Testimony Before Environmental Protection Agency 

Regarding The Proposed Clean Power Plan (Clean Air Act Section 111[d]) 

Stephen Wilkins, member Kentuckians For The Commonwealth 

July 29, 2014 

Atlanta, GA 

I am a Kentuckian and a member of our Commonwealth's largest, true grassroots 

organization, Kentuckians For The Commonwealth. I am here to speak a truth different 

from the rhetoric that has been recently spewing from some of Kentucky's so-called 

leaders; leaders beholden to large corporations--leaders who opposed the Clean Power 

Plan before they even knew what was in it. 

I grew up, not in Kentucky, but in West Virginia. And not in West Virginia's coalfields, 

but in what was then steel country. I remember seeing the sky glow orange at night as the 

huge blast furnaces shot sparks and sulphurous fumes skyward each time there was a 

"blow." Snow-covered ground would turn grey with soot in just a few hours. I was too 

young to know that it was the frequent weather inversions that made my asthma and my 

sister's asthma flare up. I lived just a couple of blocks from the Ohio River, an attractive 

place for a boy of thirteen; a place forbidden to play in or around because of the filth in 

the river. This river was, at the time, an open sewer with toilet residue floating by. That 

was before the EPA. That was before the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. That 

was the way business was done. Rivers burst into flames. Twenty people died and 

thousands were sickened from a pollutant-laden inversion in a town about 60 miles east 

of my home. Yet, it would be decades before America put the health of our children and 

of you and of me ahead of corporate bottom lines. Today, the pollutants we can see and 

smell are controlled much more and, yet, businesses still flourish. 

Now we face a challenge we can neither see nor smell. We only know of its presence 

because of the data sent to us by satellite and ocean buoy; numbers given meaning by the 

world's climate scientists. We only experience its consequences as our climate becomes 

more volatile. So, now America must step up once again and put the well-being of our 

children and our children's children ahead of corporate profit margins. We do not have 

decades to get started with this. 

I have been in a unique position, as a citizen and member of a grassroots organization, to 

have been at the table with electric utility executives, administrators and lawyers as part 

of a clean energy collaborative. Though I still consider myself a novice I've learned the 

lingo. I know a lot about baseload, dispatchable and variable generation; various types of 

power generating options; cost structures; de-coupling and automated metering. I've also 

learned a lot about energy efficiency and demand side management strategies. I've 

immersed myself in research on overcoming various barriers to advancing these 

strategies. And, I'm here to tell you that Kentucky has barely scratched the surface of 

what is possible. 

Do not be swayed by those legislators and corporate interests who say that the 

Environmental Protection Agency is killing the economy and destroying jobs. They want 

business as usual. That's understandable. It is easier to keep doing what you've been 

doing. That said, Kentucky — and the nation — have innovated and shifted in order to 
create a better tomorrow. Just look at our rural electric cooperative system and you'll see 

one innovation that propelled us out of the 19thcentury. Kentucky's legislature has had 

bills before it the last several sessions that show a way forward to reducing fossil fuel 

based generation, while creating more jobs than continuing business as usual. Good jobs 

that can be had not just in urban Kentucky, but also in Appalachian Kentucky; a region 

that is fighting for survival now that the coal is almost gone. These bills not only create 

new employment options, they also keep electric rates in check far more than continuing 

business as usual. Analyses — top quality analyses — have been presented to the legislature 

showing a viable, rejuvenating way forward, yet these bills languish without even coming 

to a vote. 

The proposed Clean Power Plan has set a very low bar for Kentucky. Louisville's 

Courier-Journal stated that the coal-fired power plants already slated for 

decommissioning will take Kentucky most of the way towards the Clean Power Plan 

goal. The remaining seven percent reduction in coal-fired generation could easily be 

achieved through energy efficiency and demand side management. Far from imploring 

the Agency to scrap the Clean Power Plan as vested interests insist, I join many others 

here in saying that your plan is not bold enough. Kentucky and the nation can do even 

more. Any revisions to the Clean Power Plan should be done to create an even more 

robust carbon reduction goal. The costs of doing less are far too great for Kentuckians, 

Americans and all our relations across the world. We've already tarried for decades, just 

as we did in the fifties and sixties when we knew America needed a clean water act and a 

clean air act. We don't have more time. The time is now. The actions bold. Thank you for 

being here to listen to ordinary folks such as me. Godspeed!