efforts to begin to reduce 

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1 the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. And change 

2 the means by which we produce energy. We have 

3 the knowledge to do just that, yet we're lacking 

4 the collective will.

5 Before the discovery of oil, whales in 

6 the world's oceans were hunted almost to 

7 extinction for their oil. Was that right? How 

8 many whaling jobs were lost when we discovered 

9 petroleum in Titusville? How many more new jobs 

10 were created when we switched to crude?

11 Well, consider the new jobs involving 

12 wind, solar, geothermal, and the newer types of 

13 nuclear resources -- I'm sorry -- reactors. 

14 Yeah. Did I say nuclear? Yeah. There's a 

15 little book out called Nuclear 2.0, Why a Green 

16 Future Needs Nuclear Power. It's small, easy to 

17 read, very powerful and well written. I'd 

18 recommend it.

19 I'll be using and quoting from the 

20 Ethical and Moral Implications of Climate Change, 

21 published in 2011.

22 "The moral and ethical principles we 

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1 adopt to guide our response to the climate crisis 

2 -- yes, we can call it a crisis -- are extremely 

3 important. How do we want to be remembered?"

4 The publishers of that article believe 

5 the three most important ethical and moral 

6 principles are:

7 Number one, the moral obligation to 

8 prevent suffering and to protect human life. The 

9 most fundamental of our guiding moral and ethical 

10 principles is that it is wrong to unjustifiably 

11 cause human suffering or death. 

12 Number two, the moral and ethical 

13 responsibility to honor principles of justice and 

14 equity. Wealthier nations such as the United 

15 States and others have generated the most of the 

16 emissions that are disrupting the climate. Yet, 

17 at least for the next few years, they will 

18 experience the fewest consequences. The people 

19 who have contributed the least to climate change 

20 will be impacted the most. Is this fair or just?

21 Number three, the moral obligation to 

22 honor and protect the processes that make life 

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1 possible. We have a responsibility to protect 

2 the ecosystems and organisms that provide the air 

3 we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, 

4 and the materials that we use to sustain life and 

5 prosperity, and, of course, the natural beauty 

6 that lifts our spirits.

7 People must realize that humans are an 

8 integral part of the natural system, the living 

9 system. And it's also morally wrong to use 

10 scientific uncertainty as an excuse to delay or 

11 prevent emissions reductions or preparation for 

12 the consequences of climate change. Even today, 

13 our US military is preparing for climate change. 

14 That's right. 

15 We want jobs. We want energy. We want 

16 the economy to grow. We want to continue to 

17 enjoy our way of life. By the way, I live in a 

18 Township that benefits from a landfill. We have 

19 to think about these things.

20 Back when I began teaching, my science 

21 department chairman was very fond of telling us 

22 after our meetings, primarily to remind us to do 

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1 a good job and be respectful to everyone, "Just 

2 remember guys, even a bird doesn't poop in its 

3 own nest," except he didn't say poop. Perhaps we 

4 should take Chuck's advice to heart but in a 

5 different context. Thank you.

6 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. Thanks to 

7 both of you for being here today.

8 Next I would like to call Jaclyn Clifford 

9 and Thomas Hoffman.

10 MS. CLIFFORD: Hello. My name is Jaclyn 

11 Clifford. It's J–a–c-l-y-n. And I'm a student 

12 at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Law. 

13 I'm also a legal intern for the Center of 

14 Coalfield Justice. 

15 Thank you for the opportunity to comment 

16 on the US EPA's clean power plan for existing 

17 power plants and the carbon pollution standard 

18 for modified resources. The EPA has proposed 

19 clean power plant implementation as vital both 

20 for the environment and the economy of 

21 Pennsylvania.

22 The Center for Coalfield Justice supports 

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1 the clean power plan to increase the use of 

2 renewable energy sources. Our nation prides 

3 itself on being innovators and trailblazers. So 

4 why have we become so complacent with our energy 

5 standards? Even though coal extraction has 

6 proven time and time again to be an 

7 environmentally and economically destructive 

8 industry, we continue to rely on the status quo.

9 We now have the chance to start investing 

10 in more reliable and safer renewable energy 

11 sources such as wind, solar, and hydro. 

12 Washington and Greene County are of the top 

13 producers of coal in the country. They are among 

14 some of the poorest communities in Pennsylvania. 

15 Most citizens are dependent upon jobs in the coal 

16 industry to provide for their families. However, 

17 these jobs are dangerous and not sustainable.

18 These areas, Washington and Greene 

19 County, lack job diversity that would allow for 

20 economic growth. The responsible development of 

21 renewable energy resources supports local 

22 economies, creates jobs, and moves America and 

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1 Pennsylvania toward a cleaner and more reliable 

2 energy future.

3 Residents of both green and Washington 

4 County have been paying the economic and 

5 environmental costs of the coal industry far too 

6 long. This rule will finally allow Pennsylvania 

7 to loosen the grip of the coal industry and allow 

8 for communities in Washington and Greene County 

9 to diversify their economy and start working 

10 towards a coal-free generation. 

11 Thank you for this opportunity.

12 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thanks for 

13 being here. 

14 MS. CLIFFORD: Thank you.

15 MR. KOERBER: Mr. Hoffman? 

16 MR. HOFFMAN: Yeah. My name is 

17 Tom Hoffman, H-o-f-f-m-a-n. I'm the western 

18 Pennsylvania director for Clean Water Action.

19 David Brower from the Sierra Club is the 

20 source of my favorite quote these days, "We don't 

21 inherit the planet from our parents. We really 

22 borrow it from our kids." 

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1 And my second favorite is from 

2 Paul Kirkman who wrote in the New York Times 

3 about the Greenland glaciers that are melting 

4 rapidly. He said that, "You can debate whether 

5 or not climate change is real, but after seeing 

6 Greenland, all I could think of was that those 

7 same kids we borrow the planet from are going to 

8 be very upset with us pretty soon."

9 I work for Clean Water Action. We're a 

10 40-year-old national environmental organization. 

11 We have 1,000,000 plus members in 17 states. We 

12 support these proposed rules. The EPA and those 

13 who support the fees proposed rules are in the 

14 right side of history. We need to act now to 

15 control carbon emissions and as a side benefit, 

16 we get cleaner air, new jobs in a sustainable 

17 economy, technology growth, and healthier kids. 

18 We're actively working in Pennsylvania to 

19 require investments in clean energy jobs and 

20 renewable energy sources just as our country has 

21 subsidized the fossil fuel industry since it 

22 began. We take heart from the German example. 

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1 They have recently announced a 50 percent 

2 renewable mark, and far from hurting their 

3 economy, that wise choice of investment in their 

4 kids' future has made them a European economic 

5 powerhouse. They practically own most of the 

6 continent now, and they play good soccer.

7 So we should do the same and the proposed 

8 clean power plant is a good start. Thank you very 

9 much for your time.

10 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you both 

11 for being here today.

12 MR. HOFFMAN: Do you need to copies of 

13 this?

14 MR. KOERBER: If you have extras, 

15 we'd appreciate keeping a copy. 

16 Next I'd like to call Dan Goldstein and 

17 Nick Bates.

18 DR. GOLDSTEIN: It's doctor, but that's 

19 okay.

20 MR. KOERBER: Doctor. Oh, I misread. My 

21 mistake. Dr. Goldstein?

22 DR. GOLDSTEIN: Thank you. My name is 

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1 Don Goldstein. That's G-o-l-d-s-t-e-i-n. And 

2 I'm from the Department of Economics at Alleghany 

3 College.

4 First, let me thank the EPA for proposing 

5 this Clean Power Plan, organizing these sessions 

6 and giving me the opportunity to comment. 

7 I teach corporate finance and 

8 environmental management at Alleghany, which is 

9 about 90 miles north of here. During my 24 years 

10 at Alleghany, I've also worked with many local 

11 companies around environmental management in a 

12 variety of capacities.

13 My research examines lower carbon energy 

14 and transportation technologies including their 

15 potential roles in the economic future of our 

16 region.

17 Everything that I've seen tells me that 

18 the proposed plan will move us in the right 

19 direction, especially to the extent that it's 

20 boost toward renewables in our energy mix is 

21 maintained and even strengthened.

22 That is where I will focus my comments 

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1 while I do welcome the many benefits the plan 

2 will create for human health and the environment. 

3 Innovation and investment in new 

4 technologies require clear signposts signaling 

5 firms that such investments will be consistent 

6 with where others in the economy at large are 

7 heading. Sometimes market signals alone are 

8 adequate and sometimes this requires a boost from 

9 government action, especially for major systemic 

10 changes.

11 The move toward lower carbon energy is 

12 that kind of technology transition. My research 

13 suggests that northwestern PA has regional assets 

14 that could be leveraged as part of this shift. 

15 For example, there is sufficient hardwood forest 

16 acreage within 75 miles of Erie to support at 

17 least a million tons of pelletized wood annually 

18 for biomass energy, sustainably managed from 

19 waste cuttings and pulpwood.

20 But pellet mill investors need to know 

21 they'll be able to get their output shipped 

22 economically and transportation facilities 

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1 investors need to know there will be ongoing 

2 demand for the product. 

3 In addition, the southern shores of Lake 

4 Erie have a commercially viable wind resource, 

5 estimated offshore at 18 miles per hour at 90 

6 meters and onshore at 15 miles per hour at 80 

7 meters high, but developers await signals that 

8 state policy will support wind power demand and a 

9 workable regulatory framework.

10 These are only the direct potential 

11 opportunities in low carbon energy. Actualizing 

12 them would also create indirect and mutually 

13 supporting ones. The Erie/Meadville region has a

14 world class cluster of several hundred precision 

15 machining companies with the capacity to become 

16 major suppliers for renewable energy equipment 

17 and infrastructure. Upgrading port and 

18 intermodal facilities to support biomass and 

19 lakeshore wind, would encourage reinvigoration of 

20 the region's historical strengths as freight 

21 transportation nexus, and expansion in both 

22 energy technologies, supply chain and intermodal 

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1 shipping capabilities, would make the region more 

2 competitive in the ongoing shift toward natural 

3 gas as a lower carbon fossil fuel source. 

4 Such projections are to some extent 

5 speculative, but we can confidently predict that 

6 pragmatic, flexible federal regulatory choices 

7 can start a process in which a combination of 

8 state policy and market forces would allow the 

9 region's companies to pursue the opportunities in 

10 low carbon technologies as they perceive them, in 

11 the process generating not only power but also 

12 jobs, income, and economic development.

13 The clean power plan is well designed to 

14 stimulate such a process. With its signposts in 

15 place, private sector innovation and investment 

16 can move us faster and farther along in this 

17 critical technology transition than would occur 

18 without the plan.

19 For the companies and workers in 

20 northwestern PA, fundamentally, this is about 

21 adaptation to the national and global economies 

22 as they evolve in a world of climate change. 

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1 Like politics, at the end of the day all 

2 climate adaptation is local. The local politics 

3 in northwestern PA have not in general been 

4 friendly to the administration's climate and 

5 energy agendas, but this proposed EPA plan can 

6 over time contribute to reframing climate 

7 adaptation in terms of economic opportunity. 

8 This could ultimately be one of its most 

9 important co-benefits.

10 Thank you.

11 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. 

12 Mr. Bates? 

13 MR. BATES: My name is Nick Bates. 

14 N-i-c-k, B-a-t-e-s. 

15 And my testimony was written and prepared 

16 by Donald A. Brown. He's the scholar in 

17 residence and professor of sustainability, 

18 ethics, and law at Wagner University School of 

19 Law in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was unable 

20 to be with us today and that's why I'll be 

21 reading his testimony. 

22 And before I begin, I want to say that as 

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1 a person of faith, I'm concerned that it's too 

2 easy to create an "us and them" mentality in 

3 these conversations where environmentalists and 

4 people concerned about the environment verse coal 

5 miners and those who have legitimate economical 

6 claims.

7 And I believe that is a solution that we 

8 can have both good jobs and help transition the 

9 economics in the region that has been overly 

10 reliant on coal for too long, and that we can all 

11 come together and really move America and our 

12 world forward.

13 So here's his testimony.

14 "Thank you for taking comments on the 

15 proposed regulations under the Clean Air Act 

16 which when adapted will constitute a long overdue 

17 first step for the United States in reducing 

18 enormous threat of climate change. This 

19 testimony is in strong support of the proposed 

20 regulations, yet, with strong reservations that 

21 the proposed regulations by themselves are 

22 woefully inadequate for putting the United States 

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1 on an emissions reductions path congruent with 

2 its ethical and moral obligations to the rest of 

3 the world.

4 There is scattered recognition in the US 

5 that climate change is a moral and ethical 

6 problem but little attention to the practical 

7 implications for policy entailed by the ethical 

8 dimensions of climate change. Climate change 

9 must be understood to be a civilization 

10 challenging ethical and moral issue because of 

11 several unique facts about climate change which 

12 require policymakers to see the problem as a 

13 moral issue at its core, a conclusion which has 

14 profound significance for policy. 

15 These facts include that, one, high 

16 emitting nations and individuals are putting 

17 hundreds of millions of poor people at great risk 

18 who have done comparatively little to cause 

19 climate change.

20 Two, the harms to these nations and 

21 people most at risk are not mere inconveniences 

22 but existential threats to people and the 

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1 ecological systems on which life depends. 

2 Three, those most vulnerable to climate 

3 change can do little to protect themselves. 

4 Their only hope is that high emitting countries 

5 and people will see that they have not only 

6 economic interest, but deep ethical duties to 

7 others. 

8 Four, the world is running out of time to 

9 limit warming to the two degree Celsius a warming 

10 limit that must be respected to prevent 

11 catastrophic climate change.

12 And, five, current elevated GHT 

13 atmospheric concentrations have been caused much 

14 more by some countries than others. The US by 

15 far has the highest amount of historical 

16 greenhouse gas emissions and are near the top of 

17 per capita emissions.

18 The controversy unfolding in the US over 

19 the proposed EPA regulation is utterly ignoring 

20 the fact that the United States has ethical 

21 duties to the rest of the world. In fact, even 

22 the EPA has been justifying this regulation on 

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1 the basis of benefits to the US alone, an 

2 approach which ignores the US's ethical 

3 obligations to others and invites opposition on 

4 the basis of US economic interest alone which 

5 ignores our ethical responsibilities.

6 In addition, the Obama administration's 

7 current commitment under the United Nations 

8 framework convention on climate change of 17 

9 percent below the 2005 levels by 2020 is far 

10 short of the US ethical obligations to the rest 

11 of the world. Any US commitment to reduce 

12 greenhouse gas emissions is implicitly a position 

13 of two issues which are at their core ethical and 

14 justice issues.

15 The first issue is the atmospheric 

16 greenhouse gas concentration that the US 

17 commitment is implicitly seeking to achieve by 

18 its greenhouse gas reductions. The atmospheric 

19 stabilization goal that the US commitment seeks 

20 to achieve is an ethical and moral issue because 

21 the atmosphere concentration level will determine 

22 the extent to which the US is willing to harm 

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1 hundreds of millions of people around the world. 

2 Last November the IPCC concluded that 

3 there is only 270 gigatons of carbon left for the 

4 entire world to emit to give the international 

5 community 66 percent chance of limiting warming 

6 to non-catastrophic levels. The Obama 

7 administration must set the emissions reduction 

8 target that would be no greater than the US fair 

9 share of the carbon emissions budget of the 270 

10 gigatons or less that is now understood to be a 

11 constrain on the world to prevent catastrophic 

12 climate change.

13 So in conclusion for these reasons, we 

14 call on the Obama administration to continue to 

15 support the climate rules and to take even 

16 further steps in reducing carbon emissions."

17 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you, sir. 

18 Thanks to both of you.

19 Next I'd like to call Russ Lorenz and 

20 Russell Speerschneider. 

21 Mr. Lorince? 

22 MR. LORINCE: It's Russ Lorince. The 

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1 last name is L-o-r-i-n-c-e. 

2 MR. KOERBER: Thank you.

3 MR. LORINCE: Good afternoon. Thank you 

4 for this opportunity. I'm Russ Lorince. 

5 I'm vice president of external affairs 

6 for Arch Coal and its eastern operations. Arch 

7 is one of the world's largest coal producers. 

8 Last year we mined 131 million tons which is 

9 about 14 percent of the US total. That occurred 

10 in 22 active mines in seven states in all of the 

11 nation's coal regions. 

12 Power generators transform abundant 

13 reliable and affordable coal into a low cost 

14 stable form of electricity on which the US 

15 economy was built. Obviously, we have concerns 

16 that that will be threatened by the EPA proposal. 

17 While all US power plants responsible for 

18 only 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions 

19 and EPA's proposal will reduce those emissions by 

20 less than one percent, the Agency's conservative 

21 projections show costs of $4.2 to $8.8 billion 

22 per year. EPA estimates that its proposal will 

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1 increase electricity prices between six and seven 

2 percent nationally. That sounds reasonable on 

3 the whole, but the fact of the matter is there 

4 will substantially higher increases in individual 

5 states. And these increases will fall 

6 disproportionately on the people who can least 

7 afford to bear them. And that is our working 

8 class and our lower income Americans; as we all 

9 know historically, that has been the case. These 

10 families are more likely to have more children, 

11 spend more time at home, have less well-insulated 

12 homes, and also have lower efficiency appliances. 

13 So the increases will also place an 

14 immense burden on US businesses that hire these 

15 Americans, businesses that depend on affordable 

16 energy to provide a critical operating advantage 

17 in a competitive marketplace. Power supply in 

18 the US is reliable because of adequate, non19 intermittent base load generating capacity 

20 largely fueled by coal. 

21 EPA proposes at the expense of coal for 

22 our generation to increase the share of 

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1 electricity generated from natural gas, which has 

2 a variety of alternative markets outside the 

3 power generation sector. Natural gas is 

4 delivered to power plants via pipeline systems in 

5 a just-in-time basis, and as witnessed during 

6 this past severe winter, delivery on particularly 

7 cold days can be constrained. So there are 

8 sincere concerns. I think the dramatic move away 

9 from coal will threaten the reliability of the 

10 electric power system.

11 It's worthwhile to closely scrutinize 

12 what EPA interprets as constituting a best system 

13 of emission reduction, BSER. Arch believes its 

14 Section 111(d) provides EPA with only the narrow 

15 authority to set emission standards based solely 

16 on emission reductions that can be achieved 

17 inside the fence line. As such, you only the CO2

18 emission reductions resulting from actions taken 

19 under building block one may lawfully be 

20 recognized.

21 Building blocks two through four as 

22 proposed by the Agency are outside defense line, 

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1 and the Agency does not have the expansive 

2 statutory authority to recognize them as BSER.

3 Even if permissible, is it feasible for 

4 the states to meet the required emissions 

5 reductions? Under building block one, EPA posits 

6 that a six percent improvement in heat rate is 

7 possible by adopting operating and maintenance 

8 best practices and from equipment upgrades. 

9 EPA presumes that plan operators do not 

10 already run and maintain their facilities by best 

11 practices to minimize the unit costs. And if 

12 they're already doing so it certainly cancels 

13 projected heat rate improvement. Regarding 

14 equipment upgrades, the new source review process 

15 makes equipment upgrades a risky and potentially 

16 litigious process. 

17 Given these reasons, outside the fence 

18 line actions are detailed under building blocks 

19 two through four and necessary for states to 

20 comply with the proposal, and each of those 

21 building blocks, however, is built on very 

22 questionable assumptions. 

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1 For example, building block two, 

2 increased utilization of combined cycle natural 

3 gas fire and power plants presupposes that 

4 pipeline infrastructure is adequate or it can be 

5 built to enable plants to operate at 70 percent 

6 capacity factors.

7 Building block three assumes that no 

8 units in the entire fleet of nuclear plants will 

9 retire regardless of market conditions. As for 

10 renewables, EPA assumes their rapid growth 

11 despite their intermittency making it 

12 progressively hard to balance load and run base 

13 load plants effectively. 

14 Finally for building block four, demand 

15 side energy efficiency, EPA assumes that all 

16 states implement the necessary policies to 

17 achieve an annualized energy savings rate of 1.5 

18 percent and given the economic growth in the past 

19 decade, it remains to be seen whether states will 

20 want to continue to embrace policies that inhibit 

21 the growth of their economies. 

22 In summary, EPA's proposal has no 

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1 effective impact on reducing greenhouse gas 

2 emissions, imposes high electricity cost on US 

3 households and industry, threatens the 

4 reliability of the grid, and is neither 

5 permissible under existing law nor technically 

6 feasible. For these reasons, Arch respectfully 

7 requests that the Agency withdraw its proposed 

8 plan. 

9 Thank you for your time and attention.

10 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. Thank you 

11 for being with us today. 

12 Mr. Speerschneider? 

13 MR. SPEERSCHNEIDER: Thank you very much. 

14 Appreciate the opportunity to speak. My name is 

15 Michael Speerschneider, S-p-e-e-r-s-c-h-n-e-d-e16 r. I am chief permitting and public policy 

17 officer at EverPower Wind Holdings. 

18 EverPower is a developer, owner, and 

19 operator of utility-scale wind energy projects. 

20 We're headquartered right here in Pittsburgh. We 

21 currently have seven projects across the United 

22 States including four here in Pennsylvania. And 

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1 we employ 75 people between our headquarters and 

2 the operating plants here in Pennsylvania. 

3 And we are -- we fully support the EPA's 

4 Clean Power Plan and proposed rule, and we 

5 encourage the administration to move forward in 

6 this important policy. 

7 In particular, we believe the Clean Power 

8 Plan recognizes the value of renewable energy and 

9 what it will provide as we move towards a more 

10 sustainable energy future. 

11 Among other things, as part of the 

12 building block three, where renewable energy is 

13 included as a compliance tool, the EPA has 

14 incorporated the potential for renewal energy 

15 when setting the state carbon emissions targets. 

16 It has designated renewables as a compliance 

17 option for states to use to meet those targets, 

18 and it allows existing renewable portfolios 

19 standards states have implemented outside of the 

20 plan to be used as a compliance option, which is 

21 a very important driver for our industry.

22 While there are clearly technical and 

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1 political challenges with implementing the plan, 

2 EverPower believes that perhaps the most 

3 important thing that the Clean Power Plan does is 

4 achieve a way to recognize the economic and 

5 societal values of renewables and wind energy.

6 The investments in the grid and 

7 generation and transmission that will be 

8 necessary under the plan certainly will require a 

9 change to our sort of traditional views on 

10 energy. And thought the short term pain may be 

11 not nearly as disruptive as some of -- as some 

12 may claim.

13 For example, the current fleet of wind 

14 turbines in the US right now reduces emissions 

15 already by 127 million tons. That's like the 

16 equivalent of taking 20 million cars off the road 

17 each year. The wind energy right now supports 

18 more than 50,000 jobs across the country and 

19 that's actually down substantially from due to 

20 some of the uncertainty in national energy policy 

21 including the production tax credit.

22 There are 550 manufacturing facilities 

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1 across 44 states that supply the industry in 

2 various ways. Average cost of wind has declined 

3 43 percent just in the past four years alone 

4 making it second to just combined cycle natural 

5 gas the lowest cost source of new electric 

6 generation that we have.

7 And despite being an intermittent 

8 resource, wind energy has proven to be a reliable 

9 source of energy. The wind energy has provided 

10 more than 10 percent of the energy mix in 

11 multiple states across the country, and it has 

12 not led to any reliability concerns throughout 

13 those states.

14 In addition, wind energy would not result 

15 in widespread increases in retail electric rates. 

16 There have been a number of studies that have 

17 been done that show this. And, in fact, show 

18 that wind energy would have an effect of reducing 

19 electric rates, wholesale electric prices over 

20 time. For example, in August of 2013, the Ohio 

21 Public Utilities Commission conducted a study 

22 looking at wholesale prices and the impact that 

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1 their existing wind energy facilities in that 

2 state which are -- which is a very small amount 

3 at this point -- has reduced wholesale prices. 

4 In March of 2014, G.E. Energy Consulting 

5 studied the effect if wind and solar integration 

6 into the PJM system, and they found among other 

7 things that there was no insurmountable operating 

8 issue that came about because of wind 

9 integration. And every scenario that they've 

10 studied, the result was lower fuel, and O&M cost, 

11 and lower wholesale prices.

12 And in May 2013, Synapse Energy Economics 

13 released a study that quantified the impacts of 

14 increased renewable energy on the PJM system and 

15 that study showed that the annual benefit to 

16 consumers would be on the order of $2.6 billion, 

17 and that's if there was not a mechanism to 

18 capture some of the societal cost of carbon. 

19 So to us, a clear and consistent energy 

20 policy is critical for our business, and equally 

21 critical is that there's a full accounting of the 

22 value of renewable energy whether that's through 

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1 market prices or regulatory actions such as the 

2 Clean Power Plan. 

3 And we do appreciate the EPA's efforts on 

4 this important topic, and we look forward to the 

5 final rule and to working with the states to deal 

6 with the many issues that will be challenging for 

7 us going forward and achieve that affordable 

8 energy future. Thank you.

9 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you, 

10 both. And let me once again thank all the 

11 speakers and non-speakers. Your presence today 

12 is important to us and very much appreciated. So 

13 thank you all for being here.

14 Next I'd like to call Russell Zerbo and 

15 Cary Mosley. 

16 MR. ZERBO: I definitely want to thank 

17 you guys. It's a long day a lot of information. 

18 Hello. My name is Russell Zerbo, Z-e-r-b-o. 

19 I am the advocacy coordinator for the 

20 Clean Air Council. The Clean Air Council is a 

21 Pennsylvania 501(c)(3) dedicated to protecting 

22 the right of everyone to breathe clean air.

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1 Thank you for the opportunity to speak 

2 today. 

3 The council supports the EPA's decision 

4 to limit carbon dioxide pollution from existing 

5 power plants. Pennsylvanians are already 

6 suffering the impacts of climate change and are 

7 counting on the EPA to implement requirements 

8 that will actually reduce greenhouse gas 

9 emissions.

10 The state of Pennsylvania has already 

11 showed that it intends to protect existing carbon 

12 emitters to the greatest extent possible. The 

13 council is concerned that the plan Pennsylvania 

14 submits to the EPA will not reduce greenhouse gas 

15 emissions and may, in fact, create more carbon 

16 emissions.

17 For instance, Pennsylvania has already 

18 suggested that it plans to take advantage of the 

19 EPA's lax waste energy regulations to comply with 

20 the carbon rule. I urge the EPA to reject 

21 selection approach and, in fact, reevaluate the 

22 way it treats carbon dioxide emissions from waste 

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1 to energy power plants. 

2 The EPA proudly states on its energy 

3 recovery from waste web page that no new plants 

4 have been built in the US since 1995. Contrary 

5 to this, the PA Department of Environmental 

6 Protection has just permitted a waste incinerator 

7 in Allentown Pennsylvania, and in its white paper 

8 on how it proposes to meet carbon dioxide limits, 

9 cites waste energy as a chief example of a 

10 project with unique environmental benefits.

11 There are no true environmental benefits 

12 to burning trash. The EPA made compromises with 

13 the waste burning industry to only count one14 third of the significant carbon emissions from 

15 WTE facilities and allowed the Integrated Waste 

16 Services Association to provide industry driven 

17 information on the EPA website. 

18 Simply put, encouraging waste burning 

19 will encourage waste and increase carbon dioxide 

20 emissions. 

21 Pennsylvania's white paper also describes 

22 coal waste as essentially carbon neutral, which 

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1 could not be further from the truth. Of the 18 

2 coal waste burners in the country, 14 are in 

3 Pennsylvania. This is a source of carbon 

4 significant in Pennsylvania that the EPA must 

5 consider in developing its 111(d) criteria. 

6 At its most efficiency, coal waste emits 

7 as much carbon dioxide as a conventional coal 

8 power plant and many plants are not operating at 

9 a top efficiency.

10 Chester, Pennsylvania, the poster 

11 community for environmental injustice is home to 

12 a cluster of emission sources including a waste 

13 incinerator and a coal waste power plant, opened 

14 in 1992 and 1986 respectively.

15 It took the state until May 6 of this 

16 year to hold a public hearing where the 

17 Environmental Justice Advisory Board heard the 

18 views of concerned Chester residents. At the 

19 hearing, I pointed out that Pennsylvania's 

20 alternative energy portfolio standard intended to 

21 promote low emission electricity production 

22 created this clean energy coal waste and trash 

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1 incineration. It would be hard for the citizens 

2 of Chester to understand how the EPA has allowed 

3 the state to comply with carbon dioxide limits by 

4 ignoring the true emissions from waste to energy 

5 and coal waste power plants.

6 In conclusion, Pennsylvania does not 

7 positively view saving energy. In Pennsylvania, 

8 energy equals jobs. Pennsylvanians have good 

9 options to lower their carbon footprint, options 

10 that would allow -- that would slow climate 

11 change, create good jobs, and not negatively 

12 impact nearby communities. Pennsylvania refuses 

13 to consider such options. 

14 For example the Uniform Construction Code 

15 Review and Advisory Council is tasked with 

16 enforcing standards for the protection of life, 

17 health, property, and environment for the safety 

18 and welfare of the consumer, general public, and 

19 owners and occupants of buildings and structures, 

20 but has refused to update building codes since 

21 2009.

22 By simply generating and consuming less 

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1 energy with modern construction codes, 

2 Pennsylvania could easily comply with 32 percent 

3 CO2 reduction from a 2005 baseline. From 2005 to 

4 2011, Pennsylvania reduced CO2 emissions by 12 

5 percent without the EPA mandate. 

6 A comprehensive construction code that 

7 lowers EPA's energy requirement would spur 

8 innovation and construction and provide good jobs 

9 that value energy consumers.

10 The state does not see the linkage 

11 between energy consumption and health. I urge 

12 the EPA to require real reductions of energy 

13 generation and consumption in its final carbon 

14 rule for existing power plants.

15 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. 

16 Mr. Mosley? 

17 MR. MOSLEY: Good afternoon. My name is 

18 Khari Mosley. That's K-h-a-r-I, M-o-s-l-e-y, and 

19 I'm the Pennsylvania regional program manager for 

20 the Blue Green Alfliance, based here in 

21 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

22 Back in 2006, the Blue Green Alliance was 

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1 formed by the United Steel Workers and the Sierra 

2 Club. Now we are a partnership of some of 

3 America's largest unions and most influential 

4 environmental organizations. Nationwide we unite 

5 nearly 16 million members and supporters to build 

6 a cleaner, fairer, and more competitive American 

7 economy.

8 The Clean Power Plan, which will put the 

9 first ever limits on carbon pollution from 

10 existing power plants, is a significant step 

11 forward to tackle the impacts of climate change; 

12 doing this right will ensure cleaner air, 

13 reliable power, and a stable economy where jobs 

14 are both created and protected.

15 America's workers are key to getting this 

16 right. We will responsibly reduce our nation's 

17 carbon pollution, upgrade our infrastructure, and 

18 expand clean energy and energy efficient 

19 technologies.

20 Pennsylvania is dealing with more extreme 

21 weather events, and this plan will help address 

22 that in the long term for generations to come. 

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1 The facts about how climate change is already 

2 affecting us today speak for themselves. Extreme 

3 temperature swings related to climate change are 

4 causing more potholes on roads. Higher than 

5 average rainfall is testing the limits of dams 

6 and levees, and stronger and stronger winds are 

7 leaving our electric grid vulnerable to more 

8 power outages than I've ever seen in my lifetime.

9 In fact, the number of weather related 

10 blackouts has doubled since 2003. This is due to 

11 the fact that Pennsylvania has had 13 major 

12 disaster declarations in just 10 years from 

13 severe storms including hurricanes Irene, Sandy 

14 and tropical storm Lee. These disasters have 

15 resulted in the need for hundreds of millions of 

16 public money to support recovery and rebuilding 

17 efforts.

18 We must choose to take full advantage of 

19 all the opportunities presented to us through the 

20 Clean Power Plan such as building on the success 

21 of renewable portfolio standard that is making 

22 strides towards generating 18 percent of the 

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1 state's electricity and renewable energy sources 

2 by 2021.

3 While progress on the Lake Erie wind 

4 project is taking longer than any of us would 

5 like, we are optimistic that the leadership of 

6 the Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation and 

7 other stakeholders offshore wind will grow and 

8 become part of our state's energy portfolio. 

9 Whether it be through expanding renewable 

10 energy or other methods, it's important to 

11 emphasize that our state and local lawmakers must 

12 engage Pennsylvanians, especially workers who may 

13 be impacted, as they draft our state's blueprint 

14 to meet the clean power standards.

15 We are committed to making sure workers 

16 impacted by the decisions and the companies have 

17 a say in the future, as many of these decisions 

18 aren't about EPA rules but are instead about the 

19 bottom line. That's why we support efforts to 

20 support economic development in cities and 

21 regions being impacted. We will not leave 

22 workers behind as we transition to a cleaner and 

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1 more efficient energy.

2 We are making sure workers in 

3 Pennsylvania have their voice heard. Doing this 

4 the right way will protect existing jobs while 

5 reducing emissions growing new family sustaining 

6 jobs and clean energy and energy efficiency as 

7 well as encouraging investment to jumpstart new 

8 technologies.

9 We can choose to create and maintain 

10 middle class jobs, revitalize our nation's 

11 manufacturing sector, and address climate change, 

12 but only if we make sure the voices of working 

13 people are front and center as the clear power 

14 plan moves forward. Thank you.

15 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. Thanks to 

16 both of you. 

17 Next I'd like to call Allison Freeman and 

18 Ray Roberts. 

19 Is Mr. Roberts in the room? 

20 Ms. Freeman? 

21 DR. FREEMAN: Thank you. I appreciate 

22 the chance to speak to the panel and all those in 

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1 attendance. And let me just for a start by 

2 saying that my comments are my own as a 

3 physician, an allergist, a pediatrician, and a 

4 private citizen and do not represent my workplace 

5 in any way. 

6 Good afternoon everyone. My name is 

7 Allison Freeman. I'm a physician in asthma, 

8 allergy, and immunology department at West Penn 

9 Alleghany Health System, now known as Alleghany 

10 Health Network. I'm also the former director of 

11 allergy and immunology at the Kiesinger Health 

12 System in northeastern PA.

13 As a physician specializing in asthma, 

14 allergy, and immunology I have treated children 

15 and adults all over the Commonwealth of 

16 Pennsylvania who have experienced a wide array of 

17 health issues in those areas. 

18 In my work with thousands of patients 

19 over the last 25 years, I have seen firsthand 

20 that it can be very challenging for patients and 

21 families to manage. Even when they do all that 

22 they can to minimize exposure to triggers and 

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1 control their indoor environments, they cannot 

2 control poor air quality outdoors, which makes 

3 them equally sick if not worse.

4 That is why I'm here today speaking about 

5 the importance of the clean air protections like 

6 those the EPA has proposed in its Clean Power 

7 Plan to curb carbon pollution and other emissions 

8 from existing power plants. 

9 This is too important a public health 

10 issue for me to ignore. With every patient with 

11 asthma and their family, we focus on helping them 

12 understand what it means to be living with 

13 controlled asthma. We want them to know that 

14 asthma should never keep them from school, from 

15 work, from outdoor play, from exercise when it is 

16 fully controlled.

17 Millions of people in our country are 

18 only able to achieve this kind of control with 

19 intensive education, daily medications, and 

20 removal of multiple triggers. But it's very 

21 frustrating for me that despite all of those 

22 efforts on behalf of the patients and families, 

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1 they are at risk for harmful health impacts 

2 including full asthma attacks because of the air 

3 quality outdoors that impacts them.

4 My patients do suffer when air quality 

5 alerts indicate high ozone levels and particulate 

6 pollution at dangerous levels, and we see 

7 emergency room visits spike at those times. 

8 Even healthy people without asthma and 

9 other respiratory diseases are at risk for 

10 adverse health impacts when pollution levels are 

11 high. But children are especially vulnerable, as 

12 their high exposure to those developing lungs. 

13 That's why I stand with the American 

14 Academy of Pediatrics in welcoming these new EPA 

15 rules that will limit emissions of particulates, 

16 sulfur dioxide, and many other irritants that are 

17 harming all of us but most especially the 

18 children in our area.

19 The science to me is clear that carbon 

20 dioxide emissions from coal fired power plants 

21 play a role in creating increasingly warmer 

22 temperatures which in turn exacerbates the 

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1 formation of ozone pollution. The smog that 

2 ozone pollution is a very powerful respiratory 

3 irritant. Ozone levels correlate directly with 

4 school days missed in children with asthma, 

5 including those who take daily controller 

6 medications.

7 There are many other harmful emissions 

8 from the existing coal-fired plants and all of 

9 them have detrimental effects on people living 

10 with lung diseases. Add to that the steady 

11 humidity and mold growth in this three river 

12 valley and it's a cocktail for escalating the 

13 problem with poor asthma control we are already 

14 facing.

15 Our local asthma burden is alarmingly 

16 high. We have is the six counties surrounding us 

17 some of the highest hospitalization rates for 

18 asthma in the Commonwealth. In Pennsylvania a 

19 single hospitalization for asthma costs $23,000. 

20 This is a huge burden on asthma families and on 

21 society in general. We have many families living 

22 and working in Pittsburgh and the surrounding 

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1 area that do not have the option to move to a 

2 region with healthier air quality.

3 So to me the only option we have is 

4 cutting pollution from existing power plants in a 

5 steady fashion until it can no longer be a 

6 trigger for asthma, COPD, and the other health 

7 consequences that have been mentioned.

8 I strongly support these new rules for 

9 existing power plants from the EPA and know this 

10 will have immediate health benefits when 

11 finalized and implemented. And I ask every 

12 parent, every family living with lung disease and 

13 all healthcare providers to urge the EPA to set 

14 strong standards for reducing carbon pollution 

15 and protecting public health. Thank you.

16 MR. KOERBER: Thank you. Thank you for 

17 being here today. I was just going to say I'm 

18 out of cards. And, excellent, we have a few more 

19 speakers.

20 Darian Ghorbi and Seth Long. And I have 

21 called Ray Roberts before. He wasn't in the 

22 room. Is Mr. Roberts with us? Okay. When 

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1 you're ready.

2 MR. GHORBI: Good afternoon. My name is 

3 Darian Ghorbi, D-a-r-i-a-n, G-h-o-r-b-i. I'm the 

4 director of policy analysis at the American 

5 Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. 

6 Our members include investor owned 

7 utilities, rural electric cooperatives, coal 

8 producers, railroads, and manufacturers that are 

9 involved in producing affordable and reliable 

10 electricity from coal. 

11 Thank you for the opportunity to provide 

12 comments today about EPA's proposal. Because of 

13 many serious flaws, ACE urges EPA to withdraw its 

14 proposal. I will highlight a few of these flaws 

15 briefly in the time available. 

16 First, the Clean Air Act does not allow 

17 EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from 

18 existing coal fire power plants under Section 

19 111(b) because coal-fired power plants are 

20 already regulated by EPA under Section 112 of the 

21 Clean Air Act. 

22 Recently, Attorneys General from nine 

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1 states filed an amicus brief to stop EPA's 

2 proposal for this very reason stating that the 

3 proposal, "Violates the literal terms of the 

4 Clean Air Act."

5 Even if EPA believes it has the basic 

6 authority to regulate, Section 111(d) allows EPA 

7 to set emissions standards based solely on 

8 emissions reductions that can be achieved inside 

9 the fence. However, this proposal requires 

10 substantial reductions outside the fence. 

11 Last year before the proposal was issued, 

12 Attorneys General from 17 states warned EPA that 

13 the agency does not have the authority to require 

14 these outside the fence emissions reductions. 

15 Second, EPA's proposal will cause 

16 unacceptable economic impacts including higher 

17 energy prices. ACE sponsored an extensive 

18 analysis of an NRDC proposal which served as a 

19 blueprint for EPA's proposal. Our analysis 

20 projected, among other impacts, double digit 

21 electricity price increases in 29 states and 

22 substantial increases in natural gas prices 

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1 nationwide.

2 Higher energy prices have a 

3 disproportionately greater impact on lower income 

4 and middle income families. Lower income 

5 families are especially vulnerable to higher 

6 energy costs because energy represents a larger 

7 portion their budgets and reduces the amount of 

8 income they can spend on food, housing, 

9 healthcare, and other necessities.

10 It is also worth noting that states with 

11 carbon constraints are already experiencing 

12 significantly higher electricity rates. Three 

13 months ago, electricity prices in California were 

14 17 percent higher than the national average, and 

15 the New England states, part of the regional 

16 greenhouse gas initiative, had 52 percent higher 

17 electricity prices.

18 Third, EPA has proposed to substitute its 

19 judgment for that of public utility commissions, 

20 utility companies, grid operators, and consumers 

21 across the nation by presuming the appropriate 

22 amounts of electricity from coal, natural gas, 

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1 nuclear, and renewables, as well as presuming how 

2 much electricity consumers should use in each 

3 state. In fact, Administrator McCarthy testified 

4 recently that EPA wants consumers to use less 

5 energy. Although EPA claims states have 

6 flexibility to determine how to meet EPA's goals, 

7 the magnitude of the emission reductions in the 

8 proposal leaves most states little alternative 

9 but to follow EPA's mandates laid out through 

10 building blocks 1 through 4.

11 Fourth, EPA bases its proposal of flawed 

12 information and assumptions for the four building 

13 blocks that are used to calculate each state's 

14 emissions target. 

15 Finally, despite enormous economic 

16 impacts, the proposal will have no meaningful 

17 effect on global climate change because the 

18 proposal will reduce global greenhouse gas 

19 emissions by less than one percent. 

20 Using EPA's own scientific assessment, 

21 the emissions reductions from this proposal will 

22 result in just one percent reduction in 

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1 atmospheric C02 concentrations, a reduction in 

2 global average temperature of two 100ths of a 

3 degree, and a reduction in sea level rise of 

4 1/100 of an inch, the thickness of three sheets 

5 of paper.

6 In conclusion, EPA's proposal has 

7 fundamental flaws that cannot be fixed by simply 

8 making changes to it. Instead, we urge EPA to 

9 withdraw the proposal. 

10 Thank you for the opportunity to provide 

11 comments today.

12 MR. KOERBER: Thank you, sir. 

13 Let me again see if Ray Roberts or Seth 

14 Long are in the room. And I now am out of cards.

15 So let me ask if there's anybody else who 

16 would like to say a few remarks before we adjourn 

17 for dinner? 

18 If not, we will close. I have 4:28 as 

19 the time. We will re-adjourn in this room at 

20 6:00 p.m. 

21 Thank you all very much for being here 

22 today. 

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1 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 4:28 

2 p.m. to 5:35 p.m.)

3 MR. KOERBER: Having no more registered 

4 speakers, we're going to close the hearing Room B 

5 and shift all speakers to hearing Room A. We 

6 will re-adjourn in hearing Room B at 9:00 a.m. 

7 tomorrow morning. This closes tonight's hearing. 

8

9 (Whereupon, the session concluded at 5:36

10 p.m.)

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