Denver Carbon Rules Testimony

I am Mark Fix and I am a rancher and irrigator about 20 miles southwest of Miles City on the Tongue River. I am a past chair of the Northern Plains Resource Council (NPRC) and a member of the Western Organization of Resource Council (WORC). Northern Plains is a grassroots organization that was founded when coal strip mining came to Montana. Northern Plains was instrumental in pushing forward protections for landowners, such as landowner consent and reclamation of strip mined areas.

I am here to thank the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for promoting a rule that will help control carbon emissions that are affecting our lives and our planet.

We in agriculture are the first to be affected by climate change. In Montana in 2012 over 1.1 million acres were burned by the second largest wildfire in our state's history. Luckily I escaped that fire. The day the fire spread it was around 106 degrees and the wind increased to around 60 mph. Smoke was coming my direction and I thought I might see fire at any time, but luckily the winds were not headed my way. Many of my friends and neighbors were not so fortunate, and are still dealing with the incredible expense and workload of replacing fences, livestock, and even their homes. I know how hard this can be- I had a fire on my ranch 4 or 5 years earlier that burned about 3 sections of my property.

The next subjects I will mention I feel fit into the global weirding category. Last year we had an EF One tornado hit my ranch. The winds were in excess of 95 mph and took off half of my barn roof, about a quarter of my house roof and tipped over a new circle pivot that I had only used for
about 2 weeks. The storm was about a half of a mile wide and also took down hundreds of cottonwood trees, which I am still struggling to clean up.

More recently there was an EF Three tornado that struck in SE Montana. One of the storm chasers said that he had never seen a tornado that strong in Montana. When I was a kid you never heard of a tornado in our area. Now it seems like there are warnings for possible tornados in almost every weather alert. And these are not the only type of extreme weather events, exacerbated by climate change that takes a serious toll on Montana landowners.

Cold weather and snow hit early last winter, causing many of my calves to be stressed and catch pneumonia. I lost about 10 percent of my heifer calves from sickness. The winter was long with lots of snow, and as a result, this spring we had lots of runoff and some of the worst ice jam flooding I have seen since we bought the ranch. The ice jammed for about a half of a mile and the river came out onto my irrigated ground and totally covered a 55-acre field. I had 50 head of heifers that were ready to have their first calf in a pasture that was in the path of the flood waters. The water came up very quickly and I did not have time to get the cattle out of the pasture. I saw the water and immediately thought that I had lost all fifty head of heifers. We looked a little closer and I could see some of them trapped on a high spot they had found. I had no way to getto them for rescue. There was water 8 feet deep between the house and where the heifers were.

It took me all night to get them to safety.

The flood waters took out close to a mile of fences on my ranch and I am still trying to get them fixed. My irrigated field was covered with floating trees and ice that I needed to clean up. The same field was littered with branches last year from that tornado. Climate change affects the weather and we in agriculture have to deal with the weather everyday. The weather can make or break us. If we want agriculture as we know it to continue to thrive, it is an economic and cultural imperative to deal with climate change.

As a rural electric cooperative member and ratepayer, I'd like to respond to those coops that have expressed concerns about the proposed rule. These coops, including my own, are living in the past and still think that the only viable source of power is coal. They are paying the price for it now. The supplier for our cooperative tried to build a coal plant that proved to be an enormous boondoggle. Our power supplier made bad decisions and is currently going through bankruptcy proceedings. Renewable power is cheaper, cleaner, and provides more jobs than coal fired power. We need renewables now.

We know that coal is a leading source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and we need to transition toward renewable sources of power. But there are reasons other than climate to shift our energy policy away from coal as well. My ranch is located on a potential path for a new railroad to develop a new coal mine about 50 miles away. My ranch would face condemnation were it to be built. . In addition to condemning family farms and ranches, opening that mine would permanently tear up an important agricultural aquifer. We can and must do better.

Since the mine at Otter Creek has also been discussed as an export mine, I think it's important to note that no serious national effort to rein in CO2 from coal is complete without addressing coal exports. It makes no sense to ship coal to Asia to have the prevailing winds bring back 2 tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of coal we ship to them.

One hundred miles away, they are developing an oil field at an amazing pace in the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana. There is natural gas that is a byproduct and it is simply being flared and wasted. We should salvage all of the natural gas that is now being wasted. Methane emissions are a greenhouse gas that must be looked at in addition to carbon dioxide. It is critical that the BLM's proposals to limit flaring and venting of methane, and EPA methane pollution standards move forward. Otherwise, switching from coal to natural gas could make climate change worse, not better.

Even with better controls on methane, though, promoting natural gas is not a good solution to climate change. Energy efficiency and renewable energy are much better. In Montana we have great potential for wind and solar power. Hydro power is still a good source of power as well, and we need to utilize the potential energy of the water stored in reservoirs — for example, the Tongue River Reservoir near me, which would be an excellent site for hydropower. Hydro,wind, and solar are all clean, renewable sources of energy and need to be promoted. I fully

support the new carbon rules and my hope is that they will help move renewable energy forward so that we can begin to combat climate change and build a new energy economy more consistent with the survival of family farms and ranches like mine.