UTAH REGIONAL HAZE PROPOSED RULE

PUBLIC HEARING

01/26/2016

_______________________________________________________________________

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216 16th Street, Suite 600

Denver Colorado, 80202

303-296-0017
 PUBLIC HEARING

 EPA's Proposed Rulemaking Action: Utah Regional Haze

 State Implementation Plan (SIP) and Federal

 Implementation Plan (FIP) for Regional Haze

 January 26, 2016 - 1:00 p.m.

 and 6:00 p.m.

 Location: Salt Lake City Public Library

 4th Floor Conference Room

 210 East 400 South

 Salt Lake City, Utah 8411

 Reporter: Teri Hansen Cronenwett

 Certified Realtime Reporter, Registered Merit Reporter

 Notary Public in and for the State of Utah
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 2

 1 A P P E A R A N C E S

 2 Elyana Sutin, Administrative Hearing Officer

 3 Monica Morales, EPA Region 8

 4 Gail Fallon, EPA Region 8

 5 Rich Mylott, EPA Region 8

 6 Jaslyn Dobrahner, EPA Region 8

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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 3

 1 January 26, 2016 1:02 p.m.

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

 3 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Good afternoon

 4 everyone. I think we're going to get started so if we

 5 could quiet the room. We have a lot of people here

 6 today, so thank you all for coming.

 7 My name is Elyana Sutin. I'm with the EPA in

 8 Denver, Colorado. I will be presiding over the hearing

 9 this afternoon as well as this evening. This hearing is

 10 now officially in session.

 11 The subject of today's hearing is the

 12 Environmental Protection Agency's co-proposal for Utah's

 13 Regional Haze State Implementation Plan or SIP. Our

 14 rulemaking action co-proposes two different approaches.

 15 The first approach fully approves Utah's Regional Haze

 16 SIP, addresses the requirements of the federal rules for

 17 regional haze.

 18 The second approach partially approves and

 19 partially disapproves Utah's Regional Haze SIP,

 20 proposing a Federal Implementation Plan or FIP for those

 21 elements of the SIP for which we are proposing

 22 disapproval. You will hear more detail regarding the

 23 two approaches in the proposed action from Monica

 24 Morales, who is sitting next to me, momentarily.

 25 The fact sheet on the table in the back of the
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 4

 1 room explains how you may submit written comments to

 2 EPA's proposed action, and also gives the Federal

 3 Register citation for the proposed action.

 4 Jaslyn Dobrahner is seated at the back of the

 5 room, although I think at the moment she might be out.

 6 But she will be seated at the back of the room. She is

 7 holding up her hand. Can you do that again, Jaslyn?

 8 Thanks.

 9 She can assist you with obtaining a fact sheet

 10 or completing a registration card if you wish to speak.

 11 I will explain a little bit more about the registration

 12 card in a moment.

 13 This hearing is a means for EPA to listen to

 14 your comments on the proposed action that has been

 15 published as a Federal Register proposed rule. Before I

 16 turn it over to Monica, let me explain a bit about the

 17 process and a few ground rules for the hearing.

 18 When EPA takes action on a State

 19 Implementation Plan or a Federal Implementation Plan, it

 20 is required to do so through rulemaking. This

 21 rulemaking is governed by laws passed by Congress. For

 22 SIPs, it's the Administrative Procedures Act. For FIPs,

 23 it's the Clean Air Act.

 24 In either case EPA must publish a proposed

 25 rule in the Federal Register, take public comment on the
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 5

 1 proposed rule, and publish a final rule in the Federal

 2 Register after considering comments.

 3 In the case of FIPs, EPA is also required to

 4 conduct a hearing which is what we're doing today.

 5 After considering all the comments, EPA may decide to

 6 make changes to the proposed rule or it may decide to

 7 move forward and finalize one of the approaches in the

 8 proposed rule.

 9 We are here today to listen to your comments.

 10 We will attempt to answer any clarifying questions about

 11 the process or what's contained in the proposed action.

 12 But we are not here today to explain the basis for the

 13 proposed action. The Federal Register notice does that.

 14 We cannot engage in a back-and-forth discussion of the

 15 proposed action or respond to your comments during this

 16 hearing. The purpose of the hearing is to receive your

 17 input. We will consider and then respond to all

 18 comments received during this hearing, as well as any

 19 written comments in a final Federal Register rule.

 20 If you have already made comments, there is no

 21 need to repeat them today. They will be included. We

 22 are recording our proceedings here today. So be assured

 23 that your comments will be considered.

 24 The court reporter, sitting to my left, will

 25 be preparing a transcript of today's proceeding. That
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 6

 1 will be available for anyone who wants to see it. The

 2 transcript is part of the record and will be included in

 3 the rulemaking docket. The rulemaking docket is where

 4 EPA collects materials it has considered in its

 5 rulemaking action, including public comments.

 6 The docket is available on the Internet for

 7 review at regulations.gov, or you can view a hard copy

 8 at EPA's Denver office. Specific instructions for

 9 accessing the docket are described in the Federal

 10 Register notice, the proposed rulemaking and on the fact

 11 sheet that we've made available. The transcript of this

 12 hearing will also be available in the rulemaking docket.

 13 Before we begin taking your comments, first

 14 allow me to take a moment to set the stage; that is, to

 15 explain how the hearing will be run. After I speak,

 16 Monica Morales will explain the details of the proposed

 17 action. She will explain EPA's proposed action to

 18 approve the state SIP, as well as what EPA is proposing

 19 in its FIP, based on the federal Clean Air Act

 20 requirements for regional haze.

 21 I will then call people to speak based on the

 22 registration card that was filled out when you arrived.

 23 I will provide the registration card to the court

 24 reporter to assist in the spelling of your name. Please

 25 spell your name before beginning your remarks. If you
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 7

 1 are reading from a written statement, it would be

 2 helpful, though not required, if you could provide a

 3 copy of your statement to the court reporter or our

 4 staff at the registration table, after you make your

 5 remarks.

 6 Please speak slowly and clearly so the court

 7 reporter can accurately capture your statement. Also,

 8 there is space on the back of the registration card for

 9 providing short written comments if anyone wishes to do

 10 so. If you are only here to observe, there is no need

 11 to fill out a registration card.

 12 I would like to stress that we have quite a

 13 few people here today. I don't know that everybody

 14 wants to speak, but I want to ensure that everyone has

 15 the opportunity to speak about the proposed action. To

 16 that end, please consider, after you have made your

 17 statement, leaving so that those -- if you look behind

 18 you, all those people out there are trying to also come

 19 in and make a statement. So if you could please allow

 20 them the opportunity and the time to come in, it would

 21 be greatly appreciated by everyone.

 22 In order to have things move quickly, I need

 23 to keep people's comments brief, three minutes or less

 24 at least in the beginning. Please try to be as succinct

 25 and on point as you can. If I find that we are straying
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 8

 1 from the topic at hand, I will interrupt and ask that

 2 you please return to the issue before us.

 3 If we have time at the end and everyone has

 4 had a chance to speak, you -- and you have more to say

 5 then the time you were given, then I'll allow people to

 6 get back up and finish their comments.

 7 Also, please know that this first hearing ends

 8 as five o'clock today. We'll take an hour break and

 9 we're back here at 6:00. So if you do not have a chance

 10 to speak and want to come back at six o'clock, you can

 11 do so.

 12 Gail Fallon, sitting on the other side of

 13 Monica, will assist with monitoring speaker times by

 14 raising a yellow card when 30 seconds of time remains

 15 and raising a pink card when your time has expired. So

 16 that's how we will proceed.

 17 We're going to get started here. Next to

 18 speak will be Monica Morales from EPA. After Monica,

 19 Bryce Bird from the Utah Department of Environmental

 20 Quality will speak after her. Thank you.

 21 MONICA MORALES: Good afternoon. My name is

 22 Monica Morales. I'm the unit chief for the air quality

 23 planning unit in EPA's Region 8 office in Denver. As

 24 you heard from Ms. Sutin, this hearing concerns EPA's

 25 proposed action on a portion of Utah's Regional Haze
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 9

 1 State Implementation Plan that addresses the

 2 requirements pertaining to particulate matter and

 3 nitrogen oxide and visibility impacts, those pollutants

 4 have wilderness areas and national parks, also known as

 5 Class 1 areas under the Regional Haze Rule.

 6 Our proposed action was published in the

 7 Federal Register on January 14, 2016. You should have

 8 received a regional haze fact sheet when you signed in.

 9 This fact sheet provides a general background on EPA's

 10 Regional Haze Rule and explains some of the terms and

 11 acronyms that will be discussed during the hearing. I

 12 encourage those of you who are not familiar with the

 13 Regional Haze Rule to take a look at the fact sheet. We

 14 have also posted the fact sheet on EPA's Region 8

 15 website.

 16 The portion of Utah's Regional Haze State

 17 Implementation Plan or SIP upon which one of EPA's

 18 proposed action is based includes requirements for

 19 PacifiCorp's Hunter, Huntington and Carbon coal-fired

 20 plants. These plants are located in central Utah.

 21 PacifiCorp operates as Rocky Mountain Power in Utah.

 22 Our January 14, 2016 rulemaking action

 23 co-proposes two different approaches. The first

 24 approach fully approves Utah's regional haze SIP,

 25 addressing the requirements of the Regional Haze Rule
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 10

 1 under 40 Code of Federal Regulations 51.309(g). And the

 2 second approach partially approves and partially

 3 disapproves Utah's regional haze SIP proposing a Federal

 4 Implementation Plan or FIP, for those elements of the

 5 SIP for which we are proposing disapproval.

 6 Under our first approach, EPA is proposing to

 7 fully approve the two Regional Haze SIP revisions

 8 submitted by Utah in 2015. Specifically, we are

 9 proposing to approve the following: The state's

 10 particulate matter best available retrofit technology,

 11 or what we call BART, determinations for PacifiCorp's

 12 Hunter Units 1 and 2 and Huntington Units 1 and 2. The

 13 states's nitrogen oxide BART alternative for

 14 PacifiCorp's Hunter Units 1, 2 and 3, Huntington Units 1

 15 and 2 and Carbon Units 1 and 2. The state's monitoring,

 16 recordkeeping and reporting requirements in part H of

 17 Utah's SIP for the particulate matter BART

 18 determinations and the nitrogen oxide BART alternative.

 19 Under our second approach, we are proposing to

 20 approve only the portion -- portions of the state's SIP

 21 that pertain to particulate matter BART and the

 22 associated particulate matter monitoring, recordkeeping

 23 and reporting requirements for the BART sources. We are

 24 proposing to find that some aspects of the Utah Regional

 25 Haze SIP are inconsistent with the regulatory and
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 11

 1 statutory requirements.

 2 As a result, we are proposing to disapprove

 3 the state's NOx and nitrogen oxygen BART alternative for

 4 PacifiCorp's Hunter Units 1, 2 and 3, Huntington Units 1

 5 and 2 and Carbon Units 1 and 2, and the associated

 6 nitrogen oxide monitoring, recordkeeping and reporting

 7 requirements for the nitrogen oxide BART alternative.

 8 We are proposing the promulgation of a FIP to

 9 address the deficiencies in those portions of the

 10 state's SIP which we are proposing to disapprove.

 11 The co-proposed FIP includes the following

 12 elements: NOx BART determinations and emission limits

 13 for PacifiCorp's Hunter Units 1 and 2 and Huntington

 14 Units 1 and 2, and also the monitoring, recordkeeping

 15 and reporting requirements applicable to the four BART

 16 units for which there is a FIP emission limit.

 17 As part of the public comment process, EPA

 18 specifically is requesting that interested parties

 19 provide any additional information or analysis regarding

 20 the proposed action. For example, modeled visibility

 21 benefits of the BART alternative compared to BART, and

 22 whether the interested parties think EPA should consider

 23 options that differ somewhat from the proposed BART

 24 alternative or the BART control technology option, which

 25 could be finalized as our FIP if we disapprove the Utah
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 12

 1 SIP in our final action.

 2 EPA will consider all public comments and

 3 information received, including additional options for

 4 control technology and timing, before issuing our final

 5 action.

 6 We anticipate that there will be differing

 7 views regarding the state's BART alternative SIP and

 8 what course of action EPA should take. This is because

 9 of the complex nature of the BART alternative, the

 10 analysis that supports it, consideration of that

 11 analysis under the statutory regulatory framework and

 12 the implications of EPA's actions.

 13 Given these considerations, EPA decided to

 14 solicit comments to support either a proposed action to

 15 approve the state's SIP in its entirety, or a proposed

 16 action to partially approve and partially disapprove the

 17 state SIP and propose a FIP.

 18 As it has done with other states, EPA would

 19 work with the state on a revised state plan should a

 20 partial disapproval and FIP be finalized. If EPA

 21 finalizes our federal plan and the state finalizes a

 22 revised plan that adequately addresses regional haze,

 23 our federal plan could be superseded upon our approval

 24 of the state's revised plan.

 25 We are accepting written comments for 60 days
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 13

 1 after the proposed action was published in the Federal

 2 Register on January 14th, 2016. Written comments must

 3 therefore be received by EPA on or before March 14th,

 4 2016.

 5 Your comments are encouraged. We will

 6 consider all comments in finalizing our action on the

 7 state's Regional Haze Plan and our federal plan.

 8 Thank you. We appreciate your attendance

 9 afternoon. And now I'll turn it over to Mr. Bryce Bird

 10 with the state of Utah as our first commenter.

 11 BRYCE BIRD: Good afternoon. My name is Bryce

 12 Bird, B-R-Y-C-E, and B-I-R-D. I am the air quality

 13 division director of the Utah Department of

 14 Environmental Quality. We appreciate this opportunity

 15 to comment on EPA's dual proposal to either approve or

 16 partially approve and disapprove the Utah Regional Haze

 17 State Implementation Plan.

 18 Utah supports the EPA's finding that full

 19 approval of the alternative to BART section of the

 20 Regional Haze SIP meets all of the requirements of the

 21 current Clean Air Act and the Regional Haze Rule. We

 22 also note our support of EPA's finding that the BART

 23 alternative provides a greater visibility benefit than

 24 BART.

 25 Throughout the SIP development process, we
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 14

 1 have worked as regulatory partners, closely and

 2 extensively with EPA staff, to ensure that Utah's

 3 alternative to BART SIP revisions met all of the

 4 requirements of the Clean Air Act and was approvable by

 5 EPA. The EPA should approve of the option that Utah

 6 developed in close consultation with EPA and not the

 7 option that Utah was not even aware it was being

 8 prepared or under consideration until it was signed by

 9 the regional administrator.

 10 As the EPA evaluates comments and makes its

 11 final decision on the Utah SIP submitted, we remind EPA

 12 that the goal of the Regional Haze Rule, according to

 13 the Clean Air Act, is the prevention of any future and

 14 the remediating of any existing impairment of visibility

 15 in mandatory Class 1, federal areas.

 16 Though we acknowledge that exposure to NOx has

 17 health impacts, the purpose of this SIP and the Regional

 18 Haze Rule is to improve visibility. It does not

 19 establish any health standards. Additionally, we note

 20 that the region is currently in attainment for all

 21 health standards, including oxides of nitrogen.

 22 Preserving and improving visibility at our

 23 national parks is very important to the state of Utah

 24 and its citizens. That is why Utah has been working for

 25 decades on this issue. The BART alternative submitted
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 15

 1 by Utah is just the latest piece of comprehensive

 2 strategy developed to address regional haze.

 3 Let me share with you what Utah has done over

 4 the decades to address this issue. Utah's visibility

 5 protection programs and Utah's prevention of significant

 6 deterioration programs were adopted in the early 1980s

 7 to address the visibility goals established in the 1977

 8 Clean Air Act.

 9 In the mid 1980s, Utah's Governor Bangerter

 10 appointed the Task Force on Visibility Protection to

 11 determine the appropriate level of protection for Utah's

 12 Class 1 areas, and to determine sources of impairment of

 13 visibility in those areas. After more than a year of

 14 investigation, the task force recommended that all Utah

 15 Class 1 areas needed protection, and the biggest cause

 16 of visibility impairment is not an individual industrial

 17 source, but rather regional haze from a multitude of

 18 sources that is transported over long distances.

 19 In 1991 EPA established the Grand Canyon

 20 Visibility Transport Commission as required by the 1990

 21 Clean Air Act. Utah's Governor Bangerter was the vice

 22 chair of the commission, and Utah was an active

 23 participant in this process.

 24 In 1996, the commission finalized a

 25 comprehensive series of recommendations that addressed
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 1 the multiple emission sources and pollutants that

 2 contributed to regional haze on the Colorado Plateau.

 3 These recommendations were the basis of Utah's Regional

 4 Haze SIP.

 5 Utah was an active participant in the Western

 6 Regional Air Partnership. That was the follow-up

 7 organization to the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport

 8 Commission. Utah's Governor Leavitt co-chaired the

 9 Western Regional Air Partnership, and Utah

 10 representatives were cochairs or members of many of the

 11 WRAP's forums.

 12 The WRAP established an extensive

 13 stakeholder-based process to further develop the Grand

 14 Canyon Visibility Transport Commission's recommendations

 15 and to improve the technical understanding of the causes

 16 of regional haze in the western states. They used these

 17 recommendations and the technical understanding to

 18 develop effective strategies to improve visibility to

 19 Class 1 areas throughout the West. Throughout this

 20 process, Utah has worked closely with the National Park

 21 Service, the EPA and other western states.

 22 Utah's Regional Haze SIP was focused on

 23 reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide from stationary

 24 sources because sulfur dioxide is the most significant

 25 anthropogenic pollutant contributing to the haze on the
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 1 Colorado Plateau. The SIP was adopted five years

 2 earlier than was required for the rest of the country

 3 due to the significant work in Utah, that Utah, EPA and

 4 federal land managers and other stakeholders had done

 5 together to address the visibility on the Colorado

 6 Plateau through the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport

 7 Commission.

 8 The current control strategies in the state's

 9 Regional Haze SIP have improved visibility at the

 10 federal Class 1 areas in the state, and have also

 11 benefitted Class 1 areas outside of Utah that might be

 12 impacted by emissions from Utah and met all requirements

 13 of the first planning period.

 14 The emissions reduction strategies in Utah's

 15 Regional Haze SIP have been implemented and are

 16 effective. The State of Utah has developed the Utah

 17 Smoke Management Plan that provides operating procedures

 18 for federal and state agencies that use prescribed fire,

 19 wildfire and wildland fire on federal, state and private

 20 lands in Utah. Mobile oxide nitrogen emissions have

 21 decreased state-wide in line with the level of

 22 reductions in the four main urban counties of Weber,

 23 Davis, Salt Lake and Utah where emissions are projected

 24 to decrease by 42,000 tons per year, or 61 percent by

 25 2018 from 2002 levels.
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 1 It is important to point out that even greater

 2 initial reductions will be achieved by 2018 than have

 3 been anticipated in the Utah Regional Haze SIP due to

 4 federal Tier 3 rule and vehicle standards that were

 5 adopted in 2014. The alternative to BART measures

 6 included the proposed revision of Utah's -- in the

 7 proposed revision of Utah's SIP will have decreased SO2

 8 emissions by 27,947 tons and NOx emissions by 15,258

 9 tons from the 2002 levels by 2015.

 10 The Grand Canyon Visibility Transport

 11 Commission set a goal of achieving 10 percent of

 12 electrical generation from renewable sources by 2005 and

 13 20 percent by 2015. Significant progress has been

 14 achieved toward meeting these regional goals. Thirteen

 15 percent of electricity generation in Utah was from

 16 renewable resources in 2012, and significant new

 17 resources are currently under construction.

 18 In summation, Utah's Regional Haze SIP

 19 reflects the state's commitment to improve visibility

 20 and focus on the strategies that will provide the best

 21 benefit to visibility in Class 1 areas.

 22 As I've already mentioned, Utah has achieved

 23 significant reductions in haze-causing pollutants.

 24 While the visibility modeling predicted a significant

 25 improvement in visibility due to emissions reductions
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 1 made during the current planning period, there has not

 2 been an equivalent actual improvement in visibility at

 3 mandatory Class 1 areas. Based on actual observations,

 4 it appears that the current model consistently

 5 over-predicts the visibility benefits.

 6 Therefore, the actual monitored data should be

 7 considered more heavily than modelling when determining

 8 the efficiency of visibility controls. However, due --

 9 however, to the extent that the model can be relied

 10 upon, we note that the alternate BART scenario shows a

 11 greater improvement to regional visibility than

 12 requiring selective catalytic reduction to control

 13 oxides of nitrogen on the Huntington and Hunter subject

 14 to BART units.

 15 EPA's second proposed action to finalize the

 16 Federal Implementation Plan states that averaging the

 17 number of days with impacts greater than 1.0 deciview

 18 across all affected Class 1 areas is not a relevant

 19 metric. The proposal further states that because of

 20 averaging, the results for the total number of days with

 21 impacts of -- sorry -- over 1.0 deciview on Class 1

 22 area-by-area basis are not clear in supporting the BART

 23 alternative.

 24 EPA has applied the average impairment metric

 25 consistently in other states, as allowed by the regional
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 20

 1 haze rules, and should do so in this case. Furthermore,

 2 averaging visibility improvement is the best way to

 3 measure it because it counts each Class 1 area as equal.

 4 An evaluation that claims improvements at some sites are

 5 greater under BART versus the alternative gives more

 6 importance to one Class 1 area over another.

 7 In its FIP proposal, the EPA states that it is

 8 not appropriate to combine all three pollutants in the

 9 annual emissions comparison test. However, an

 10 evaluation that considers each pollutant individually

 11 gives great weight to one pollutant over another and is

 12 contrary to the stated goal to improve visibility.

 13 Under Utah's proposed alternative to BART

 14 scenario, two of the three haze-causing pollutants,

 15 sulfur dioxide and the PM10 are reduced more than under

 16 the BART scenario. Therefore, the overall pollution

 17 reduction is greater under Utah's alternative to BART

 18 scenario.

 19 Our monitoring data indicate that ammonia is

 20 the limiting factor in the formation of nitrate and

 21 sulfate. Therefore, reducing nitrogen oxide and sulfur

 22 dioxide emissions is not anticipated to have a

 23 corresponding improvement to visibility. Because the

 24 visibility modeling used a much higher value for ammonia

 25 than is actually present, this could explain the
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 1 discrepancy between the model's over-prediction and the

 2 lack of measured visibility improvement.

 3 In EPA's dual proposal, the EPA is considering

 4 two options, the first being approval of the Utah

 5 Regional Haze SIP. The second will be a partial

 6 disapproval of the SIP and imposition of a FIP or

 7 Federal Implementation Plan that requires selective

 8 catalytic reduction on the Hunter and Huntington units.

 9 Because Utah has already implemented controls

 10 under the first option, imposing a FIP under the second

 11 option would effectively require all controls from both

 12 options. The cost effectiveness of this option to

 13 partially disapprove the Utah SIP and impose a FIP

 14 should be evaluated based on the cost to implement all

 15 controls from the beginning to the end of the current

 16 planning period. The visibility benefit of the cost of

 17 controls should factor heavily in EPA's justification

 18 for requiring SCR.

 19 A simple reliance on NOx emissions reductions

 20 and questionable cost estimates to install the controls

 21 results in imposed cost without corresponding visibility

 22 benefits and should be rejected as not meeting the

 23 stated goal to improve visibility.

 24 The precedent established by imposing a FIP

 25 after the controls required in the SIP were already
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 22

 1 installed will provide interest to current and future

 2 SIP development processes. Based on this action, no

 3 SIP-affected source would ever begin to design or

 4 install any SIP-required control measure until after the

 5 SIP was fully approved by the EPA.

 6 The EPA's proposal to partially disapprove of

 7 the Regional Haze SIP is based on an analysis that

 8 accounts for conditions as they are currently. This is

 9 inconsistent with the Regional Haze Rule which requires

 10 all options to be evaluated from beginning of the

 11 current planning period. This is the standard that was

 12 required for Utah. We respectfully request that EPA

 13 adhere to the same standard.

 14 The EPA acknowledges that in the proposed --

 15 in the proposal to approve that the controls required by

 16 the Utah Regional Haze SIP are installed and therefore

 17 meet the requirement that all necessary emissions

 18 reductions take place during the period of the first

 19 long-term strategy for regional haze.

 20 The EPA states in its proposed FIP that

 21 installation SCR or the BART controls would be fully

 22 implemented between to 2019 and 2021. According to the

 23 Regional Haze Rule, this is not allowed as it is past

 24 the end of the current planning period.

 25 Throughout the current planning period, Utah
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 23

 1 has worked closely and in good faith with the EPA and

 2 federal land managers to evaluate and implement

 3 appropriate controls for improving visibility. Up to

 4 the point of the current proposal, the EPA has indicated

 5 to Utah that the alternative to BART approach and

 6 analysis was acceptable.

 7 The state will continue to evaluate the legal,

 8 technical and procedural elements of EPA's proposal and

 9 will follow up this testimony with detailed written

 10 comments following the review and prior to the end of

 11 the comment period.

 12 Again, we appreciate the opportunity to

 13 provide comments on EPA's proposals. We strongly urge

 14 you to fully approve the Utah alternative to BART SIP as

 15 demonstration as contained in first proposal and

 16 withdraw from consideration the second proposal to

 17 finalize the Federal Implementation Plan because it is

 18 not necessary to achieve the requirements of the Clean

 19 Air Act or the Regional Haze Rule. Thank you.

 20 (Applause).

 21 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Mr. Bird.

 22 Okay. We're going to get started with the

 23 rest of the commenters. Our first commenter will be

 24 Bill Lawson from PacifiCorp Rocky Mountain Power. I

 25 want folks to know that PacifiCorp combined their time
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 24

 1 of several people who wanted to comment. So their

 2 comments will be a little bit longer, about five and a

 3 half minutes. But most people will have three minutes.

 4 Thank you, Mr. Lawson.

 5 BILL LAWSON: Good afternoon. My name is

 6 Bill, B-I-L-L, Lawson, L-A-W-S-O-N. I'm the director of

 7 Rocky Mountain Power's Environmental Services Group,

 8 which is responsible for administering environmental

 9 rules and regulations at all of our thermal electric

 10 generating facilities, including coal, natural gas, and

 11 geothermal.

 12 Rocky Mountain Power and its customers have a

 13 vested interest in the outcome of this ruling, as it

 14 will significantly impact the costs and operation of

 15 Rocky Mountain Power's Hunter Unit 1, Hunter Unit 2,

 16 Huntington Unit 1 and Huntington Unit 2 located in Emery

 17 County, Utah. These impacts will not only be felt by

 18 Rocky Mountain Power and our customers, but also by

 19 Deseret Power Electric Cooperative, Utah Associated

 20 Municipal Power Systems, and Utah Municipal Power Agency

 21 due to their partial ownership in the Hunter plant.

 22 I appreciate the opportunity I have today to

 23 comment, and will follow up these comments with more

 24 detailed written comments at a later date.

 25 Rocky Mountain Power supports Option 1 of
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PUBLIC HEARING 1/26/2016 25

 1 EPA's proposed rule and believes that Option 2 is not

 2 legally sustainable. The State of Utah completed a

 3 rigorous public process to develop its Regional Haze SIP

 4 in accordance with EPA's rules. Given the flexibility

 5 provided states under those rules, for states to develop

 6 and implement their own regional haze programs, the very

 7 fact that EPA developed an analysis and rationale in

 8 support of Utah's SIP is reason enough to accept it as

 9 written.

 10 However, in light of the EPA's request for

 11 additional input, I provide the following. First,

 12 following -- some imply that Option 1 is a do-nothing

 13 plan. This is simply not true. Since 2007 Rocky

 14 Mountain Power has taken the following actions as

 15 required by Utah's Regional Haze SIP, which is reflected

 16 as EPA's Option 1.

 17 In 2007, we installed low NOx burners, a

 18 sulfur dioxide scrubber and a bag house on Huntington

 19 Unit 2. In 2008, we installed low NOx burners on Hunter

 20 Unit 3. In 2011, we installed low NOx burners, sulfur

 21 dioxide scrubber upgrades and a bag house on --

 22 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: I'm sorry, Mr. Lawson,

 23 I hate to interrupt. We need to have the door -- people

 24 at the door not speaking so loudly we can't hear. Thank

 25 you. Go ahead, Mr. Lawson.
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 1 BILL LAWSON: In 2011, we installed low NOx

 2 burners, sulfur dioxide scrubber upgrades and a bag

 3 house on Huntington Unit 1.

 4 In 2012, we installed low NOx burners,

 5 scrubber upgrades and a bag house on Hunter Unit 2.

 6 In 2014, we installed low NOx burners,

 7 scrubber upgrades and a bag house on Hunter Unit 1. And

 8 in 2015, we closed the Carbon plant and removed it from

 9 service.

 10 Those significant capital costs projects have

 11 cost over half billion dollars, and their visibility

 12 benefits started being realized back in 2007. EPA

 13 itself has projected that the -- that these projects

 14 that have been installed on these BART-eligible units

 15 will reduce emissions of SO2 and nitrogen oxides by more

 16 than 19,000 tons between 2012 and 2018.

 17 And the remissions reductions associated with

 18 the retirement of the Carbon plant, and the installation

 19 of low NOx burners on Hunter Unit 3, will add an

 20 additional 12,500 tons of annual emission reductions.

 21 Moreover, the regional haze program is not

 22 designated -- or is not designed to require that all

 23 possible controls be installed immediately during the

 24 first planning period. Rather, it's a long-term

 25 program, and Rocky Mountain Power will be an active
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 1 participant in all phases of that program.

 2 Second, Option 1 has been fully implemented in

 3 accordance with the BART requirements. EPA's

 4 coproposals do not represent an either/or alternative as

 5 the proposed rule implies. If EPA chooses to impose

 6 Option 2, it will require both Option 1 and Option 2.

 7 This is not an allowable approach under the proposal to

 8 implement one option or the other.

 9 Third, Option 1 produces greater reasonable

 10 progress at significantly lower costs than Option 2.

 11 Under EPA's rules, the State of Utah was required to

 12 compare its alternative measure SIP against the most

 13 stringent NOx control technology and emission limits as

 14 BART. Utah in fact did this and properly concluded that

 15 Option 1 not only produces greater reasonable progress,

 16 including lowering emissions and improved visibility,

 17 but it does so at the total capital cost savings of over

 18 700 million dollars to electric customers.

 19 In other words, the alternative measure

 20 proposed by the State achieves visibility improvements

 21 than would be achieved by requiring selective catalytic

 22 reduction at these four units. And it does so at a

 23 significant lower cost.

 24 The importance of this cannot be overstated.

 25 This presents a classic win-win scenario. Visibility
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 1 proponents win because the alternative measure results

 2 in greater reasonable progress, and electric customers

 3 win because the greater -- that greater reasonable

 4 progress is achieved at a much lower cost than

 5 installing the additional controls.

 6 In summary, EPA should approve Option 1

 7 because one, it complies with EPA's Regional Haze Rules

 8 as EPA itself has concluded. Two, it has already been

 9 fully implemented. Three, it provides the required

 10 visibility improvements; and four, it saves over 700

 11 million dollars in total capital costs to electric

 12 customers while still achieving greater reasonable

 13 progress.

 14 Rocky Mountain Power encourages the EPA to

 15 approve Option 1 and accept Utah's Regional Haze

 16 Implementation Plan as proposed. Thank you.

 17 (Applause).

 18 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. All right.

 19 Now, next if we can have Karin Madsem. I am going to

 20 have to ask folks -- there are a lot of people here, and

 21 we want to make sure everyone who wants to be here can

 22 be here. But I also want people to feel like they could

 23 testify comfortably and not being intimidated. So if

 24 there are any kinds of distractions, I am going to have

 25 to ask people to leave. So please be respectful of all
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 1 of those folks who are testifying today. Thank you.

 2 KARIN MADSEM: Good afternoon. My name is

 3 Karin Madsem, K-A-R-I-N, M-A-D-S-E-M.

 4 I was born, raised and lived in Carbon County

 5 for 30 years. I'm an environmental engineering

 6 technician for four of our local coal mines. My

 7 father's worked his entire career at the power plant,

 8 and my husband is a coal miner.

 9 Some of the people here today, who have not

 10 spoken yet, are in support of over-regulating our

 11 coal-fired power plant because you are under the

 12 delusion they are causing ungodly amounts of pollution

 13 and haze, threatening your skies, your lungs and your

 14 livelihood.

 15 Let me tell you something about livelihood.

 16 Our livelihood, the livelihood of citizens of Carbon and

 17 Emery counties, the citizens who took the entire day to

 18 get here to attend this meeting that's being held in

 19 Salt Lake City, 150 miles away from the communities this

 20 rule would impact, communities who work hard every day

 21 to provide you all with reliable and cost-effective

 22 coal-fired power, the same coal-fired power that this

 23 rule aims to destroy.

 24 The regional -- I disapprove of the Regional

 25 Haze Rule because it claims that these power plants are
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 1 producing enough pollution to impact Utah's air in the

 2 national parks. This is ludicrous. This meeting was

 3 held here today with the ulterior motive of wanting

 4 people to believe the haze here in the city is the

 5 result of these power plants, but simply is not.

 6 Data found on EPA's own website clearly shows

 7 the haze you all see when you walk outside this building

 8 is caused by vehicles and not by power plants. It's

 9 clearly not our power plants.

 10 Feel free to visit any one of Utah's national

 11 parks and see for yourself the beautiful sky, clean

 12 fresh air and clear clean waters. On your way you might

 13 get to drive through Carbon and Emery County and take a

 14 big deep breath of some of the cleanest air you'll ever

 15 come across.

 16 Federal operations is becoming more of a

 17 problem. The lies and half truths used to push the

 18 anti-coal agenda is a disappointment. If not careful,

 19 we'll be over-regulated into a corner we won't be able

 20 to get out of. Thank you.

 21 (Applause).

 22 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Ms. Madsem.

 23 Next if we could Phillip Jensen.

 24 PHILLIP JENSEN: Good afternoon. My name is

 25 Phillip Jensen. P-H-I-L-L-I-P, J-E-N-S-E-N. I'd like
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 1 to thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

 2 I have lived in Carbon County, Utah for the

 3 majority of my 45 years. I am an engineering tech

 4 working with permitting and environmental quality issues

 5 at Utah American Energy Incorporated. But I speak for

 6 myself today.

 7 In opening, I find it disgraceful that we are

 8 having this hearing with such short public notice on a

 9 weekday, and over 120 miles away from the very

 10 communities that you are trying to decimate. Is that so

 11 you don't have to face these people? You cowards.

 12 I can only hope that this inquisition is

 13 concerned with facts and not beliefs, feelings or

 14 contrived data. Fact, the prevailing winds of the

 15 United States are westerly, which generally blows from

 16 the west to the east and northeast. Fact, these two

 17 power plants, Huntington and Hunter, that we are

 18 discussing, are located north and northwest of Utah's

 19 national parks.

 20 In order for the plant's emissions to reach

 21 these parks, they would have to travel contrary to the

 22 prevailing winds, which is physically not possible.

 23 Therefore, these two power plants are not the likely

 24 sources of the haze that we are discussing today, as the

 25 EPA is stating they are. That source of haze is most
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 1 likely from outside the state of Utah.

 2 According to the EPA's own website, 2001 --

 3 2011 data is the latest I could find. I find that very

 4 curious. But according to the EPA's website, southern

 5 California vehicles alone produce over 10 times the

 6 amount of the NOx emissions than these two power plants

 7 currently do combined. And the prevailing winds are in

 8 a direct line between southern California and Utah's

 9 national parks. When you add Clark County, Nevada, that

 10 equals 12 times the amount of NOx emissions.

 11 Now, how can we prove that this comes from

 12 southern California? Any time there's a storm in Los

 13 Angeles, it always, almost always goes right through

 14 southern Utah and our national parks. Furthermore, any

 15 time there's a wildfire in California, Utah is assailed

 16 by that smoke. And just for comparison purposes,

 17 according to the EPA's website again, Salt Lake County

 18 produces more NOx emissions from vehicles than these two

 19 carbon -- than these two coal-fired power plants

 20 currently do.

 21 Furthermore, again according to EPA's own

 22 website, vehicles produce over half of the smog-forming

 23 VOCs, over half of the NOx emissions and about half of

 24 all toxic air emissions. Therefore, coal is not the end

 25 all boogie man that so many people portray it to be.
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 1 The EPA really needs to look at the reality of

 2 pollutants and their sources and stop trying to destroy

 3 these industries. Stop trying to destroy whole

 4 communities and stop trying to destroy the people's

 5 lives, all for this holier than thou crusade of yours.

 6 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Mr. Jensen, your time

 7 is up.

 8 PHILLIP JENSEN: Two more things. This is

 9 intended for political agenda only. Stop it and leave

 10 the good, hard working people of eastern Utah alone.

 11 Thank you.

 12 (Applause).

 13 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next if we

 14 can have John Prehn. Sorry if I am not saying that

 15 right.

 16 JOHN PREHN: My name is John Prehn, P-R-E-H-N.

 17 And I am here to support Heal Utah, the Utah Physicians

 18 For a Healthy Environment and the Sierra Club.

 19 I support the Clean Parks Plan to

 20 substantially clean up some of the pollution -- some of

 21 the pollution generated by coal-burning power plants.

 22 Utah is a natural jewel. Globally unique. It is being

 23 degraded by numerous irresponsible industry actions, one

 24 of which is burning coal without emission controls.

 25 I call on the EPA to impose stricter controls,
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 1 comparable to those enforced in neighboring western

 2 states, since our state officials are unwilling to do

 3 so.

 4 We have learned two things in recent years at

 5 least. We have enough multi billionaires like Warren

 6 Buffet. They can afford to clean up their acts. Two,

 7 we must stop burning coal to produce electricity. Coal

 8 is a dirty, lethal business from its mining to the

 9 exhaustion of poisonous chemicals into the atmosphere

 10 during burning. Until we can transition away from coal,

 11 we should at least get relatively clean coal, scrubbed

 12 of some of these chemicals as promised by promoters of

 13 coal for years now.

 14 This is not a privileged, optional or cosmetic

 15 issue. Our environment is in crisis. Utah can no

 16 longer be considered the Wild West where anything goes.

 17 Thank you.

 18 (Applause).

 19 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Mr. Prehn.

 20 Next, if we could have Dave Levanger.

 21 DAVE LEVANGER: Hello. My name is Dave

 22 Levanger, L-E-V-A-N-G-E-R. I'm a director of planning

 23 for Carbon County, Utah and wish to speak today in

 24 support of the state's implementation plan for regional

 25 haze; in other words Option 1, in our national parks and
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 1 echo previous comments.

 2 My understanding is that by being prudent and

 3 responsible in their planning, along with the

 4 cooperation of PacifiCorp, I am talking about the state

 5 of Utah, with their planning, and by spending over 500

 6 million dollars at five power generating stations in our

 7 area, we have achieved a goal set for reduction of

 8 nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter in

 9 our atmosphere.

 10 I further understand that by taking the

 11 approach that has been taken by the state, in the

 12 electrical generating industry in eastern Utah, our

 13 electrical power rate payers have saved around 700

 14 million dollars or will save that if they are not forced

 15 to do Option 2.

 16 This amounts to economic justice for all of

 17 our citizens and especially for the poor, who must pay

 18 for electricity as well.

 19 I also understand that coal provides nearly 50

 20 percent of the electrical energy generated in America

 21 and around 80 percent here in Utah. Our consumers and

 22 businesses in Utah deserve the lowest cost power they

 23 can obtain. That keeps us all working.

 24 I maintain that in order to comply with the

 25 spirit of our system of laws, the EPA should recognize
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 1 the real progress that has been made through the

 2 cooperation of PacifiCorp, the Rocky Mountain Power in

 3 retrofitting the Hunter plants 1, 2, and 3, and

 4 Huntington plants 1 and 2.

 5 I would also add that we in Carbon County feel

 6 that we have already paid the price of the closure of

 7 the Carbon plants 1 and 2 at Castle Gate which added to

 8 the reduction of the air pollutants. We see no reason

 9 for EPA to not accept the achievements already made and

 10 stay the course with the Utah plan.

 11 While we can all see that wind and solar,

 12 along with nuclear energy, will be a part of the future

 13 of our energy, our best course of action now is to

 14 support the compliant generation of electricity in Emery

 15 County. And if you don't believe it's nice and clear

 16 down there, come on down and leave some of your money in

 17 Carbon on the way.

 18 (Applause).

 19 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next if we

 20 can have Bill King.

 21 BILL KING: My name is Bill King. B-I-L-L,

 22 K-I-N-G. I am a civil engineer for Canyon Fuel Company.

 23 I want to discuss a little bit about the options that

 24 the EPA has today.

 25 Air pollution has become a large challenge
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 1 faced by the world today, and saving the planet has

 2 become a household term. You may believe everything you

 3 hear on the subject is true, or you may have your

 4 doubts. In both cases we are victimized by countless

 5 myths.

 6 No doubt, yes, air pollution exists, and yes,

 7 we do need to do something about it. Therefore, are we

 8 truly working together to clean Utah's regional haze or

 9 are we just trying to hinder and shut down industry?

 10 I have read the reports from EPA concerning

 11 Utah's Regional Haze State Implementation Plan or SIP

 12 with respect to the Clean Air Act, and I want to share

 13 the following.

 14 EPA's evaluation and proposal -- proposed

 15 approval of Utah's Regional Haze State Implementation

 16 Plan states: We propose to concur with Utah's findings

 17 that the BART alternative will achieve greater SO2 and

 18 PM10 emission reductions and greater aggregate emission

 19 reductions of all pollutants. We propose to concur with

 20 Utah's findings that SO2 emission reductions should

 21 provide visibility benefits in all seasons and that

 22 sulfate is the largest contributor to visibility

 23 impairment at the class -- at the affected Class 1

 24 areas.

 25 Furthermore, we propose to find these
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 1 observations suggest that the BART alternative is likely

 2 to achieve greater reasonable progress, which that is

 3 what we are after. This importance cannot be

 4 overstated. In other words, the alternate measures in

 5 the Utah Regional Haze State Implementation Plan

 6 achieves better visibility and improvements than will be

 7 achieved by the normal BART plan.

 8 This presents, as Rocky Mountain Power, said a

 9 win-win scenario, a win for environment and a win for

 10 the people for our economy, for our hard-working workers

 11 through Carbon and through Salt Lake and Utah. Like we

 12 said, 80 percent of Utah's power comes from coal. It

 13 will directly affect everyone.

 14 Avoiding the unnecessary major incremental

 15 compliance expenditures under the EPA's second proposal

 16 option for NOx emissions, which will not produce

 17 meaningful visibility improvements above those already

 18 achieved, is in the best interests of Utah and the

 19 stakeholders.

 20 Again, are we truly trying to clean the air or

 21 are we just trying cripple to industry, jobs and our way

 22 of life? We need to approve Utah's current Regional

 23 Haze Implementation Plan. Thank you.

 24 (Applause).

 25 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next
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 1 Robbie Gray.

 2 ROBBIE GRAY: Name's Robbie Gray.

 3 R-O-B-B-I-E, G-R-A-Y. I live in Helper, Utah. Ladies

 4 and gentlemen, thank you for giving me the opportunity

 5 to speak today. I have worked in the energy industry

 6 all my adult life. From the oil and gas fields in the

 7 Uintah Basin, to coal production in Carbon County.

 8 This work has provided well paying jobs in our

 9 area, with health and retirement benefits that are fast

 10 becoming lost in the rest of the state. The coal we

 11 produce here in our own state keeps electricity rates

 12 among the lowest in the nation. Even Governor Herbert

 13 last week said Utah has one of the fastest growing job

 14 markets in the nation.

 15 The state of Utah has very capable people that

 16 introduced the SIP plan to balance air quality with

 17 consumer rates and cost to Rocky Mountain Power.

 18 I live in Helper, Utah where the Castle Gate

 19 Power Plant was shut down last year. It is very

 20 apparent what this has done to our local economy. The

 21 job loss to local vendors, to highly skilled workers

 22 that rebuild these plants, welders, pipe fitters,

 23 electrical workers, the list is long. My wife is a

 24 manager for two local convenience stores in Helper, and

 25 she tells of the immediate effect this plant closing has
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 1 done to our local economy.

 2 Putting unreasonable and unobtainable cost

 3 restrictions on these power plants with little or no

 4 gain in air quality is not in the best interest for the

 5 state of Utah. With overreaching current EPA plans on

 6 air quality, we will see adverse growth and the fallout

 7 that will surely come with the EPA's plan. We will see

 8 higher unemployment. We will see lower quality of life.

 9 We will see higher crime rates. Along with that comes

 10 higher drug use. These are some of the things that we

 11 have to look at.

 12 What does this have to do with the state's SIP

 13 plan? Let Utah take care of this with their very

 14 capable division of air quality. We can and will solve

 15 these issues without the federal EPA involvement. Thank

 16 you for listening. Thank you for this opportunity.

 17 (Applause).

 18 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Mr. Gray.

 19 Next, if we can have Marry McGann.

 20 MARRY McGANN: My name is Marry McGann.

 21 M-A-R-R-Y, M-C capital G-A-N-N. I live in Moab, Utah

 22 which is located in Grand County. I am an elected

 23 member of the Grand County Council. Today I am speaking

 24 to you as a citizen, not as a council representative. I

 25 appreciate this opportunity to address the EPA on this
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 1 important issue.

 2 Should the state of Utah be required to use

 3 the Clean Parks Plan, which implements the best possible

 4 technology for controlling nitrogen oxide emissions at

 5 the Hunter and Huntington coal power plants? The Clean

 6 Park Plan would reduce the emissions of nitrogen oxide

 7 by two thirds. Or should Utah be allowed to continue

 8 letting these coal power plants release large quantities

 9 of nitrogen oxide into the air?

 10 For eight years in a row, Utah takes the top

 11 ranking for the best economic outlook in the nation. A

 12 state with this type of economic outlook does not need

 13 nor deserve a pass on using the best technology

 14 available for controlling nitrogen oxide emission.

 15 The state of Utah has the ability to support

 16 the Hunter and Huntington power plants financially so

 17 that the plants can afford to implement the best

 18 technology possible. Utah can afford this, and its

 19 citizen and visitors deserve the best quality air

 20 protection possible.

 21 The EPA site states current scientific

 22 evidence links short-term nitrogen oxide exposure with

 23 adverse respiratory effects. It would be reckless of

 24 the EPA to give a state that can well afford the extra

 25 cost of installing the best available technology a pass
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 1 on not using that technology.

 2 As I stated earlier, I live in Moab, Utah,

 3 which is located next to two magnificent national parks,

 4 Arches and Canyonlands, and an amazing state park, Dead

 5 Horse Point. The Hunter and Huntington coal power

 6 plants contribute to the increased haze in these

 7 remarkable parks. The recreational value of Grand

 8 County's land contributes to the state -- strength of

 9 Utah's economic outlook. This resource must be

 10 protected.

 11 The state of Utah can help these plants. They

 12 do not have to carry the burden themselves. We can

 13 protect the jobs and the environment. We do not need to

 14 choose.

 15 Please protect Utah's health, environment and

 16 tourist industry. Require Utah to implement the Clean

 17 Park Plan. Thank you very much.

 18 (Applause).

 19 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Miss

 20 McGann. Next, Rick Fredrickson.

 21 RICK FREDRICKSON: My name is Rick

 22 Fredrickson. R-I-C-K, F-R-E-D-R-I-C-K-S-O-N. I want to

 23 first thanks for the -- giving me a few minutes of your

 24 time to speak in behalf of myself and some of my fellow

 25 coworkers. After reading about this hearing and I felt
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 1 it was important for me to stand here and speak on the

 2 issue.

 3 You look at what the PacifiCorp has already

 4 done. They met or exceeded the expectations for this

 5 issue by the EPA on their own standard. Now EPA wants

 6 more. In whose interest? Is that in the public's

 7 interest or in the government's interest? I feel the

 8 U.S. government isn't for the general population any

 9 more. It's obvious if you watch the debates that are

 10 going on now for the presidential race.

 11 I was in city council for two four-year terms

 12 in Moroni. As a council, we tried to do what was best

 13 for the people of our community, not for us

 14 individually. We don't see this in the U.S. government

 15 today. So what is best for our people?

 16 Sanpete is already the lowest income per

 17 capita in the state of Utah. By doing what EPA wants

 18 strategically, closing our coal mines, it would

 19 devastate our communities in many ways economically.

 20 Hundreds or thousands of jobs directly or indirectly

 21 would be impacted by this.

 22 Our local stores would suffer or close. The

 23 banking institutes would be hit with foreclosures,

 24 bankruptcy, defaults on loans. Unemployment would go

 25 sky high. Crime goes up with unemployment. So does
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 1 drug usage and alcoholism. It would put only -- it

 2 would not -- it would put not only Sanpete but Carbon,

 3 Emery and other counties in a financial whirlwind.

 4 Price would become a ghost town.

 5 I have lived in Sanpete 40 of my 54 years. I

 6 choose to live here because it is a great place to raise

 7 a family. I have spent a lot of time in our state's

 8 national parks in the mountains and valleys surrounding

 9 us. The only place I have personally witnessed this

 10 so-called haze is in Utah and Salt Lake counties farther

 11 north.

 12 This hearing does not address the real issue

 13 of haze. We as people, not -- need to stand up and do

 14 our part and let the U.S. government -- instead of

 15 letting the U.S. government take over. Our state has

 16 done wonders to try to help and cooperate with the U.S.

 17 government, and we have to choose this today if we can

 18 afford -- if this kind of stuff keeps going on, we are

 19 going to have to choose whether we have electricity or

 20 whether we have food on our tables.

 21 In short, I ask that the EPA does what's right

 22 for Utah. Let the state make its own rules with your

 23 recommendations. We need to back PacifiCorp for what

 24 they have done. They have put a lot of effort into

 25 following your own rules to stop this so-called haze.
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 1 Instead of punishing all of us for the EPA's

 2 hidden interest to close all the coal mines down, we

 3 need to look hard and as a state make these decisions on

 4 our own and not let them come from the nation's capital.

 5 In close, I'd just like to say thanks for the

 6 time and do the right thing.

 7 (Applause).

 8 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you,

 9 Mr. Fredrickson. Next, Caroline, I'm sorry, I'm having

 10 a hard time reading your last name, Gleith.

 11 CAROLINE GLEITH: Gleith.

 12 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Sorry about that.

 13 MS. GLEITH: Thank you. Hello. My name is

 14 Caroline Gleith. That's C-A-R-O-L-I-N-E. Last name, G

 15 as in George, L-E-I-T-H. I am a professional skier and

 16 outdoor adventurer based here in Utah. I travel all

 17 around the world to pursue human-powered outdoor

 18 recreation. When I meet people and tell them where I am

 19 from, I'm tired of having to defend my decision to call

 20 Utah home.

 21 It seems the world knows two different Utahs,

 22 the Utah that is the most beautiful place, and the Utah

 23 that is known for its outdated energy portfolio, dirty

 24 air and exploitation of natural resources.

 25 I love to rock climb, hike, and camp and
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 1 recreate in Utah's national parks. I have seen the haze

 2 generated from coal-burning power plants over Arches

 3 National Park, obstructing the scenic views of the

 4 surrounding red rock. The haze is not only dampening

 5 people's respect for Utah and their travel plans here,

 6 it's endangering our health.

 7 We need to clean up the air to keep our

 8 tourism and outdoor industries vibrantly growing.

 9 Utah's outdoor recreation industry generates 12.2

 10 billion dollars annually. Coal plants in Colorado,

 11 Arizona and New Mexico have already installed these

 12 controls.

 13 When people are deciding where to go on

 14 vacation, the reputation of a state matters. The

 15 outdoor consumer is savvy and well educated. They want

 16 to invest in places and companies that care about the

 17 health of people and the environment.

 18 I choose to make Utah my home, and I consider

 19 myself an ambassador to the state. It's important to me

 20 to make sure our tourist economy stays vibrant and that

 21 Utah air stays clean so our national parks remain

 22 iconic.

 23 I urge the EPA to order Utah's coal power

 24 plants to install state-of-the-art pollution control

 25 technologies and to choose the plan that will do the
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 1 most to clean up our air and protect the Utah that I

 2 love and enjoy. Thank you very much.

 3 (Applause).

 4 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Next, Brody Leven.

 5 BRODY LEVEN: Hi. I'm Brody Leven. That's

 6 B-R-O-D-Y, L-E-V-E-N.com is my website, if you're

 7 interested. You know what, I spend a lot of time

 8 outside because as a professional adventurer,

 9 professional skier, that is my office. Not this. I

 10 should be out there today.

 11 But that's new. Until recently my office was,

 12 like many other people's, behind a computer. And it

 13 doesn't matter if I am going outside for work or for

 14 pleasure, nothing has changed insofar as I moved to Utah

 15 nine years ago because of the natural environment, not

 16 for a job.

 17 My friends and I are the people that this is

 18 truly hitting. Because our livelihoods, like some of

 19 the other peoples, depend on clean, clear air and

 20 abundant recreational tourism. But we are also the

 21 people making Utah home throughout the state. We are

 22 taxpayers and homeowners. We're young entrepreneurs.

 23 We patronize your businesses. We shop locally. We

 24 graduate from Utah colleges with Utah debt in Utah

 25 banks.
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 1 We also make annual pilgrimages to EPA and to

 2 the White House to explain the vital importance and

 3 economic viability of clean clear air.

 4 The nature of my work allows me to live

 5 anywhere in the world, but I have chosen to make my home

 6 here in Utah, like everyone else in this room. But this

 7 luxury is in jeopardy. This isn't about another powder

 8 day of skiing or another fun rock climb.

 9 It's about the tourism-choked economy that so

 10 many of us live in being drained of its vitality, about

 11 the inexplicable freedom of exploring natural national

 12 parks being ripped from our children by unwanted and

 13 unhealthy haze. And without adequately stringent

 14 attention and regulation on our primitive coal-fired

 15 power plants, we, and the EPA, are inviting a ruined

 16 right to co-exist with nature, and we have only

 17 ourselves to blame.

 18 Personally, I am embarrassed by a need to be

 19 here today. But it exists. I am ashamed that the state

 20 that I have chosen to adopt as my home, like everyone

 21 else in this room, has become the laughing stock of the

 22 tourism, recreation and outdoor community.

 23 I consistently speak to national,

 24 international media. Let me repeat that. I

 25 consistently speak to national and international media
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 1 about living in Utah. And my decision to live here is

 2 constantly being questioned. We are ambassadors for the

 3 state. What happens when people stop coming to Utah and

 4 its threatened public lands because of our inability and

 5 indifference?

 6 The haze has dampened the public's respect for

 7 Utah and the tourism dollars that they bring here. The

 8 youth cares. Let's fix it now. Let's fix it before

 9 it's too late.

 10 Because I don't know if you guys realize how

 11 our generation and our jobs work, but this video that

 12 Caroline's taking will be online in the next five

 13 minutes, and there will be hundreds of thousands of

 14 people, primarily tourists, watching this video from

 15 around the world as they consider their choice of where

 16 to move or visit.

 17 Let's stop the embarrassment. Let's stop the

 18 economic suffering. There's a solution that we can all

 19 agree on. Thank you.

 20 (Applause).

 21 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Next, Sarah Fields.

 22 SARAH FIELDS: My name is Sarah Fields.

 23 S-A-R-A-H, F, as in Frank, I-E-L-D-S. Thank you for the

 24 opportunity to speak, though I do wish that the

 25 department division of air quality had made a better
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 1 effort to work with the EPA to get a better venue where

 2 there would have been seats for everyone and no

 3 distracting noise in the hall.

 4 I live in southeast Utah. I live in Moab. I

 5 am a PacifiCorp paying customer. I support Option 2. I

 6 believe, as some other speakers have expressed, that we

 7 should have the maximum amount of pollution controls in

 8 the coal-fired power plants in Utah. And there are a

 9 number of reasons for that.

 10 There's the reason for health, and also

 11 there's a reason of cumulative impacts. Earlier this

 12 year -- well, in late last year, I had the need to drive

 13 up to Price to deliver some documents, and the pollution

 14 in Green River and the pollution in Price was very high.

 15 And that was probably because of the fires in other

 16 states.

 17 So when you are looking at compliance with

 18 Utah at a certain level, when there is no -- a lot of

 19 pollution isn't coming from other areas, you are not

 20 really dealing with what often is happening throughout

 21 the year because of winds, because of fires, because of

 22 other sources of pollution.

 23 So if we can use our laws, our regulatory

 24 authority to bring those pollution levels as -- down,

 25 then it means when we do have fires, that we do have
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 1 uncontrolled sources of pollution, it won't be as

 2 hazardous.

 3 Also, a few -- I believe and agree with one of

 4 the speakers that you should have had hearings in

 5 southeast Utah, in Carbon County, in Orem, in Utah

 6 County. Because whatever decisions that you are going

 7 to make primarily impacts the people in that area.

 8 Something else. Oh, as far as jobs, I don't

 9 think this is an anti-coal miner issue. PacifiCorp is a

 10 very well-to-do corporation. It has a lot of money.

 11 And I am sure that they have the funds available to put

 12 in pollution -- additional pollution control.

 13 (Applause).

 14 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Miss

 15 Fields. Next. If we can have Jake Mellor, Mellon?

 16 JAKE MELLOR: It's Jake Mellor, M-E-L-L-O-R.

 17 I have the fortunate opportunity or curse to be the

 18 Carbon County commissioner. I don't -- I say a curse in

 19 congeniality, because honestly, we do live in Paradise

 20 down there. I, in good favor, tell everybody come on

 21 down to Paradise, Price and we'll show you what clean

 22 air really looks like.

 23 Honestly, it is interesting and it is sad that

 24 we have to on a weekday leave our work and leave our

 25 area to come and defend our livelihood. And to come and
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 1 express to you the importance of where we are.

 2 It would be much more self-explanatory if you

 3 would just visit with us the areas that are affected by

 4 these rulings, and as many have already, invite you to

 5 come to our place where we call home to, where we call

 6 paradise and see what tourism and see what amazing

 7 things we're able to do all together at one time.

 8 There's been several comments made, several

 9 good points. I'd like to just talk about cooperation.

 10 I'd like to talk about redundancy. I'd like to talk

 11 about the EPA's role, and I'd like to talk about what we

 12 do in Carbon and Emery and eastern Utah.

 13 First of all, jobs, economy, clear skies,

 14 clean air, we have all of that where we're at. The

 15 State of Utah, Bryce Bird, air quality division

 16 director, he is doing what you proposed to do in a much

 17 more efficient way.

 18 And I say that because he's here with boots on

 19 the ground. It is much easier for him, and much more

 20 effective for him as proven to our history and the

 21 results that we've already received, not through models,

 22 but through actual monitored data, what we are able to

 23 do as far as emission controls.

 24 And if you are looking for an emission

 25 culprit, a cause for emissions, if you wanted to really
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 1 attack what is polluting our air or the main source, it

 2 might kill tourism, but it's our airports. More so than

 3 any refinery. More so than any emissions from any

 4 vehicle on any freeway. It's the Salt Lake

 5 International Airport. Colorado, I believe, relocated

 6 their airport for similar reasons.

 7 Now, I am not here to tell you how to do your

 8 jobs. I believe the reason and purpose for why the EPA

 9 was created when it was created, though I fear that the

 10 pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and that there

 11 is an overstep.

 12 We are agencies funded by government, by

 13 taxpayer money, and I feel that you are trying to

 14 reproduce something that is already working. The State

 15 of Utah has an air quality control division that is

 16 working, and for the EPA to step in and implement

 17 something completely different without I feel fully

 18 looking at what has been done and what is being done, is

 19 unjust and unresponsible for our taxpayer money.

 20 There is a little bit of delusion as far as

 21 what is clean air, where is clean air. I say that

 22 because there's been a lot of comments, a lot of

 23 emotions, a lot of passion. But I'm a person who likes

 24 to dwell on the facts.

 25 Part of the plan has been mentioned in the FIP
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 1 plan to replace the Utah SIP is not necessarily legally

 2 sustainable, and perhaps through the models will not

 3 actually create the reality proposed. We have monitored

 4 data that shows what can be done through the current

 5 efforts and from actual data gathered, we can create

 6 better models.

 7 I also fear that through the overreach that

 8 you are working towards by implementing this plan that

 9 was not fully reviewed or even provided on a timely

 10 basis to the state air quality division, that that's

 11 going to further the efforts of the congressional

 12 oversight committee led by Chaffetz to continually look

 13 at defunding part of the EPA.

 14 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Mr. Mellor, your time

 15 is up.

 16 JAKE MELLOR: I appreciate this process. I

 17 appreciate you being here. I appreciate the opportunity

 18 to speak. I would just ask that we would cooperate and

 19 that we would look at what's currently being done, not

 20 seek to be redundant but seek to cooperate.

 21 (Applause).

 22 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next, if

 23 we could have Frank Nederhand.

 24 FRANK NEDERHAND: Hi. Thank you very much for

 25 letting me come here to speak today. My name is Frank
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 1 A. Nederhand. Spelled F-R-A-N-K, Nederhand, spelled

 2 N-E-D-E-R-H-A-N-D. I actually live in Wasatch Front,

 3 and I do have a prepared statement, but I'm going to

 4 deviate somewhat from that to save time for other people

 5 to speak.

 6 I am -- would like to go on the record, public

 7 record, supporting EPA's move to disapprove Utah's SIP.

 8 And I am sorry, Administrator Bird, but I also encourage

 9 EPA to go much further than just this to look closer

 10 than just the regional haze issue and consider taking

 11 Utah's right to regulate air quality on behalf of the

 12 citizens of Utah away. Here are a couple of points why.

 13 Utah is the only state that I am aware of that

 14 allows some of its largest emitters of pollutants to

 15 operate without a Title 5 permit. And for those that

 16 don't know, that is operating permit program that

 17 Congress requires every state to have, and they do not

 18 have Title 5 permits. They are not under a Title 5

 19 permit because it's not available for the public to see

 20 it on their web page.

 21 The state I work with, Georgia, has their web

 22 page up 15 years ago and never misses having all their

 23 Title 5 permits on that. It is easy technology, and the

 24 state of Utah is not doing their job. How can we expect

 25 them -- expect them to do the right by regional haze?
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 1 Second of all, there is a big power plant that

 2 was built not far from where I live in Utah Valley.

 3 This was built by the same company that operates

 4 Huntington and Hunter. Instead of replacing those

 5 plants with that plant, the state-of-the-art plant, and

 6 cleaning the air up here both in the Wasatch Front and

 7 in the Emery and Carbon counties, they built it here

 8 instead. The state knows that that is the largest

 9 single emitter of PM2.5 there is, and we are in a

 10 nonattainment area here. So how can we trust the state

 11 of Utah?

 12 That's another reason why I want them to move,

 13 one of the things that's never discussed about poor

 14 Castleton. Now, I know the people there are probably

 15 used to it, but how would Salt Lake like 200 plus trucks

 16 a day bringing coal through Main Street, every day? I

 17 don't think they would appreciate that.

 18 One last thing I'd like to say since I only

 19 have 30 seconds. I want to thank the coal miners and

 20 other people that came up from Carbon and Emery

 21 counties. I want to assure you that the NOx controls

 22 required by EPA are not going to make you lose jobs. I

 23 work with the largest coal plant in the United States,

 24 and they have these controls, and I speak from

 25 experience. It did not -- it is not a problem, and you
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 1 can do it here too. Thank you again and good luck.

 2 (Applause).

 3 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you,

 4 Mr. Nederhand. Next, if we can have Gary Cox.

 5 GARY COX: My name is Gary Cox. G-A-R-Y,

 6 C-O-X. I'm the senior system business manager for IBEW

 7 Local 57. Local 57 represents the bargaining unit

 8 employees of Rocky Mountain Power in Utah, Idaho and

 9 Wyoming, at least the southwest portion of Wyoming. We

 10 represent approximately 250 workers that would be

 11 impacted by these regulations if they are imposed. I

 12 appreciate this opportunity to express my concerns on

 13 behalf of our membership.

 14 Prior to accepting employment with Local 57, I

 15 was an employee of PacifiCorp and its predecessors for

 16 approximately 25 years. The majority of my career with

 17 PacifiCorp was spent as an instrument and control

 18 technician at the Naughton plant which is located near

 19 Kemmerer, Wyoming.

 20 I had the unique opportunity to be involved

 21 with multiple projects related to environmental

 22 compliance with both state and national air quality

 23 regulations. I was the Naughton plant lead technician

 24 assigned to the installation and maintenance of new CMs,

 25 and other equipment associated with Part 75 regulation.
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 1 The regulation required the company to continuously

 2 monitor, measure and report SO2, NOx, CO, O2, opacity

 3 and total air flow.

 4 In recent years the company has been required

 5 to install monitors that measure mercury emissions as

 6 well, even though they are not measurable. Coal

 7 emissions across the country have been reduced by 80

 8 percent since 1980.

 9 I was also asked to maintain Method 9

 10 certification, which is an alternate method to evaluate

 11 the amount of opacity or particulate matter that is

 12 being emitted by a source.

 13 In 2013, I was asked to attend a meeting to

 14 discuss the closure of PacifiCorp's Carbon plant. The

 15 reasons given for closing the facility were to meet the

 16 new MATS and regional haze requirements. While this

 17 meeting was being conducted, several trains loaded with

 18 coal were headed to foreign destinations. The Carbon

 19 plant has ceased operations as agreed in the state plan.

 20 The next attack of course will be to stop the trains.

 21 I am an avid outdoorsman who wants clean air

 22 as much as anyone else. My wife and I average 7500

 23 miles a year on a motorcycle, and I have visited 18

 24 national parks over the last four years, many of them

 25 multiple times. We have witnessed firsthand the impacts
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 1 of haze. Ironically, some of the worst haze witnessed

 2 was on a cruise ship in Glacier Bay, Alaska, where there

 3 were obviously no U.S. coal-generating stations that

 4 could contribute.

 5 The vast majority of regional haze is linked

 6 to wildfires and other sources that are beyond the scope

 7 of and control of both the state and EPA regulators.

 8 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Mr. Cox, your time is

 9 up.

 10 GARY COX: One more thing. I find it very

 11 difficult to believe that we should switch to more

 12 expensive energy and burden ourselves with wind and

 13 solar which costs many times more. Thank you.

 14 (Applause).

 15 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next, if

 16 we can have Brent Donohue.

 17 BRENT DONOHUE: Hi. My name is Brent Donohue.

 18 B-R-E-N-T, D-O-N-O-H-U-E. Good afternoon. I come

 19 before you today not to give scientific data or not to

 20 spread a new theory about cleaning the air. I come in

 21 front of you today because I care about Utah and air

 22 quality as much as any resident in the state.

 23 I call for you to reconsider and uphold the

 24 State Implementation Plan in its entirety. The state's

 25 plan allows responsible economic development and takes
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 1 air quality into account.

 2 The state's plan is very practical and is a

 3 strong plan for reducing haze from industrial sources.

 4 The state's plan is well reasoned. It will improve the

 5 visibility and air quality. It moves in the right

 6 direction. With it there will be incremental change for

 7 better air balance, with real world economic factors.

 8 Citizens will see and will feel a difference

 9 if the state's plan is adopted in its entirety. Thank

 10 you.

 11 (Applause).

 12 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you,

 13 Mr. Donohue. James Newman.

 14 JAMES NEWMAN: Thank you. James Newman,

 15 N-E-W-M-A-N. I'm a mining engineer. I was actually

 16 born and raised right here in smog Salt Lake County and

 17 moved down to clean air Carbon. I make that comment

 18 because I have really a lot of trouble with my breathing

 19 sometimes. Only when I visit up in here, where we do

 20 have the smog problem.

 21 I mean we're all for fresh air. We all want

 22 good, clean air. I don't know anyone who wants bad air.

 23 And the major problem with the haze is transportation,

 24 the cars.

 25 The EPA in their report, unlike the state who
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 1 focused on many aspects, focused only on the power

 2 plants. Using only data when we have the three running

 3 in, sorry -- the Carbon when we had Carbon running. But

 4 has not supplied any data since the shutdown of that

 5 plant.

 6 Instead of focussing on the issues, they have

 7 gone on to a political point, that it must be the coal

 8 plants, even though they are not in the correct wind

 9 patterns for the very national parks that we are saying

 10 we are trying to protect.

 11 But Los Angeles, which is in an attainment

 12 area is, and we get a lot of their junk. But instead of

 13 looking at that, they battle the power plants because it

 14 must be the power plants. It can't be anything but the

 15 power plants, even though they are outside of the area,

 16 outside of the wind patterns.

 17 And they did some good modeling, but

 18 arbitrarily skipped on the connection points and just

 19 automatically said, hey, if we take this much from the

 20 power plants, this is going to reduce the amount in the

 21 national parks. Gave no connection on how they were

 22 doing that in their report.

 23 And then, as part of the report, they are

 24 required to talk about the economy, and the different

 25 areas. That's 13 CFR 121.2012. Now, they spent over a
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 1 paragraph defining what that is and less than a

 2 paragraph saying that it would have no economic. Gave

 3 no fact, no reason, nothing. There was no data given at

 4 all. Merely a blanket statement saying, yes, we're sure

 5 it won't affect the economy in the area at all.

 6 Meanwhile, in just the last year, we have had

 7 the extreme buffer rule. We have had the freeze on all

 8 new coal leases. We have the attempt also to increase

 9 royalty rates on new leases, all these things happening

 10 at the same time the last year so that the EPA can

 11 follow their edict from Joe Biden that you can build a

 12 power plant but we'll shut it down.

 13 We are ignoring what the real problem is here.

 14 And we are just focussing on the power plants because

 15 they are the political issue.

 16 I think what Utah has done is great. They

 17 have cleaned. They have followed the EPA's guidelines,

 18 but never will they reach it until they have shut us all

 19 down. Thank you.

 20 (Applause).

 21 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Mr. Newman.

 22 Next, if we can have Mark Hillson, Hallson.

 23 MARK HEILESON: Thank you for this opportunity

 24 to speak. My name is Mark Heileson. I do work for the

 25 Sierra Club. However, I am speaking on behalf of myself
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 1 today.

 2 I am a six generation pioneer to this state.

 3 My family came over in 1864 with the Mormon migration,

 4 and we settled in Sevier County where some of my family

 5 still resides today. I, however, grew up in Provo,

 6 Utah, where I developed a strong passion for exploring

 7 the red rock country of the state. And by far the crown

 8 jewels are the vistas. The most incredible views are

 9 those found in our national parks.

 10 Unfortunately, over time growing up, I have

 11 noticed some days you just can't see as well. You can't

 12 see as far. Things are not as sharp. Where I first

 13 noticed that was on the Waterpocket Fold in Capitol Reef

 14 National Park and some of the ridges around the San

 15 Rafael Swell.

 16 And as the haze got worse, you could start to

 17 see it on the rims around Moab above Canyonlands. And

 18 if you get up in the Mahos outside of Monticello, Utah,

 19 above the Needles District of Canyonlands, sometimes you

 20 can really see how the haze is set in. And where it

 21 comes from is a very obvious compass arrow right back to

 22 the Highway 10 corridor where the power plants are.

 23 The national parks really are a financial

 24 backbone of our state, especially for rural economies.

 25 That's not necessarily my words. Governor Herbert
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 1 explained that a couple years ago, when they had the

 2 government shutdown and the state actually pumped in

 3 taxpayer money from the State of Utah to open up the

 4 parks in cooperation with the federal government to keep

 5 that money from recreation flowing.

 6 And there was a lot of case being made if

 7 those parks are closed, even for a short time, the

 8 economies of that corner of the state would crash. And

 9 that's a real hand tip. The State knows how important

 10 these parks are to our economy, and it should be all the

 11 reason why we don't take any chances with the views and

 12 how much they mean to our economy. That should be

 13 paramount that they should be protected and that's all

 14 we're asking for today.

 15 I wasn't aware that this was a hearing about

 16 closing coal mines or power plants. This is about

 17 cleaning up, using the best available technology. And

 18 this is why I believe that the SCR technology is best.

 19 I don't think that's going to cost jobs. I think it's

 20 going to create them. Let's get the hard working people

 21 of Emery and Carbon County to put the scrubbers in those

 22 tanks and maintain them. This is what we're asking for

 23 today.

 24 Our parks are our heritage. It's just like --

 25 people who love them come to see. People travel for
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 1 miles, sometimes from other countries to see our

 2 national parks, and they will only come if they could

 3 see them. And that's what we should be talking about

 4 today.

 5 And you know, let's face it, PacifiCorp,

 6 Warren Buffet, these are pretty well healed companies

 7 and CEOs. They can afford that technology, and they

 8 should hire people locally to put those in and get them

 9 this work. And again, thank you for your time.

 10 (Applause).

 11 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next, if

 12 we can, Jason Marietti.

 13 JASON MARIETTI: Right on, cool, thank you.

 14 Yes. My name's Jason Marietti. J-A-S-O-N,

 15 M-A-R-I-E-T-T-I. Anyway, I am not going to go with the

 16 facts. I'm just going to tell you, I have lived in

 17 Price basically my whole life, been to all these parks.

 18 The only time you ever see haze is on a fiery day where

 19 there's a fire in California or wherever.

 20 And all I can tell you is, I am a coal miner,

 21 proud to be a coal miner. And if we're so worried about

 22 our environment, why don't we attack issues that are

 23 really there? I agree with all these guys saying

 24 transportation is our biggest issue. So why don't we

 25 fix that? Because we're not going to do any better on
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 1 our power plant.

 2 You have heard, I have read four different

 3 things that says four different things. Who's got the

 4 facts? Show us the facts. Give them to us. That's all

 5 I got. Thanks.

 6 (Applause).

 7 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Is it Fred

 8 Marietta?

 9 FRED MARIETTI: Hey, right on. My name is

 10 Fred Marietti. I was MSHA coal mine inspector and miner

 11 for 36 years. I've lived in Carbon County most of my

 12 life. I don't have all these facts and figures on

 13 tests, how they test for NO2 and all them things. But I

 14 have lived down there, and I am a sky watcher. And I

 15 live in Emery County. I lived in Carbon County.

 16 And I agree with Mr. Lawson when he says seven

 17 years ago the plants have made moves to clean up their

 18 air through scrubbers and stuff. And I used to look

 19 down there by Hunter power plant and them, and I used to

 20 see some nitrous oxides floating. But they are floating

 21 kind of northwest. I don't know that they go over Moab

 22 that much.

 23 But anyway, it's just air stream pattern, and

 24 all I can say is since '07, I'd say it is, I've looked

 25 down there many days, and the air is clear. I see some
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 1 steam generated. And you see that in there. But I

 2 don't see the nitrous oxides layers floating over the

 3 country any more.

 4 And I think they have made great progress in

 5 improving what they are doing, and I think from what

 6 Mr. Lawson said that they are doing more improvements

 7 and going to increase the No. 3 unit and whatever.

 8 And I have been to the parks in different

 9 places. And yeah, you have hazy days. That's just in

 10 the climate. But you know, are you going to -- what you

 11 going to attribute it to? The one guy there says they

 12 directly come down from Highway 10 corridor over to

 13 there. Well, I got to tell you Monticello to Hunter

 14 plant is a little bit southeast not northeast.

 15 Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

 16 (Applause).

 17 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: The court reporter

 18 needs to take a break. We'll take a 10 minute break and

 19 then we'll be back here at 2:45.

 20 (Recess from 2:37 p.m. to 2:54 p.m.)

 21 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Okay. Everyone, we're

 22 going to get started again in a couple of minutes. So

 23 if we could move one of the speakers outside the room so

 24 the folks outside can hear. Are you able to hear us out

 25 there? Great. Okay. So we're going to get started
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 1 again.

 2 Okay. If I can have Larry Castle-Fericks.

 3 LARRY CASTLE-FERICKS: Good afternoon. My

 4 name is Larry Castle-Fericks. And that's L-A-R-R-Y,

 5 after my grandfather. And C-A-S-T-L-E dash

 6 F-E-R-I-C-K-S. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

 7 We're all passionate about the air we breathe

 8 because it's really important to us. I am a Salt Lake

 9 resident, so I get to breathe this lovely air all the

 10 time. And I just came today because I'd like to urge

 11 the EPA to support implementation of any current

 12 technology to provide clean air for all of us to

 13 breathe, and to reduce the haze impacting the vistas in

 14 our national parks.

 15 As a lifelong Utah resident, I have grown up

 16 appreciating the magnificent scenery surrounding us.

 17 You only need to drive along I-70 and be humbled by the

 18 enormity of the landscape as the San Rafael Swell rises

 19 up before you. This is why people come here from around

 20 the world and actually end up choosing to move here.

 21 The haze that's generated by any power plant

 22 does not belong here due to the enormity of the scenery.

 23 It does not belong -- the arches that cover the La Sal

 24 Mountains so that you no longer see their snow capped

 25 peaks.
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 1 Not only is our health at stake, but our

 2 economy, in the tourist industry and the many jobs that

 3 are supported -- that support the power industry itself.

 4 We have technology to manage these problems. We're a

 5 smart country. And we are developing new technologies

 6 all the time. We are downwind of a lot of pollutants in

 7 this state just because of air patterns. We should do

 8 what we can to eliminate those things we can control.

 9 And that's why I support the use of any clean

 10 air technology that can be implemented, and I support

 11 the fact that the EPA and Utah Division of Air Quality

 12 are working and striving towards creating a breathable

 13 air for all of us. Thank you.

 14 (Applause).

 15 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next, is

 16 it Jae Potter?

 17 JAE POTTER: Jae Potter. J-A-E, P-O-T-T-E-R,

 18 like Harry. I am a Carbon County commissioner, and I am

 19 here today speaking in behalf of the commission and the

 20 citizens of Carbon County. That means I represent about

 21 19,000 people, the majority of which would support the

 22 state plan. And that's why I am here is to tell you

 23 that we support the state's implementation plan, not

 24 what the federal government through the EPA is

 25 proposing.
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 1 Now, I am very grateful to those that have

 2 traveled up here. It is too bad that you did not choose

 3 a better location than downtown Salt Lake. It's also a

 4 very poor choice of facilities. We have facilities in

 5 our counties that you could have enjoyed a day out of

 6 the city and also appreciated the clean air that is

 7 there.

 8 My hope today is to help you understand what

 9 the impacts really of your plan -- of the federal plan

 10 would mean to our area. We are counties, and I speak

 11 for Carbon and Emery, that are reliant upon the

 12 economies of mineral extraction and power generation.

 13 80 percent of our economy is impacted because of that.

 14 That is where the work is provided.

 15 If we were to lose another power plant, which

 16 we have already sacrificed the Carbon plant two years

 17 early to reach the attainment in the BART alternative,

 18 and if we are to lose more coal mines, perhaps we will

 19 all come and live with you in Salt Lake, compete for

 20 your jobs, pollute your air, and in the meantime you

 21 should keep your haze in your own valley.

 22 As I came up over the summit today, I could

 23 see it just settle into Utah County, and I look back my

 24 direction, and it was a nice day.

 25 Now, statistically, it's been already talked
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 1 about, the air currents, and it's hard for me to

 2 believe, as I have been in the national parks, that any

 3 of the pollution, the haze that you want to talk about,

 4 the NOx and so forth, from the power plants reaches any

 5 of the power plant -- or any of the state or national

 6 parks.

 7 I know that there are many things that could

 8 be done. In a recent air permitting hearing in

 9 Wellington, we had one of our local physicians stand up

 10 and said, if you really want to cure the problems that

 11 are with respiratory and with the illnesses that are

 12 always attributed to the pollution, do a great campaign

 13 and get rid of smoking. That would save lives.

 14 Another citizen said what you are really

 15 trying to do is tell us that what we should do to clear

 16 up the air up here in Salt Lake and other regional areas

 17 is, why don't we restrict the use of cars in Salt Lake

 18 Valley. Nobody up here can drive a car. But when I

 19 come visit you, I'll be happy to drive my car up.

 20 That's exactly what you're telling us about

 21 clean power plant and also about the regional haze, is

 22 let's impact the areas, let's take the attacks on the

 23 culture and upon the businesses that made their

 24 livelihood through those particular projects.

 25 The closure of Carbon 1 and 2, two years
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 1 early, and this is the phase of what we're talking

 2 about, was 75 jobs at the power plant. Compound that by

 3 approximately five, and you will have at least 300 jobs

 4 that were either done away with or jeopardized.

 5 In addition to that there's the ancillary

 6 jobs. You talk about a coal mine that closes, it's

 7 again five times. So that has impacted every bit of our

 8 market, our stores, our tourism, our real estate, and

 9 the people that want to live and make a living in our

 10 area.

 11 I would like to again ask you to support the

 12 state-implemented plan. They have already done wonders

 13 in improving the air quality and especially the

 14 visibility. I really don't believe that the EPA can put

 15 attainment areas in a box, and until you bring forth

 16 plans that show what you are going to do in other areas

 17 and not just in Carbon and Emery counties against the

 18 power plants, I don't have great faith in what your

 19 proposal is. So again I support the state plan. Thank

 20 you.

 21 (Applause).

 22 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Mr. Potter.

 23 Next, if we can have Garrett Atwood.

 24 GARRETT ATWOOD: Good afternoon. My name is

 25 Garrett Atwood. G-A-R-R-E-T-T, A-T-W-O-O-D. I work in
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 1 the coal industry and was born and raised in central

 2 Utah. Like many of you, I grew up in the outdoors of

 3 central Utah. Even as I drove through Carbon and Emery

 4 County on my way here this morning, I was impressed by

 5 how beautiful it is, and the scenery is easy to see

 6 because the air is so clear.

 7 I echo the comments that were made early that

 8 it would be nice to have this hearing down in Carbon and

 9 Emery County because the air is so beautiful, and

 10 instead of coming to Salt Lake City and seeing the haze

 11 that's up here and probably is influencing people's

 12 opinions of what the air is like in Carbon and Emery

 13 County.

 14 I support the State Implementation Plan as

 15 it's been proposed by the state. I commend our state

 16 officials for the correct approach in working with the

 17 industry to meet and exceed the emissions criteria

 18 imposed by the EPA. I think it's amazing that a rule

 19 was given by the EPA. A criteria was set. The state

 20 has achieved it or exceeded it, and yet we are still

 21 having this discussion. It makes me wonder what the

 22 real agenda is.

 23 Allowing our federal government to mandate

 24 excessive and expensive emissions controls and retrofits

 25 is a bad idea. These retrofits are estimated to cost
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 1 around 700 million dollars. PacifiCorp pass these

 2 expenses on to customers in Utah through the rate

 3 increases. Businesses and residents would feel the

 4 effect of this.

 5 I would urge the EPA to approve Option 1 as

 6 the SIP is proposed by the state. And I believe it's a

 7 more cost effective approach to achieving the mandated

 8 emissions criteria, and I thank you for your time.

 9 (Applause).

 10 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Mr. Atwood.

 11 Jeff Sego.

 12 JEFF SEGO: My name is Jeff Sego. J-E-F-F,

 13 S-E-G-O. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here

 14 today. I am here because I am a concerned citizen. I

 15 am concerned about the environment, and I'm concerned

 16 about the people of our state and their overall

 17 wellbeing. I believe everyone attending here today is

 18 concerned about the environment in general. We all want

 19 to preserve the things that we enjoy for our children

 20 and those that follow us.

 21 My family and I enjoy many outdoor activities

 22 in the areas of concern. We have spent many vacation

 23 hours in our national parks, and we go to the San Rafael

 24 Swell yearly. I have never seen the haze I hear talked

 25 about in these areas coming from these plants. Any haze
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 1 in the national parks and recreational areas, I believe

 2 is grossly overstated.

 3 I understand the concerns about pollution. I

 4 understand the haze concerns coming from living in areas

 5 of the Wasatch Front where many of us in attendance

 6 today live.

 7 To truly solve a problem or exposure, you need

 8 to look for root cause. I believe people are trying to

 9 do that with problem solving, but many times we quit too

 10 soon or are not willing to accept what root cause really

 11 is.

 12 The power plants are not the root cause of the

 13 pollution issues here in this state, neither the

 14 national parks or the Wasatch Front. I encourage people

 15 to go out there and visit those areas, as many of you

 16 that have spoken previously have suggested.

 17 The EPA has already accepted and approved the

 18 changes made at these power plants as meeting the

 19 necessary requirements. I believe we should all

 20 seriously question EPA's real motives in having this

 21 hearing today, including the location in relationship to

 22 the areas of concern.

 23 To mandate newly proposed changes at these

 24 plants would have huge repercussions to the economy of

 25 Utah, would have a quick and direct negative impact on
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 1 the rural communities of our state. I know that's not a

 2 concern for many you here today, but please do not be

 3 naive enough to think that many more of you would not be

 4 affected in other ways negatively.

 5 The tax base for the state would suffer

 6 tremendously. The consumer will suffer substantial

 7 energy increase -- increases in their rates, and our

 8 state would no longer be attractive for outside business

 9 development. A mandate like this hurts us all. Nobody

 10 should be naive about that, not just the guy in the

 11 small town that we don't care about.

 12 We have geographical challenges with these

 13 beautiful mountain valleys, and they are prone to

 14 inversion and haze. That we cannot change. So I urge

 15 everyone in attendance to truly look at and be willing

 16 to accept root cause for pollution and the haze issues

 17 in Utah. It's likely that 95 percent of us contributed

 18 to that today. I doubt there's many of us who walked

 19 here or even carpooled. It's easy to see if you are

 20 willing to accept it.

 21 The answer to our concerns about air quality

 22 is not to mandate new rules or requirements at the cost

 23 of crippling our urban communities, rural counties or

 24 the state in general. The solution to our concerns will

 25 take us all working together, but the first step is
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 1 identifying the real problem.

 2 In closing, I urge the EPA to back Option No.

 3 1 and do so in using the statements of myself and the

 4 fellow citizens here today that are concerned about the

 5 citizens of Utah and their overall wellbeing.

 6 (Applause).

 7 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. If we

 8 could have Sara Straw.

 9 SARA STRAW: Sara Straw. S-A-R-A, S-T-R-A-W.

 10 I live in Sevier County. I moved to Utah in 1975. I

 11 was blown away by the astonishing beauty of the state

 12 and said I'm living here and I don't care how poor I

 13 have to be to do so. And sure enough, I am poor.

 14 My husband did work at the Sufco coal mine in

 15 Sevier County for a few years. But in 1985, a whole

 16 bunch of the coal miners just lost their jobs. Dam

 17 environmentalists. No, actually it was the mine. They

 18 brought in the long wall. So, you know, change happens.

 19 You lose your job and move on and do something else.

 20 And I am afraid coal is one of those things,

 21 like buggy whips and film for cameras, that's time is

 22 moving onward, and eventually it will be gone. And I

 23 don't want anyone to lose their job, but on the other

 24 hand, you know, I don't want my grandchildren to lose

 25 their abilities to be alive because there's no oxygen
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 1 because we have decimated the plant.

 2 And so I am for the federal plan to have

 3 stricter regulations. And I am sure that all the coal

 4 plants will abide and the people will keep their jobs,

 5 and will clean up the air, and eventually coal will go

 6 the way of the buggy whip and we'll have cleaner,

 7 sustainable energy.

 8 Our grandchildren will have a chance to have

 9 grandchildren of their own and life will be good. So

 10 that's what we need to do. We all want electricity.

 11 And we all want happy, healthy grandchildren, and so

 12 let's do that.

 13 (Applause).

 14 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Tim

 15 Wagner. Tim Wagner. (No response). Okay. Next, if we

 16 could have Matt Pancenza. Matt P-A-N-C-E-N-Z-A.

 17 RICH MYLOTT: Matt's definitely here.

 18 MATT PANCENZA: Good afternoon. My name is

 19 Matt Pancenza. I am the executive director of Heal

 20 Utah, and I appreciate the opportunity to comment today.

 21 Before I quickly urge the EPA to take a

 22 particular action, I wanted to raise the possibility of

 23 considering having another hearing. I think, you know,

 24 we appreciate the passion of folks from Carbon and Emery

 25 County who have made their way up here, and clearly they
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 1 have strong feelings about the potential impact of this

 2 rule upon their livelihoods.

 3 I think we can all agree in retrospect, it

 4 would have been ideal to have a hearing down there and

 5 perhaps one up here. One of the things we witnessed out

 6 in the hallway today is there have been dozens, if not

 7 hundreds, of people who have come to try to speak but

 8 then, intimidated by the length of the line and the size

 9 of the crowd, they turned away. So I am not sure the

 10 balance of speakers so far accurately reflects the

 11 intention of folks who did want to speak. So hopefully

 12 we can come up with a way to hear from other people as

 13 well.

 14 You know, some people in the room do not want

 15 to hear this, but we do believe that it is appropriate

 16 and necessary to order SCR on the Hunter and Huntington

 17 coal-fired power plant units.

 18 We live in a time when there's bad news and

 19 good news, and the bad news is we do have demonstrated

 20 effects of burning coal power on our visibility, on our

 21 health and on a wide range of things. The good news is,

 22 there's incredibly talented scientists and engineers

 23 that have developed technology in order to clean a lot

 24 of that.

 25 And I don't think we are lobbying for the end
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 1 of coal power. I think we are lobbying for taking

 2 advantage of the state-of-the-art technologies that can

 3 make dramatic differences in pollution that comes out of

 4 the smokestacks.

 5 And I think we would point out there's jobs in

 6 creating these technologies. There's jobs in installing

 7 these technologies. There's jobs in maintaining these

 8 technologies. So jobs and environmental improvement do

 9 not need to be at odds in this particular case.

 10 So we do strongly believe that the EPA needs

 11 to install and require SCR. We believe that the studies

 12 that have been done by independent consultants, the

 13 expertise, the arguments that have been made by Heal, by

 14 the Sierra Club and many others would certainly reach

 15 that conclusion.

 16 So I'm going to end my time. There's a lot of

 17 people that want to speak. Again, I appreciate

 18 everyone's passion here. I'm glad we are all here.

 19 Let's try to do it again where we can give more and more

 20 people a chance to speak, not just the few who have

 21 managed to crawl the top the of line.

 22 So thank you very, very much. Thanks for

 23 coming to Salt Lake.

 24 (Applause).

 25 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next if we
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 1 could have James Cutler.

 2 JAMES CATLIN: My name is James Catlin, is

 3 that what's on the card?

 4 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Yeah, sorry.

 5 JAMES CATLIN: J-A-M-E-S, C-A-T-L-I-N. I'm a

 6 retired scientist and I live in Salt Lake City. Thank

 7 you for coming to Salt Lake. This is an important

 8 hearing. It's about Utah's quality of life. It's about

 9 the economy. I am in favor of increasing emission

 10 controls and emission equipment on the power plants in

 11 question.

 12 I think that this is a case where we are going

 13 to see significant amount of money spent that is going

 14 to keep the coal industry there longer. Now, I am

 15 willing to pay more for my electricity, more in my

 16 utility rates in order to help this happen.

 17 I know this is necessary to do this, in part

 18 because I remember growing up in Utah, more than 50

 19 years ago, traveling with my family to remote places in

 20 Utah, capitol Reef National Park being one of them. I

 21 remember it was views without the slightest hint of any

 22 degradation in air quality.

 23 And over the years, I now work as a scientist

 24 in these rural places and remote places, and you never

 25 see that kind of air quality again. It's exceedingly
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 1 rare except after a storm that you have that experience.

 2 This is something that people across the United States

 3 don't have.

 4 You know, I think we can do this and still

 5 have an energy industry. And we can still have the

 6 multi billion dollar outdoor industry that employs over

 7 a hundred thousand people directly in Utah. And this is

 8 about jobs and about the future. The future is going to

 9 be different, and I think that we need to be ready for

 10 it.

 11 The governor, preparing this energy proposal

 12 for the future, looked at how many jobs were now in

 13 different sectors of the energy industry. He found

 14 there were quite a few in the coal industry. But what

 15 was amazing is that he found there were even more in

 16 renewable energy. Even though we have only about 2

 17 percent of our energy today in renewable, we have more

 18 jobs in that area.

 19 I think we can have both. I think we can

 20 continue to support the workers and families that are in

 21 need of jobs. But we have to look to an economic

 22 difference in the future. Well, thank you for this

 23 opportunity.

 24 (Applause).

 25 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Mr. Catlin.
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 1 I'm sorry I got your name wrong. Is Suzanne Sensa still

 2 here?

 3 FEMALE VOICE: She had to go. She's not here.

 4 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Okay. Next, if we can

 5 have Randy Pickett.

 6 RANDY PICKETT: I don't know if I can do

 7 justice to what I have to say, because I don't have much

 8 of a voice, due to cancer. You know, it's a funny thing

 9 about cancer. There's a line down there called Sevier

 10 County, and radiation only goes to that line and stops.

 11 Because it knows that it doesn't affect anyone beyond

 12 it. My dad died from complications of cancer. Hundreds

 13 of people in our valley died from complications of

 14 cancer, because the winds blow from down by Las Vegas up

 15 this way. Not from us that way.

 16 Those parks never have been affected, only but

 17 once in a blue moon by the winds. You know, the jet

 18 stream, if you watch, you will have a high pressure, and

 19 the only time that jet stream bends is when it hits a

 20 high pressure. And it bends and goes around it. But

 21 basically it goes from west to east.

 22 I looked up on the Internet last night. The

 23 winds in Utah, 26 percent of them come from the south.

 24 24 percent come from the southeast. That's almost 50

 25 percent of our -- do you know how much of it goes from
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 1 here that way? 18 percent. So those power plants,

 2 although we do need the clean air, do not affect our

 3 parks.

 4 Maybe we should understand what the fight

 5 really is. Maybe the winds coming out of California

 6 bring all that pollution up to those parks. Maybe we

 7 ought to do something about those pollutants, not worry

 8 about five little power plants.

 9 Now, I also looked up what pollutants come

 10 from power plants. And I looked up what comes from

 11 cars. Guess what? They are exactly the same. Only

 12 there is millions, millions of cars, not just five.

 13 There's millions of them.

 14 So why -- and you say oh, we have done

 15 something about it. We put restrictions on those cars.

 16 Yeah, now what used to get 20 miles to the gallon gets

 17 five, seven. You should be getting 50 or 60. And then

 18 you would only burn a gallon of gas. What a novel idea.

 19 To solve some of our pollution. But, no, we'll worry

 20 about a power plant that's going to put lots of people

 21 out of a job. Thank you for your time.

 22 (Applause).

 23 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you,

 24 Mr. Pickett. Jeff Noyes.

 25 JEFF NOYES: I appreciate the opportunity to
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 1 voice my opinion. My name is Jeff Noyes. J-E-F-F,

 2 N-O-Y-E-S. I am a life-long resident of Carbon and

 3 Emery County. I am an employee of Sufco coal mine. And

 4 I am a supporter of Option 1. In my life experience in

 5 Carbon and Emery county, I have witnessed the over -- I

 6 am looking for, over regulated, over regulating, I have

 7 witnessed devastation to these two counties by over

 8 regulating. And I urge you, as the EPA, to support

 9 Option 1, and help us save our jobs as coal miners,

 10 power plant workers, coal truck drivers. The trickle

 11 down effect is tremendous.

 12 And in closing, I'd just like to say I'm proud

 13 to be a coal miner. Proud to work with -- and be

 14 associated with the best damn coal miners in the world.

 15 (Applause).

 16 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next, if

 17 we can have Mark Thomas. Marc Thomas. He's gone. If

 18 he shows up, I'll let him speak. John Wysheit. John

 19 Wysheit. No? Okay. Larry Olsen.

 20 LARRY OLSEN: Hi. My name is Larry Olsen.

 21 That's O-L-S-E-N. I am here as a concerned citizen and

 22 a concerned coal miner. I am from Carbon County. Up

 23 until a year ago, we had four of them in a hundred mile

 24 radius. I have lived there all my life. A life-long

 25 resident.
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 1 We do, as many people have said, have the

 2 clearest air around. Not just certain days, but every

 3 day, you can wake up and see clear across the valley.

 4 And from my house, you can pretty well see the Hunter

 5 power plant, and it's very clear.

 6 I would love to say that a lot of these people

 7 are uninformed that are opposing this. But I won't. We

 8 are here to talk to the EPA, and you know what? It --

 9 this administration has really been after coal mines and

 10 anything to do with fossil fuels. Let's stop and let's

 11 look at the information that's not being provided to you

 12 from your people on what you want to hear. Let's look

 13 at reality. Our air is clear.

 14 The national parks, like many of have said,

 15 are not being fed from these power plants, and that's

 16 what we're here to talk about is these two power plants.

 17 The third one is idled as you heard, even though it was

 18 mentioned earlier. That's what it's about.

 19 I strongly disagree that you need to put more

 20 on these power plants because they are not being

 21 affected as the information that you're being told.

 22 Quit looking at the paper. Look outside and

 23 look at the air. It's clear. I have no health issues

 24 due to breathing bad air or anything, and neither does

 25 my family. I have grandkids that absolutely, they will
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 1 be raised in Carbon and Emery counties. So I'll just

 2 keep it short. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

 3 (Applause).

 4 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Gail Solomon. Gail

 5 Solomon.

 6 RICH MYLOTT: Gail Solomon. No. No.

 7 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Okay. Paul Balo.

 8 Paul B-A-L-O.

 9 RICH MYLOTT: Paul Balo. B-A-L-O. No.

 10 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Okay. Wyn Smith. Wyn

 11 Smith.

 12 RICH MYLOTT: Wyn Smith.

 13 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Mimi Trudeaux. Mimi

 14 Trudeaux.

 15 RICH MYLOTT: No.

 16 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Jay, is it Vestal?

 17 Jay Vestal, V-E-S-T-A-L.

 18 FEMALE VOICE: Never mind. He didn't want to

 19 comment.

 20 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Alan Peterson. Alan

 21 Peterson.

 22 ALAN PETERSON: Hey.

 23 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Oh, there you are.

 24 ALAN PETERSON: Can I bring a picture up

 25 front?
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 1 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Sure.

 2 ALAN PETERSON: Thank you for the opportunity.

 3 I did not come prepared. I'm winging it. The yellow

 4 card was my ticket to get in this room. My main purpose

 5 for coming up today, I jumped in with three other guys

 6 this morning, was to bring a picture of the Hunter power

 7 plant and the beautiful blue skies and the beautiful

 8 white steam that is coming out of the building towers

 9 and the stacks. That's what's on the picture in front

 10 of you.

 11 I'm going to assume that EPA people probably

 12 have not visited Emery County. Perhaps you have never

 13 seen the Hunter power plant or the Huntington plant that

 14 this discussion is about. I am also going to venture a

 15 guess that 90 percent of the people in opposition have

 16 also never been to Emery County, Carbon County, and seen

 17 those plants.

 18 I encourage everybody to do that, to see why

 19 we love living in rural Utah, including Sanpete and

 20 Sevier, to see why it's important to us to be able to

 21 raise our families there. We love our children more

 22 than you ever will, and that's where we want them to be

 23 raised.

 24 The talk today is about haze and evidently

 25 where this haze comes from and where it goes. This
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 1 picture in front of you I took on January 1. I was

 2 headed down on the desert with my dogs to chase dead

 3 Indians, and the locals might know what that means.

 4 And I stopped four different times to take

 5 pictures of the Hunter power plant because the beauty

 6 and because of the controversy. And what goes through

 7 my mind is, how can this, what you see on that picture,

 8 turn into the haze that these valleys up here in

 9 northern Utah are faced with?

 10 I come late to this party because I have been

 11 trapped outside. So I don't know what all has been

 12 talked about. I don't know what all has been said. But

 13 I do know that the power company has installed what they

 14 were told they had to install, with the agreement that

 15 it made, and now to change the rules -- yeah.

 16 The best technology is a good thing. Our

 17 scientists that were mentioned, the people who develop

 18 this stuff, those are all good things. My question and

 19 challenge to the EPA is, you do the research. What

 20 percentage are we talking about?

 21 If we've already cleaned say 95 percent of all

 22 emissions out, is this fight over the last five, or have

 23 we already cleaned 99 and this fight is over the last

 24 one? And then what percentage does coal burn in the

 25 United States, compared to worldwide?
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 1 One last thing I want to mention. I sent this

 2 picture to the four news stations a few weeks ago to

 3 their meteorologists. I got responses back from Channel

 4 13 and Channel 4. And in that e-mail I asked, please

 5 explain how the blue skies, the beautiful blue skies at

 6 this plant turn into the smog and haze in Salt Lake that

 7 I hear about.

 8 I specifically asked about up here not the

 9 parks because they never entered my mind because I visit

 10 the parks in San Rafael weekly. And the two that

 11 responded said absolutely no connections. The emissions

 12 from those power plants do not affect Salt Lake Valley.

 13 Our problems are local.

 14 He did encourage me to go to the state's

 15 website, which I did, the Division of Environmental

 16 Quality. I found an article on there about Asian

 17 pollution, and it tracked it through satellite imagery

 18 coming from China across the ocean and in California and

 19 Nevada and into Utah. And in the article it said that

 20 pollution is picked up on monitoring in Utah. But it's

 21 not produced in Utah. So how can it be regulated in

 22 Utah? Thank you.

 23 (Applause).

 24 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Marc

 25 Thomas.
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 1 MARC THOMAS: Thank you. It's good to see a

 2 lot of friendly faces here today. Hi. My name is Mark

 3 Thomas. I'm from Moab, Utah.

 4 It's very simple. In its plan submitted to

 5 the EPA, the Utah Department of Environmental Quality

 6 should have required the Hunter and Huntington

 7 coal-fired power plants to install selective catalytic

 8 reduction emission control systems to convert dangerous

 9 nitrogen oxide into more benign chemicals.

 10 SCR technology is required usage in New

 11 England and in our neighboring states of New Mexico,

 12 Arizona, Colorado and Wyoming. Why does this state

 13 always have to be an outlier when it comes to enacting

 14 effective regulation controls on industries whose

 15 emissions impact the health and wellbeing of its

 16 citizens? Even a place that believes in limited

 17 government is supposed to put the health of its

 18 citizenry above all else.

 19 Just look at what is happening today in Flint,

 20 Michigan when that guiding principle is overlooked. If

 21 the use of SCR technology is important enough to protect

 22 the citizens living in neighboring states, then it

 23 should be required use in coal power plants in Utah to

 24 protect our quality of life.

 25 Both the state and PacifiCorp greatly
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 1 over-estimate the cost of retrofitting the plants with

 2 this technology. Upgrades elsewhere have proven cost

 3 effective, and they under-estimate its benefits. Your

 4 own studies show the systems reduced nitrogen oxide

 5 emissions by 70 to 90 percent. Anyone who suffers from

 6 a respiratory condition, asthmatics, children, the

 7 elderly, pays the price when these emissions become

 8 particulates in the air that we breathe.

 9 The state has been dragging its heels since

 10 2003 in coming up with a best available practices haze

 11 and nitrogen oxide reduction plans. The fact that one

 12 of your own sister agencies, the Southeast Utah Group of

 13 the Utah National Park Service, which manages both

 14 Arches and Canyonlands, finds the state plan lacking and

 15 wants to see SCR technology implemented, speaks volumes

 16 about the current plan's shortcomings.

 17 I have a personal recollection. Twenty years

 18 ago when I was trying to convince my wife that moving to

 19 rural southern Utah from urban Chicago wasn't a

 20 hair-brained idea, I took her to the Green River

 21 Overlook in Canyonlands. There she had her aha moment

 22 as she gazed down at the Green River snaking around

 23 Turk's Head, with deeply incised canyons below her and

 24 the majestic buttes of the Maze off in the distance.

 25 There and then she fell in love with this land, and 10
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 1 years ago we moved permanently to Moab.

 2 Proud of the beauty where I live, I am worried

 3 that today's visitor standing at the canyon overlooks in

 4 southern Utah wouldn't experience their own aha moments.

 5 Sadly when friends visit, I now hesitate to take them to

 6 Grand View Point, Green River Overlook or Dead Horse

 7 Point, for fear, as the National Park Service has

 8 documented, that more than 80 percent of the time haze

 9 has degraded these view sheds.

 10 I am urging you to reject the Utah DEQ

 11 Regional Haze Plan in favor of one that requires the

 12 installation of SCR systems for the control of nitrogen

 13 oxide. To do so will hold this state to the same

 14 standards as our neighboring states and be in line with

 15 the goals of the 1970 Clean Air Act, the 2012 Regional

 16 Haze Plan and the 2015 Clean Power Plan, all of which

 17 are key building blocks in reducing our nation's air

 18 pollution.

 19 Thank you for your time. I appreciate you

 20 letting me speak at this forum.

 21 (Applause).

 22 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: John Weisheit. I

 23 don't know if I am saying that right. John. Coming.

 24 Oh, great.

 25 JOHN WEISHEIT: My name is John Weisheit.
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 1 That's spelled W-E-I-S-H-E-I-T. I live in Moab, Utah.

 2 I have lived there since 1986. Before that I lived in

 3 Maricopa County in Arizona, along the Salt River, and

 4 before that I lived in Los Angeles County, drinking

 5 water from the metropolitan water district.

 6 The Colorado River has been in my life since

 7 infancy. My first boat trip was in 1959. I am

 8 currently 62 years old. I became a full-time river

 9 guide in 1980. I have done over 350 river trips down

 10 Canyonlands National Park. I have done 50 trips in the

 11 Grand Canyon.

 12 I wrote a book with two other authors

 13 published by the University of Utah press called Grand

 14 Canyon. In that book we described how the changes are

 15 occurring in Canyonlands National Park. Our beaches are

 16 not as big as they used to be. Our fish are more

 17 endangered. The effects of climate change are affecting

 18 our vegetation.

 19 You are not supposed to see these kinds of

 20 changes in your lifetime. I have managed to see them in

 21 less than 30 years.

 22 As a person who does a lot of river trips and

 23 spends a lot of time in the outdoors for over six

 24 decades, I can tell you that we are negatively impacting

 25 our natural resources. And I should say that as a
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 1 private river runner, I have done the San Rafael River.

 2 I have done Dirty River or Muddy River, excuse me, and

 3 the Dirty Devil River, and which are, of course the

 4 water supply for the two coal plants in question.

 5 So I have seen a change in the air quality of

 6 the region that I work and play in. I don't think that

 7 they are going to take my job away, but I think they are

 8 making my job more and more unattractive when I can't

 9 enjoy clean air and vibrant resources and vibrant

 10 ecology, and my customers want these assets to be

 11 restored in Canyons Lands region and the Colorado River

 12 Basin in general.

 13 So I would ask the EPA to please put

 14 restrictions that will also not take jobs away. It will

 15 actually improve our air and improve our livelihoods and

 16 our quality of life together. So I would like to see

 17 our -- the jobs that these resource provided to be a

 18 sustainable environment, and I encourage the EPA to

 19 please make our air cleaner. Thank you.

 20 (Applause).

 21 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Paul Balo,

 22 Paul.

 23 PAUL BALO: Good afternoon. My name is Paul

 24 Balo. B-A-L-O. And I am a resident of Moab, Utah. I

 25 did submit written comments, although I may stray from
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 1 them some. I'm speaking in favor of the Clean Parks

 2 Plan. I speak for the neighbors and friends who have

 3 experienced respiratory problems. Some of them cannot

 4 tolerate the air in Salt Lake City and avoid this area.

 5 Healthy air quality is important to everyone

 6 in the area, residents and visitors alike. The

 7 enjoyment of the outdoors is negatively affected by the

 8 haze.

 9 I do not want to give a free pass to the

 10 Hunter and Huntington power plants. This is not

 11 acceptable. Lack of selective catalytic reduction, SCR,

 12 does not utilize the required best available technology.

 13 Do not be distracted. These plants should be commended

 14 for efforts to reduce particulates and sulfur emissions

 15 and the installation of low NOx burners. But these are

 16 not keeping up with the available means for continuous

 17 improvements.

 18 And by the way, I am a miner. I have worked

 19 on the metal side. So I do identify with the problems

 20 people in the mining industry have. And I am also

 21 concerned that without installing these controls that

 22 the plants are going to be more susceptible to being

 23 shut down in the future because they would be on a list

 24 of the dirty plants.

 25 So please install these controls to protect
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 1 our miners. I do identify with them. Utah depends upon

 2 the revenue encouraged. It's 700 million dollars per

 3 year. And if transportation and recreation are

 4 included, this impact is 7 billion dollars per year.

 5 Maybe sharing these figures will get action to protect

 6 our visual resources and clear the air.

 7 In social media we like to put our best foot

 8 forward, and I'm guilty of doing that. What I am

 9 advocating is, we begin to show photographs to our

 10 contacts when conditions are poor in comparison to the

 11 few days we have clearer air.

 12 In addition to this request to support the

 13 Clean Parts Plan, to take action to illustrate these

 14 comparisons, I avoid going to the scenic vistas, like

 15 John mentioned just before me, whenever the air is hazy.

 16 And I think I have been complicit in providing views

 17 that is less than accurate just this week when I went to

 18 share views on social media that the average visitor

 19 will see less than 25 percent of the time.

 20 What I am asking for is people to share

 21 comparison photographs of what clear air is like versus

 22 less than ideal situations. I believe that many people

 23 do not even recognize what clear air looks like.

 24 Statistics and data are very important to

 25 quantify what's happening. But on visual resources, the
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 1 photograph is much easier to digest and provide impacts.

 2 This is my equivalent of the transparency and openness

 3 we demand from our leaders and regulators. Thank you

 4 for your time and attention.

 5 (Applause).

 6 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Mr. Balo.

 7 Dick Comminski. Dick Comminski. Mark Barone. Mark

 8 Barone. Libby Ellis.

 9 LIBBY ELLIS: Thank you. My name is Libby

 10 Ellis, and I am proud to stand here today on behalf

 11 Black Diamond Equipment. At Black Diamond,

 12 headquartered here in Salt Lake City, we design,

 13 engineer, manufacture and sell innovative outdoor

 14 equipment, apparels for climbers, back country skiers

 15 and Alpine skiers.

 16 Black Diamond contributes significantly to

 17 Utah's business and tourist economy. On any given day,

 18 whether in our national parks, forests or wilderness

 19 areas, our products are used by outdoor enthusiasts,

 20 helping them enjoy their experiences to the fullest.

 21 While our business depends upon the health of

 22 our national parks, the soul of our business, the

 23 inspiration from which we draw our ideas and our

 24 passions, depends upon the protection even more so.

 25 Today, our state's iconic landscapes, Arches, Escalante,
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 1 Grand Canyon, Canyonlands and on are being harmed by

 2 dangerous haze-causing pollution. This air pollution is

 3 coming in part, in part from the Hunter and Huntington

 4 coal-burning power plants in southern Utah.

 5 Black Diamond is here today to urge the EPA to

 6 require that the Huntington and Hunter coal plants be

 7 upgraded with SCR pollution controls. This technology

 8 has been used successfully, without taking away jobs, to

 9 lower air pollution in over 250 coal plants throughout

 10 the country already.

 11 The Regional Haze Rule of the Clean Air Act

 12 requires you, the EPA, to return our national parks'

 13 natural visibility by 2060. Please don't wait until

 14 2060 to protect our parks' air sheds and air quality.

 15 Require retrofitting of Hunter and Huntington

 16 coal-burning plans with industry-accepted pollution

 17 controls. Thank you.

 18 (Applause).

 19 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Richard

 20 Parkins.

 21 RICHARD PARKINS: I will defer until later

 22 because some have to leave.

 23 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Okay. Can we have

 24 Rebecca Hinsell. Rebecca Hinsell. Beth Hayes. Beth

 25 Hayes. Heila Ershadi. Heila Ershadi. Up to the podium
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 1 please.

 2 HEILA ERSHADI: Good afternoon. First off,

 3 thank you for your time and consideration today. I know

 4 there are knowledgeable, intelligent people coming down

 5 on different sides of this issue, and I appreciate that

 6 you have a difficult and important job to receive a

 7 whole lot of input and use that to make a wise decision.

 8 I am actually glad I had to wait such a long

 9 time to speak because it gave me a chance to talk to

 10 many great people on all sides of the issue. Once

 11 again, I am reminded how great the people of Utah are

 12 regardless of their stance on regional haze or other

 13 issues.

 14 My name is Heila Ershadi. H-E-I-L-A,

 15 E-R-S-H-A-D-I, and I have traveled here today all the

 16 way from Moab for the opportunity to weigh in on

 17 Regional Haze Rule. I am a member of Moab city council

 18 and a mother of two children who have been born and

 19 raised in Moab.

 20 As a mother and a city council member, I am

 21 concerned about air pollution and its effects on both

 22 visibility and health. I realize that the regional haze

 23 rule addresses visibility only, but the health

 24 consequences of nitrous oxides and the particulates and

 25 ground level ozone to which they contribute cannot be
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 1 discounted, particularly in an area where people come

 2 not only to enjoy the views but to get out and move and

 3 breath deeply.

 4 Moab, as we all know, is a gateway community

 5 surrounded by several national parks as well as a host

 6 of other scenic wonders. Many people have moved to Moab

 7 largely out of love for the vibrant, unparallel

 8 landscapes, and there are many people with deep roots in

 9 our community whose families have treasured the area for

 10 generations.

 11 Our national parks with their world-class

 12 vistas bring people from all over the world, creating a

 13 multi-million-dollar tourism industry that is the

 14 keystone of our economy. But the intrinsic value of

 15 clear, healthy air is much greater, and that's why the

 16 Regional Haze Rule was created to protect our national

 17 park as the commonly held treasures that they are. We

 18 need to be able to see their worth.

 19 PacifiCorp deserves the credit for what they

 20 have already done to increase energy efficiency and

 21 reduce emissions from the plants, all while providing

 22 affordable power for their consumers, and there are

 23 regulations that can unfairly burden utility providers,

 24 and we do face uncertainty in what future regulations

 25 may mandate.
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 1 Legally that can't influence the decision in

 2 the case of regional haze, but we do well to consider

 3 that just as important as enforcing legislation that

 4 makes sense is getting rid of expensive red tape.

 5 Pollution controls may be less controversial if the

 6 power companies and by extension their consumers and

 7 employees are not so burdened in other ways.

 8 We need to change the conversation around

 9 clean air and regulation. Conservation and power

 10 companies and regulatory agencies need to sit down and

 11 find common ground to figure out how we can get more

 12 benefit and less impact from regulations. As our region

 13 grows -- take actions to prevent that. Let's make sure

 14 our regulations make sense.

 15 Selective catalytic reduction technology does

 16 make sense, which is why it's being used in neighboring

 17 states. National Park Service has done an excellent job

 18 of making it comprehensible to the public. They have

 19 meticulously documented the likely visibility benefits

 20 and the regulatory language that requires the best

 21 available retrofit technology.

 22 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Ms. Ershadi, your time

 23 is up. So can you wrap up, please.

 24 HEILA ERSHADI: Oh, sure. And so I stand with

 25 the National Park Service and many other groups in
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 1 asking the EPA to adopt fair clean air protection that

 2 include industry standard pollution technology that will

 3 improve visibility in parks and as well as clean the

 4 air. Thank you.

 5 (Applause).

 6 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Edith O'Brian. Edith

 7 O'Brian. Michael Shea. Michael Shea.

 8 RICH MYLOTT: Michael Shea is here.

 9 MICHAEL SHEA: Hello. My name is Michael

 10 Shea. I'm with Heal Utah. First off, thank you so much

 11 for the EPA for taking the time to come out and hear the

 12 very diverse group of opinions being talked about today.

 13 You know, I have been sitting here waiting and listening

 14 to everybody's different opinions about, you know, why

 15 this is necessary or why this shouldn't happen, and I

 16 mean, it's incredibly difficult.

 17 We have an industry that is part of a

 18 community that's helped create jobs and give them

 19 livelihood to many, many people and their families. And

 20 I can see how where everybody here is coming from. But

 21 on the other hand, our national parks are an incredibly

 22 valuable resource, and any -- any haze, any type of

 23 pollution that impedes people from being able to enjoy

 24 those parks, it needs to be controlled. And it is

 25 unfortunate and, you know, I hope that we can work
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 1 together as a community.

 2 I am native Utah. I am born and raised here.

 3 Just trying to come up with solutions. But I think in

 4 the meantime, we need to listen to the scientific voices

 5 of our country who are saying that this is a very

 6 dangerous pollutant and that these scrubbers do need to

 7 be installed. Because the national parks are an

 8 incredibly productive and economically viable industry

 9 that's going to continue with us long into the future.

 10 And while I do greatly feel for all the proud

 11 coal miners that are here today, I think that in the

 12 long run it is what needs to be done. And I just hope

 13 we can all sort of co-up around saying that the Denver

 14 Broncos are going to win the Super Bowl this -- two

 15 weeks from now. But thank you so much, and we

 16 appreciate you coming out today.

 17 (Applause).

 18 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Tim Wagner. Is

 19 Mr. Wagner here? Kathryn Albury. Kathryn Albury.

 20 RICH MYLOTT: Kathryn is here.

 21 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: No? Okay. Randy

 22 Tatton, Tatton. T-A-T-T-O-N.

 23 RANDY TATTON: Good afternoon. Thanks for the

 24 opportunity to be here. My name is Randy Tatton.

 25 R-A-N-D-Y, T-A-T-T-O-N. And I am in support of Option
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 1 1. I am a retired coal miner, or semiretired, and glad

 2 to have the opportunity to come here and speak to you

 3 just a bit today.

 4 I worked my entire career in the coal

 5 industry. But for the last 15 years, due to some

 6 business opportunities, I moved to Salt Lake City. So

 7 trust me, I have seen the haze firsthand. I see it

 8 every day. And it is frustrating. And I want to see it

 9 cleaned up as well.

 10 But let me tell you what's more frustrating to

 11 me. I also live next door to Bingham High School. And

 12 I don't know how many students they have, but it's

 13 thousands, and trust me, I think every one of those kids

 14 drive their car every day to school. They will drive

 15 through haze you can't even see through to get their car

 16 to school.

 17 So why aren't we addressing those kind of

 18 issues? And that's happening all over the country. Not

 19 only in Salt Lake City, South Jordan, it happens in

 20 California, and it's got to be a big root of the

 21 problem.

 22 Now, let me say that when I first retired,

 23 about 10 years ago, in 2006, I did some consulting. And

 24 I did a lot of work back east in the coal fields in the

 25 coal industry. And haven't worked there for the last
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 1 two years. Why? Because the coal mines and the power

 2 plants are shutting down.

 3 Now, when you talk to the people back there,

 4 nobody talks about pollution. They talk about the war

 5 on coal and what it's done to it, and it has devastated.

 6 And so, you know, what is the real agenda here?

 7 Also, I worked for all of my career for

 8 PacifiCorp. And I know that PacifiCorp is a good

 9 environmental citizen. And I think the reason we don't

 10 try as hard to address the automobiles and some of the

 11 other pollutions, because it's so much easier to go for

 12 a company like PacifiCorp.

 13 Everybody here heard all the money they have

 14 spent and the things they have done to improve. But

 15 yet, it's easy just to say, let's add different controls

 16 and all of this expensive equipment on the machines.

 17 You know, when I was -- and this is me, and I know it

 18 will never happen and I know it can't happen. But I

 19 wish PacifiCorp just one day would say, we are going to

 20 shut down half of our units. And when the lights start

 21 going off, the computers, the TVs, a lot of priorities

 22 in this room would probably change.

 23 (Applause).

 24 I only have 30 seconds. So again, I

 25 appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I hope that
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 1 you will really consider all the facts. You know, I

 2 lived for 15 years here in the valley. I lived the rest

 3 of my life in Price, Utah. And incidentally I never saw

 4 the haze, I never saw the pollution like I see here.

 5 Now, my time has expired so I appreciate the opportunity

 6 to be here.

 7 (Applause).

 8 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Craig

 9 Hilton. Craig Hilton.

 10 CRAIG HILTON: I appreciate the opportunity to

 11 give you some thoughts today. My name is Craig Hilton.

 12 C-R-A-I-G, H-I-L-T-O-N. And I want to dwell on some of

 13 the points. Although there's many I agree with,

 14 especially the wind and what -- I was the oldest boy in

 15 a family of five. I understand, I understand well what

 16 it is to be wrongly accused. And you know, if my

 17 parents disciplined me for something I didn't do, it

 18 didn't help the problem. And I think that's what we are

 19 aiming at here, is we're just barking up the wrong tree.

 20 No one appreciates more the clean air of

 21 southern Utah than those of us who live there. I have

 22 been a resident for 40 years and have observed times of

 23 haze and clean air, and it's much better recently. But

 24 the haze that I do experience, you can smell it. And

 25 it's wood burning. It's coming from forest fires.
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 1 I would just like to point out one thing that

 2 hasn't been brought up yet. I have read some

 3 publications recently where the Sierra Club and the

 4 Wildlife Guardians have bragged about shutting down over

 5 200 coal-fired power plants. And so to say that there

 6 will be no economic effect, this is the very purpose of

 7 what they are doing. Thank you.

 8 (Applause).

 9 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Mr. Hilton.

 10 John Byers.

 11 JOHN BYERS: My name is John Byers, J-O-H-N,

 12 B-Y-E-R-S. I'm a taxpayer and a third generation coal

 13 miner. I have lived in Utah for approximately 35 years

 14 and lived about five out of the state. I love the state

 15 of Utah. I support the state's Regional Haze SIP and

 16 have observed no regional haze that can be attributed to

 17 coal-fired power plants.

 18 Most of the haze that I have seen has come

 19 from forest fires, which I question whether we should

 20 allow controlled burns and other things with the impacts

 21 to the air. It's -- at times in southern Utah, it's

 22 worse than being up here. And primarily from the forest

 23 fires in California.

 24 My family, grandparents, great grandparents

 25 have lived in this area since 1980s or the late 1800s.
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 1 My entire family has been supported by these power

 2 plants, and these EPA-imposed rules impact my family's

 3 ability to stay in the area.

 4 I strongly support the state's implementation

 5 plan and think that the EPA needs to provide some --

 6 like one of the other individuals indicated, some

 7 justification for why they are not looking at other

 8 things that create this regional haze.

 9 And when it's easy to say to implement 700

 10 million dollars, but I know economics. I know how it

 11 works. It's coming to me, my family. And through how

 12 it's going to be paid and how it's going to be handled,

 13 it's going to go to my children and they are going to

 14 deal with this.

 15 And if this 700 million dollars was going to

 16 do something, and I had the scientists with the state of

 17 Utah telling me that -- you know, they're smart

 18 individuals as well, and I trust them a lot more than I

 19 trust the EPA. And they are telling me that, you know,

 20 the state's telling me that this plan isn't going to

 21 affect -- is not or what the EPA wants to do will not

 22 increase the air quality in the state of Utah, for 700

 23 million dollars.

 24 And I think, you know, if we were going to

 25 spend 700 million dollars, what would we do with that
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 1 money to put it to a good use? Not just for emotional

 2 views of what it's going to do for the environment.

 3 Because I have lived in the area for, you

 4 know, over 35 years and I have enjoyed recreating out

 5 there, and I don't see the regional haze that they are

 6 talking about. And I do want clean air in Utah. Thank

 7 you.

 8 (Applause).

 9 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Mr. Byers.

 10 Craig Brown. Mimi Trudeou, T-R-U-D-E-O-U.

 11 MIMI TRUDEOU: My name is Mimi Trudeou. Do I

 12 need to spell it? Okay.

 13 I am speaking to you today as a Utah resident,

 14 mother, taxpayer, and Rocky Mountain Power ratepayer.

 15 In order to ensure the health and welfare of my family

 16 and future generations, I am asking you to support the

 17 Clean Parks Plan to industry-accepted pollution controls

 18 that are already in use at more than 250 comparable

 19 coal-burning plants throughout the country.

 20 Two major issues are at stake. The first is

 21 our health. The Hunter and Huntington plants are

 22 responsible for 40 percent of the dangerous nitrogen

 23 oxide pollution emitted by the electricity sector. This

 24 pollution significantly compromises and endangers our

 25 health.
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 1 Given the fact that the proposed pollution

 2 controls would cut emissions by 76 percent, and

 3 neighboring states have already taken meaningful steps

 4 to reduce these dangerous and harmful emissions, it is

 5 incomprehensible to me that the government of Utah is

 6 fighting this. Why is the health of Utah residents

 7 worth less than the people in Arizona, Colorado and New

 8 Mexico?

 9 The second issue involves the economy.

 10 Communities across Utah depend on tourism and the

 11 outdoor recreational industries as a source of

 12 livelihood and prosperity. In 2014 alone, over 10

 13 million visitors traveled to visit our national parks,

 14 generating 730 million dollars for Utah's economy. The

 15 tourism industry supports about 132,000 jobs, or about

 16 one out every 10 jobs in the state. It is a major

 17 sector of the economy, and it is seeing the highest

 18 year-to-year growth rate.

 19 My family and friends have been visiting Utah

 20 for over 30 years. They remember crystal days and

 21 visibility for miles. These days are fewer and farther

 22 between. The mountains are often now lost in the haze.

 23 According to monitoring by National Park

 24 Service researchers, the visibility at Arches and

 25 Canyonlands is impaired by human-caused haze 83 percent
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 1 of the time. Does the government really want to risk

 2 this unique and precious asset to toxic, haze-causing

 3 pollution that could easily be controlled in

 4 cost-effective ways nationwide?

 5 People have lost trust in government agencies.

 6 Even the EPA is perceived as a captured agency.

 7 Demanding that Hunter and Huntington coal plants be

 8 upgraded and retrofitted with selective catalytic

 9 reduction pollution controls would help restore faith in

 10 the government.

 11 Coal is an inefficient, old, dirty, unhealthy

 12 technology that could be significantly improved by

 13 coming up to the best industry operating standards. We

 14 need to be transitioning to Utah's economic strengths

 15 and future rather than clinging to the past. If

 16 necessary, I am willing to pay more in utilities rates

 17 to ensure the best for the environment, our health and

 18 the economy. Thank you.

 19 (Applause).

 20 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Next, if we can, Sam

 21 Schoppe, S-C-H-O-P-P-E.

 22 SAM SCHOPPE: Schoppe.

 23 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you,

 24 Mr. Schoppe.

 25 SAM SCHOPPE: My name is Sam Schoppe, S-A-M
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 1 S-C-H-O-P-P-E. I appreciate the opportunity to be here

 2 today and speak on behalf of coal miners, and I want to

 3 thank everybody that made the trip up here today. I

 4 know a lot of people carpooled up here.

 5 As I drove into the valley, the ironic thing

 6 is, I look over to my right on the freeway, and 90

 7 percent of the cars have one person in it. Why don't we

 8 address that?

 9 I am a life-long resident of Utah, live in

 10 Sanpete County, Utah, Spring City in particular. And I

 11 enjoy the outdoors and the national parks just as much

 12 as anybody in this room. I have floated almost every

 13 river, rock climb, recreate and I love clean air. But

 14 we're going to lose a lot of jobs if this happens here.

 15 I have got a solution. We're all concerned

 16 about the national parks and seeing through them, and we

 17 have already mentioned how much profit they bring in.

 18 Let's let them pay for it.

 19 I want to ask everybody here today, how many

 20 of you got up this morning and flipped on a light

 21 switch? How many of you took a hot shower? Okay. How

 22 many woke up to a warm home this morning? Those are the

 23 things we need to be thinking about. Thank you for your

 24 time.

 25 (Applause).
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 1 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Dr. Robert

 2 Nohavec. Robert Nohavec. Nicholas Nielsen.

 3 NICHOLAS NIELSEN: My name is Nicholas

 4 Nielsen. N-I-C-H-O-L-A-S, N-I-E-L-S-E-N. I was born

 5 and raised in Carbon County, and as long as I can

 6 remember, I have loved being outside. I have loved

 7 playing around in the hills, and I can't ever remember

 8 any haze other than when there has been controlled

 9 burns, forest fires, that type of stuff.

 10 I disagree with the EPA making additions to

 11 the approved SIP. It's surprising how many people have

 12 got up here and said that they agree with retrofitting

 13 the power plants with items to control the haze. But

 14 they are agreeing with Option 1.

 15 I disagree with the EPA supporting documents

 16 that demonstrate additional changes are needed based on

 17 the CALPUFF modeling system, aside from the state's

 18 previously approved model. The justification for the

 19 additions used many assumptions, and the EPA's

 20 interpretation of the results demonstrate miniscule

 21 benefit.

 22 Omitting important information from the model

 23 such as location of highways, mobile sources and

 24 populated areas relative to national parks, supports

 25 faulty findings and promotes an agenda directed toward
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 1 coal-fired power.

 2 The primary document itself, in Section 5.1,

 3 paragraph 2, admits but fails to include in the modeling

 4 that, quote, "We further propose to recognize that not

 5 all pollutants impact visibility equally, and that the

 6 total emissions reductions of all pollutants is not

 7 necessarily a direct indicator of whether the BART

 8 alternative or the BART benchmark will achieve greater

 9 reasonable progress." End quote.

 10 The EPA's interjection to the state's SIP is

 11 focussed on the wrong contributor. The model's results

 12 demonstrate a change in measurable haze at the power

 13 plants, but provides no commonly known scale to

 14 demonstrate the overall reduction in the regional haze.

 15 Justification for additional restrictions have

 16 been primarily based from these assumptions and these

 17 models. No data or improvements in measurable haze has

 18 been provided to the public from the Carbon plant

 19 shutting down to drive additional restrictions.

 20 Energy has made central Utah. Starving a

 21 community of jobs, affordable power and a sense of pride

 22 in an industry is too great sacrifice for little proven

 23 improvement.

 24 I fully support the already proved SIP in its

 25 entirety. I disprove of the EPA restricting the state's
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 1 level -- the state level government's decision making

 2 and forcing additional financial burdens to the people

 3 in Utah industries. Thank you.

 4 (Applause).

 5 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you,

 6 Mr. Nielsen. Wendell Kutz.

 7 WENDELL KUTZ: I'm going to relinquish my

 8 time.

 9 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Okay. Chad Stone.

 10 Chad Stone.

 11 CHAD STONE: Right here. All right. My name

 12 is Chad Stone, S-T-O-N-E. Thanks for the opportunity to

 13 speak today. I was born -- excuse me. I was born,

 14 pretty much raised in Carbon County. I moved several

 15 times, and I tend to move back. I moved once to join

 16 the army and another time to study at the University of

 17 Utah.

 18 I graduated with a bachelor's of science in

 19 environmental and sustainable sciences. I was -- so

 20 long story short, I care about my community. Yeah. I

 21 care about local interests. I think that local

 22 interests are looked at best by local jurisdiction. I

 23 think that Utah State Department of Air Quality has set

 24 a good standard, the SIP, and I am for that. Basically,

 25 yeah. I appreciate your time. I am for that SIP.
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 1 Thanks.

 2 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Next, Scott Steinberg.

 3 Scott Steinberg. Gregg Galecki.

 4 GREGG GALECKI: Here. My name is Greg

 5 Galecki. G-R-E-G-G, G-A-L-E-C-K-I. A lot of things

 6 have already been brought up. So I'll try to be brief.

 7 Primarily I have worked in industry and the regulatory

 8 world for over 30 years. I bring that up because I am

 9 also a professional geologist and environmental

 10 engineer.

 11 So I want to talk about the Clean Air Act.

 12 From the specifics of it, when we talk about the package

 13 that was -- that we are looking at today, part of the

 14 Clean Air Act, the purpose of it is to have reasonable

 15 progress towards having natural visibility goal. Along

 16 those lines, I think that the state has demonstrated

 17 over the last -- since 2003, they have had six updates

 18 to their State Implementation Plan.

 19 So you look at that. It's saying that it's a

 20 dynamic plan. It's not stationary. It's not static.

 21 It's always changing. They are looking at what the best

 22 technologies are, and they are trying to improve that.

 23 The other part, using technology. The things

 24 that they implemented, they have had improvements in

 25 SO2, in NOx, PM10. They have showed that through
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 1 that -- the modeling that they have done with it. The

 2 state trying to be prudent in engineering and pragmatic

 3 in their approach is that they have -- their own

 4 modeling says they have looked at the SCR technologies.

 5 But they wouldn't have benefits that's necessary or the

 6 types of improvements that we want.

 7 I fully support the State's SIP in its

 8 entirety, and I hope the EPA will look at that, and then

 9 let's see. And the cost of compliance, that's another

 10 part of the Clean Air Act, subpart -- Section 169,

 11 subpart 3. When you look at the cost of implementation,

 12 700 million dollars, for a small, small benefit, what's

 13 going on isn't good use of the state funds, and that's

 14 why I support the State plan in its entirety. Thanks.

 15 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Craig

 16 Brown.

 17 CRAIG BROWN: Good afternoon. I am an

 18 engineer who has spent my entire career in the energy

 19 industry. I grew up in rural Utah and have spent much

 20 of my time recreating in the Class 1 areas discussed in

 21 this action. I have backpacked into wilderness areas

 22 and visited several national parks each year.

 23 I value clean air, magnificent views and

 24 nonpolluted air sheds. I feel that being a part of both

 25 these worlds is not a conflict but rather compliment
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 1 each other very well. Loving the outdoors heightens my

 2 awareness and environmental sensitivity, and increases

 3 my resolve to create a workplace that is considerate of

 4 the impact it has.

 5 The proposed State Implementation Plan and

 6 Federal Implementation Plan are forced creations from

 7 the EPA's Regional Haze Rule as a method of improving

 8 visibility in Class 1 areas of Utah. This rule does not

 9 consider actual environmental or personal health effects

 10 as a result of NOx, SO2 or PM10.

 11 Essentially what the EPA tells us by enacting

 12 this plan is that they do not truly care about the

 13 underlying health of the people it reports to, or the

 14 environment it supposedly protects. And are in reality

 15 willing to spend the hard-earned money of the citizens

 16 of Utah just to improve the visibility of the properties

 17 they control.

 18 The proposed plan will require to spend nearly

 19 700 million dollars. Rocky Mountain Power, the owner of

 20 the power plants in question, has a customer base of

 21 approximately 83,000 households. The Federal

 22 Implementation Plan, if forced on us, will cost each of

 23 these households $8,434. This hurts every citizen of

 24 that system, especially the low and fixed income

 25 families. And for what?
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 1 The EPA states in their own plans that there

 2 will be less than one deciview on average of

 3 improvement, which is not even noticeable to the human

 4 eye. The bottom line is the federal government is

 5 forcing the rate payers of Utah to pay a great cost for

 6 something that we cannot even see.

 7 As an outdoor enthusiast and someone whose

 8 livelihood is based on energy, I feel that something

 9 does need to be done about pollution in this state, but

 10 not just in Class 1 areas, not just for visibility and

 11 not at a cost of $8,434 per household.

 12 If this plan had any chance of marked

 13 improvement and was aimed at the health and wellbeing of

 14 our environment and our people, I would support it. But

 15 because the benefit does not match the cost and comes at

 16 the expense of so many of us, I highly encourage the EPA

 17 to approve the State Implementation Plan in its

 18 entirety.

 19 (Applause).

 20 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Jeremiah

 21 Armstrong.

 22 JEREMIAH ARMSTRONG: My name's Jeremiah

 23 Armstrong. I'm an environmental engineer. I've got a

 24 bachelor's and master's degree in wildlife and wildlands

 25 management. I'm currently employed as an environmental
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 1 engineer. I have a bachelor's and master's degree in

 2 wildlife and wild lands conservation. And I want to say

 3 first of all, that I support, fully support and

 4 encourage the approval of the State of Utah's SIP plan

 5 as presented and as partially implemented.

 6 Second, the EPA's insistence on installation

 7 of SCR technology at the Huntington and Hunter plants is

 8 essentially an implementation of both options that have

 9 been presented, as the plants have already implemented

 10 the state's requirement and have seen significant and

 11 sufficient reductions in PM10, SO2 and NOx.

 12 Third, I would like to point out, and get into

 13 the weeds a little bit, that the main justification for

 14 the EPA's proposed takeover of the Regional Haze Plan

 15 from the state is based on the 98 percentile deciview

 16 impact at the Class 1 air sheds in question. This was

 17 the only measure which the state's plan didn't show

 18 significant improvement over the EPA's BART baseline.

 19 Now, deciview is new to me until a few days

 20 ago. But a deciview is a unit of measure of the

 21 transmission of light through the air. One deciview

 22 correlates to the relevant change the human eye can

 23 actually perceive. Using information provided in the

 24 docket folder for this proposed action, which is tables

 25 H.5 through H.8, six of the nine Class 1 areas have
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 1 substantially less than 1.0 deciview model improvement

 2 on the worst of days.

 3 At Canyonlands, the most impacted area in the

 4 model, the sum of the model improvements for all the

 5 proposed power units is only 2.3 deciviews on the very

 6 worst day of the year. These occur primarily in the

 7 winter months when park visitorship is fairly low.

 8 In the EPA's proposed action, which is

 9 installing SCR technology at the Hunter and Huntington

 10 plants, the average improvement using the BART baseline

 11 over the state's BART alternative, is a paltry 0.14

 12 deciviews, .14 of what the human eye can see.

 13 We are asked to foot the bill for 700 million

 14 dollars for a assumed modeled improvement that is not

 15 even perceptible to the human eye, and has zero impact

 16 on human health.

 17 Again, I recommend and fully support the

 18 state's SIP plan and recommend that the EPA focus on

 19 issues that actually impact the health and welfare of

 20 the citizens of the United States, rather than push

 21 political agenda. Thank you.

 22 (Applause).

 23 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Jamie Riccobono.

 24 JAMIE RICCOBONO: Good afternoon. My name is

 25 Jamie Riccobono, J-A-M-I-E, R-I-C-C-O-B-O-N-O. I am the
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 1 executive director for the American Lung Association in

 2 Utah, and thank you for this opportunity.

 3 I am here today to testify against the current

 4 state plan and in favor of revising it to include

 5 pollution control measures for Rocky Mountain Power's

 6 Hunter and Huntington coal-fired power plants. These

 7 pollution control measures will have the greatest

 8 benefit for overall public health. And it isn't just

 9 NOx that we're worried about.

 10 The American Lung Association in Utah works

 11 very hard to improve lung health and prevent lung

 12 disease. And we know that climate change can harm

 13 public health through degraded air quality, wild fires,

 14 drought, heat waves and more.

 15 We also know that climate change worsens the

 16 burden of the 57,800 children and 177,000 adults that

 17 have asthma in Utah. According to the 2015 state of the

 18 air report for the American Lung Association, the Salt

 19 Lake County area ranked at the seventh most polluted

 20 city in the country for short-term particle pollution,

 21 followed by Logan, Utah in the eighth position. Uintah

 22 County ranked seventh most polluted county for ozone,

 23 and Duchesne, Utah, ranked as the 15th most polluted

 24 county for ozone.

 25 Ozone pollution, also known as smog, is
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 1 dangerous and sometimes even lethal. It can send people

 2 to the emergency room and even cause premature death.

 3 High ozone levels can impact anyone's health, but some

 4 groups are particularly vulnerable to the health harms

 5 from ozone, including children, the elderly, people with

 6 asthma and other lung diseases, people with heart

 7 disease and people who work and exercise outdoors, as

 8 well as people who have low incomes.

 9 Low income communities have suffered the

 10 consequences of pollution exposures from our nation's

 11 coal-fired power plants for far too long. They have

 12 lived near these plants where they have breathed the

 13 worse pollution, including toxic emissions like arsenic,

 14 lead, and carcinogens like benzene spewed into their

 15 air.

 16 They are suffering more from what climate

 17 change brings since research shows that air pollution

 18 disproportionately harms poorer humans, in part because

 19 they are more likely to have diseases like asthma.

 20 Public health is our number one priority.

 21 Everyone deserves the right to breathe clean air.

 22 Everyone. That is why the American Lung Association is

 23 in favor of revising the state plan to include pollution

 24 control measures for Rocky Mountain Power's Hunter and

 25 Huntington coal-fired power plants. Thank you.
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 1 (Applause).

 2 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Melanie McCoard.

 3 MELANIE McCOARD: I'd like to talk to you a

 4 little bit about process. I am from Provo. Provo has

 5 its own municipal power company. We are a member of

 6 UMPA, U-M-P-A, Utah Municipal Power Agency, the largest

 7 municipal power agency in the state. UMPA owns part of

 8 the Hunter plant, a small interest in it. We also buy a

 9 great deal of our power from both Deseret Transmission

 10 and also PacifiCorp.

 11 UMPA is the agency which is tasked to keep the

 12 residents who use their power, UMPA's power, informed

 13 about what's going on. That never happens.

 14 UMPA recently passed an IRP for five years.

 15 They had a public hearing about the kind of money that

 16 was going to be spent improving both the Hunter plants

 17 and the Bonanza plant out in the Uintah Basin, and as

 18 far as I know, I am the only person in all of Utah

 19 Valley that read it, that IRP. UMPA's policy is to fly

 20 under the radar.

 21 You have got a group of citizens here who are

 22 very willing and ready and eager to participate. But

 23 there are hundreds of thousands of energy users in Utah

 24 Valley, the cities of Provo, Spanish Fork, Salem, Nephi,

 25 Manti and Levan, who buy power through UMPA and have
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 1 virtually no say in how that money is spent or the kind

 2 of policy decisions that are made.

 3 The mayor of Provo, Mayor John Curtis, is the

 4 board of directors -- is the chairman of the board of

 5 directors of UMPA. He is in a position to have some

 6 policy making power. But we don't get any press

 7 coverage. We don't get any information. We don't get

 8 any notification that there is public hearing occurring.

 9 And so the process that you are hearing today,

 10 there are a lot of coal miners and there are a lot of

 11 environmentalists, but you are not hearing from the rank

 12 and file energy users. Especially not in Utah County.

 13 Especially not in those seven cities. Because we depend

 14 totally upon that agency, UMPA, to inform us.

 15 They are supposed to be doing public outreach.

 16 Never happens. So I very strongly encourage and

 17 recommend that you hold additional hearings in Utah

 18 County. I know it's hard for you to come from wherever

 19 it is that you are located. But you need to come down

 20 and hold an additional hearing in Provo especially for

 21 UMPA users, power users.

 22 We own a publicly held power company. We own

 23 an interest in the Hunter plant, and we should have much

 24 more opportunity. There are two of us, I believe, here

 25 from Provo today. Please give us an opportunity.
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 1 Please come. Thanks.

 2 (Applause).

 3 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you,

 4 Ms. McCoard. Joe Brinton.

 5 JOE BRINTON: My name is Joe Brinton. J-O-E,

 6 B-R-I-N-T-O-N. I come here today representing the coal

 7 industry, but I want to speak more on behalf of what I

 8 feel as a citizen and as a father of six children. I'll

 9 start with a story of my 10-year-old son.

 10 He is in the cub scouts, and we were talking

 11 recently for a citizenship badge about the rule of law.

 12 And the example I used is, if you are going 35 miles

 13 down -- 35 miles an hour down a road that's posted 35,

 14 and a policeman pulls you over, he doesn't have the

 15 right to give you a speeding ticket for obeying the law

 16 if he interprets the law different than is written.

 17 What it has to do with today's discussion is

 18 that if the state of Utah is complying with the law,

 19 they should be allowed to comply with the law. The rule

 20 of law says that we need to be able to depend upon the

 21 laws that are written and not take them as willy-nilly

 22 interpretations of that law.

 23 I'll tell a second story about my son. He

 24 always asks for more. If we give him one jelly bean, he

 25 asks for another. And if we give him yet another he
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 1 will always ask for another. And finally we say, "When

 2 is it going to stop?"

 3 I bring this up because this has a lot to do

 4 with a lot of the recent environmental action against

 5 the fossil fuel industry. If we give a little, they ask

 6 for more. If they give a little more, they continue to

 7 ask for more. The question is, when is it going to

 8 stop? At what point will we satisfy their requirements?

 9 And I urge you to consider that, because I

 10 think there may not be an answer to that. I think there

 11 may not be a final point that they are trying to get at.

 12 The third story I will tell about my son is,

 13 he always thinks he has the answer to everything. And I

 14 warn him that if the answer is easy, if somebody's told

 15 you the answer is really easy, it's just that simple,

 16 you might ought to double-think that. You might ought

 17 to question their logic.

 18 If haze reduction were just as easy as putting

 19 in SCRs, we'd have done it a long time ago. If it were

 20 just that effective as we've heard it said, that if we

 21 put in SCR and all the haze would be gone from the

 22 national parks forever, we would have done it a long

 23 time ago. It's not as simple as that, of course.

 24 So I urge all of you who are in the position

 25 of considering this, to keep those points in mind that I
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 1 advise my son. That it's -- if someone tells you that

 2 it's a simple answer, you probably ought to double-check

 3 that.

 4 So in case it wasn't made clear, I support the

 5 State's Implementation Plan, and I encourage you to do

 6 the same. Thank you.

 7 (Applause).

 8 HEARING OFFICER: Matt Romsell, It's R-O-M, I

 9 think it's an S, E-L-L. Matt Romsell. Geneva Lawrence.

 10 Geneva Lawrence. Jim Ireland.

 11 RICH MYLOTT: He's on his way in. Jim's here.

 12 JIM IRELAND: Hi. Good afternoon and thank

 13 you for allowing us the opportunity to address this

 14 important issue. My name is Jim Ireland. I'm the Utah

 15 State Court agent for the National Park Service and the

 16 superintendent of the Timpanogos Cave National Monument.

 17 In June of 2015, the National Park Service submitted

 18 extensive formal comments and analysis in this matter.

 19 We appreciate your consideration of them as you

 20 carefully consider Utah's proposed State Implementation

 21 Plan.

 22 This is a complex legal and technical subject.

 23 I have great appreciation for the challenges you face,

 24 and the EPA, the State of Utah and the industry for that

 25 matter, addressing this problem of regional haze. As
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 1 the previous speaker said, he took the words out of my

 2 mouth, if there were a simple and easy solution, we

 3 would have done it long ago.

 4 Since 1916, a hundred years this August, the

 5 National Park Service has been dedicated to the mission

 6 given to us by the American people, including everyone

 7 in this room, to protect these areas unimpaired, for the

 8 enjoyment of this and future generations.

 9 Congress fully recognized and amplified the

 10 significance of these areas in 1977 when it amended the

 11 Clean Air Act to prior program for protecting

 12 visibility, specifically in national parks and

 13 wilderness areas.

 14 Early parks were often compared to islands

 15 protected by their isolation. But today we recognize

 16 that these precious areas are constantly impacted by

 17 things outside of our boundaries and our control,

 18 notably for today's purposes, air.

 19 The EPA in this matter absolutely shares the

 20 mission of the National Park Service of protecting our

 21 national parks unimpaired for future generations.

 22 Clearly, this is not just a technical engineering

 23 problem. Any approach to reducing haze will have

 24 social, political and economic implications, as

 25 evidenced by all the people in the room and outside the
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 1 room.

 2 So we know that our people will speak to

 3 public health concerns, technical analyses of the

 4 proposals or other perspectives.

 5 I would like to briefly address parks, tourism

 6 and economic impacts associated with this issue. Others

 7 have spoken to this already, but tourism is a

 8 significant contributor to the overall economy of Utah.

 9 In 2013, tourists did spend 7.5 billion dollars in the

 10 state of Utah, resulting in 1 billion dollars of

 11 estimated revenue at the state and local tax levels, 3.7

 12 billion in total towards related wages and the

 13 employment of approximately 132,000 people.

 14 The National Park Service estimates that in

 15 2014, Utah park visitors alone spent approximately 730

 16 million in our local gateway communities directly

 17 supporting 12,600 jobs and 376 million in labor income.

 18 That year saw 10.5 million recreational visits in Utah's

 19 national park.

 20 But this past year, 2015, that number grew by

 21 12 percent with a record breaking 11,800,000

 22 recreational visitors. Increased visitation will only

 23 increase this economic impact.

 24 It's notable that much of this increase can be

 25 directly attributed to the recent magnified marketing
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 1 campaign by Utah State Office of Tourism. The state has

 2 brilliantly capitalized on the scenic beauty of its

 3 natural parks in this highly successful, award-winning

 4 campaign with images of Delicate Arch and other iconic

 5 Utah park scenes everywhere from magazine ads, to the

 6 sides of taxicabs. This scenery clearly has economic

 7 value which must be considered in the evaluation of

 8 these proposals.

 9 I am joined today by superintendents of four

 10 of the five parks. They will speak to their parks

 11 individually and the specific impact of this proposal on

 12 those parks.

 13 I know that the State of Utah shares our

 14 concern over air quality in general. It's already been

 15 identified as one of the key issues in the 2016

 16 legislative session which opened yesterday. It only

 17 makes sense for the tourism industry and the agencies

 18 that promote it to do everything possible to reduce haze

 19 and increase visibility of our beautiful scenery.

 20 The EPA must pursue the course of action with

 21 the greatest reasonable progress possible to this end.

 22 In fact, the EPA notes in its overview of the proposed

 23 action in the December 16 Federal Register letter,

 24 "Several of the metrics in the state analyses do not

 25 appear to support a conclusion that the BART alternative
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 1 achieves greater reasonable progress."

 2 I respectfully support your proposal to

 3 disapprove the BART alternative and go with Option 2 if

 4 that what is what your analysis truly finds provides the

 5 greatest protection for our national parks. Thank you.

 6 (Applause).

 7 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Fred Armstrong.

 8 FRED ARMSTRONG: Good afternoon. Thank you

 9 for the opportunity to speak. My name is Fred

 10 Armstrong, Division Chief for Natural and Cultural

 11 Resources At Zion National Park.

 12 Zion was the first national park unit

 13 established in the state of Utah, over 100 years ago,

 14 initially as national monument and later elevated to

 15 national park status. Excerpts from legislation cite

 16 that park lands were established "for the benefit and

 17 enjoyment of the people," and speak of the superlative,

 18 "brilliantly colored strata and remarkable canyons with

 19 highly ornate and beautifully colored walls."

 20 Regional haze threatens the scenic values and

 21 the associated visitor experiences that are fundamental

 22 to the establishment and purposes of the park. On clear

 23 days, visitors at high elevation viewpoints are not only

 24 rewarded with stunning contrasts in colors and textures

 25 as they peer into the canyons, but land forms over 70
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 1 miles in distant on the Colorado Plateau are

 2 discernible.

 3 On moderately hazy days, hikers to the popular

 4 destination of Observation Point on the rim of Zion

 5 Canyon can barely see the outline of Canyon Mountain, a

 6 mere 13 miles in distant, while the intensity of the hue

 7 in canyon walls is diminished to drab oranges and grays.

 8 Air quality monitoring at Zion from the year

 9 2000 to the present indicates that visibility and

 10 clarity of distant scenic views are impaired by

 11 human-induced haze approximately 80 percent of the time,

 12 as compared to the annual average level of

 13 natural-induced haze.

 14 Diminished visibility does not equate solely

 15 to the spoiled vistas, but the altered air chemistry

 16 includes elevated ozone, which damages sensitive plants

 17 such as quaking Aspen forests, and nitrogen oxide that

 18 causes nitrogen deposition to soils. This atmospheric

 19 nitrogen deposition stimulates growth of nonnative

 20 invasive grasses that can contribute to the catastrophic

 21 wildfires that we have experienced in recent years and

 22 also allows them to out compete native vegetation.

 23 Airborne toxins including mercury are

 24 deposited with rain and snow and are then accumulated in

 25 the organisms in the area's reproductive and
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 1 neurological systems.

 2 From 2008 to 2012, a USGS sampling in Zion of

 3 speckled dace, a small native fish consumed as prey,

 4 showed mercury concentrations that exceed levels

 5 recommended for human consumption. And at this level

 6 they are considered unhealthful for fish and wildlife

 7 that prey on them.

 8 The state of Utah clearly values and derives

 9 economic benefit from the millions of domestic and

 10 international visitors who come to the area to

 11 experience our world class wonders. More than 3.6

 12 million visitors were drawn to Zion in 2015. Visitors

 13 expect to immerse themselves in the iconic landscapes

 14 promoted in coffee table books, travel posters and

 15 calendar photographs. These visitors contribute 233

 16 million dollars annually to the local economy around

 17 Zion National Park.

 18 The managers at Zion National Park urge the

 19 EPA to take measures to ensure that Utah's regional haze

 20 State Implementation Plan be one that's to remedy

 21 existing visibility impairment and restore air quality

 22 for the benefit of local residents, park visitors and

 23 the protection of park fundamental resources and values.

 24 Thank you.

 25 (Applause).
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 1 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you,

 2 Mr. Armstrong. Leah McGinnis.

 3 LEAH McGINNIS: Hi. I'm Leah McGinnis. I am

 4 Superintendent at Capitol Reef National Park. Capitol

 5 Reef National Park has been described in many different

 6 ways. However, none are as eloquent as geologist

 7 Clarence Dutton, whose first impression from atop

 8 Boulder Mountain overlooking the valley in 1877 were

 9 described as follows:

 10 "It is a sublime panorama. The heart of inner

 11 plateau country is spread out before us in a bird's eye

 12 view. It is a maze of the cliffs and terraces, red and

 13 white domes, rock platforms gashed with profound

 14 canyons, burning plains barren even of sage -- all

 15 glowing with bright color and flooded with blazing

 16 sunlight. It is the extreme of desolation, the blankest

 17 of solitude, a superlative desert."

 18 The Capitol Reef National Park is a geologic

 19 park with striking features of scientific interest

 20 including the scenic Waterpocket Fold. Expanding for

 21 nearly 80 miles, the Waterpocket Fold is recognized as

 22 the largest exposed monocline in North America.

 23 This and the other remarkable geologic

 24 features and formations of Capitol Reef National Park,

 25 such as the Temple of the Sun and Moon in Cathedral
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 1 Valley, are widely recognized for their scenic value.

 2 Visitors often ask where they can go to get the best

 3 view of these iconic features as the ruggedness of the

 4 country prevents travel through much of the area.

 5 Visitors to some of the park's scenic

 6 overlooks are astonished to clearly see the La Sal or

 7 Abajo Mountains over a hundred miles distant. To be

 8 able to see such a distance with clarity is an

 9 exceedingly rare experience for most visitors, and it

 10 can be an intensely emotional experience to realize how

 11 much the boundaries of the world have expanded.

 12 Last year 988,516 visitors traveled to Capitol

 13 Reef National Park to experience what might be an

 14 unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime experience for some.

 15 This is an 18 percent increase over previous years'

 16 visitations, for a third year in a row, and we certainly

 17 expect to see the same increase in 2016 as we celebrate

 18 the National Park Service's 100th anniversary.

 19 Unfortunately, monitoring data indicates the

 20 visibility and the clarity of distant views are impaired

 21 by anthropogenic haze approximately 79 percent of the

 22 time, relative to the annual average level of natural

 23 haze. 79 percent of the time our visitors do not

 24 experience those extraordinary views to which clear and

 25 clean air is essential.
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 1 Capitol Reef National Park is a Class 1 area

 2 under the Clean Air Act and must be managed responsibly

 3 to protect air quality related values, including

 4 visibility. Clean, clear air contributes to the

 5 brilliant night skies that make Capitol Reef National

 6 Park an international Dark Sky Park.

 7 Capitol Reef offers a wilderness opportunity

 8 in 82 percent of the parks 241,000 acres. As emphasized

 9 in the Wilderness Act of 1964, wilderness values and

 10 purposes, "shall be devoted to the public purposes of

 11 recreational, scenic, scientific, educational,

 12 conservational and historical use."

 13 Expansive vistas extending to far horizons,

 14 vivid night skies, superb scenic views and exceptional

 15 wilderness experience; clean, clear air is paramount to

 16 each of these, and we owe it our visiting public.

 17 Therefore, Capitol Reef National Park supports

 18 installation of additional NOx controls. Thank you very

 19 much.

 20 (Applause).

 21 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you Miss

 22 McGinnis. Kate Cannon.

 23 KATE CANNON: Hello. I'm Kate Cannon. I am

 24 the superintendent for the National Parks Service at

 25 Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, and I'd like to
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 1 speak today simply about the essential role of the

 2 clean, clear air at the national parks, particularly to

 3 Arches and to Canyonlands National Parks, which on a

 4 clear day offer some of the most spectacular scenic

 5 views in the country, and which are now among those in

 6 Utah most adversely affected by regional haze.

 7 Arches National Park offers sweeping views of

 8 striking colorful geological features in the foreground,

 9 against the towering La Sal Mountains in the distance.

 10 A scene full of color and contrast, but now, often

 11 fading behind a gray veil of haze.

 12 Canyonlands National Park offers stunning long

 13 views across astonishing, varied and colorful landscapes

 14 on all sides, which now fade and disappear behind the

 15 haze. Currently visitors to Arches and to Canyonlands

 16 see hazy views to some degree much of the time, we

 17 estimate perhaps over 80 percent of the time.

 18 Modeling indicates that NOx emissions from the

 19 Hunter and the Huntington power plants cause that

 20 impairment about 20 percent of the time it exists, and

 21 contribute to that impairment most of the rest of the

 22 time.

 23 So looking to the future, with the

 24 installation of selective catalyst reduction on the four

 25 units of Hunter and Huntington, we would expect to see
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 1 substantial improvement, also shown in the modeling,

 2 with visibility impairment reduced by about 60 percent

 3 on the worst days, and significantly reduced on most if

 4 not all of the other days.

 5 But at what cost? If we look at what costs

 6 surrounding states have undertaken and consider to be

 7 cost effective for similar installations, the cost of

 8 SCR for Hunter and Huntington are similar to those costs

 9 of the surrounding states. And those states found those

 10 costs justified in the light of the substantial

 11 visibility benefits they offered.

 12 SCR at Hunter and Huntington would provide

 13 substantial visibility benefits at a reasonable cost,

 14 while the proposed alternative provides no improvement

 15 over the current conditions. Visibility impairment

 16 would be reduced by 60 percent with SCR installation on

 17 those worst days compared to no improvement at all with

 18 the proposed alternative.

 19 We have a chance here to clear up the air for

 20 all of us, and to restore lost visibility to Utah's

 21 national parks. So we recommend that EPA take that

 22 step. Require installation of NOx reduction at Hunter

 23 and Huntington and clear the air. Thank you.

 24 (Applause).

 25 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Mr. Parkins, do you
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 1 want -- you deferred. Would you still like to speak?

 2 RICK PARKINS: I'd like to speak before five

 3 if I could.

 4 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Yes. So why don't you

 5 come up now.

 6 RICK PARKINS: My name is Rick Parkins.

 7 That's R-I-C-K, P-A-R-K-I-N-S. I'd like to thank you

 8 for the opportunity to address you today and I

 9 appreciate the chance to be included in your decision.

 10 I want you to know right up front that I

 11 support the implementation of the state SIP, without

 12 rejecting any portion of the plan.

 13 I work in the coal industry, and have been

 14 proud to do my part to provide coal to these powers

 15 plants, and reliable low cost energy to PacifiCorp's

 16 customers. I worked with some of the safest and most

 17 productive coal miners in the world, and they are people

 18 that you can trust. When they say something, and they

 19 agree to something, you can count on them to follow

 20 through. I hope that the EPA would aspire to those

 21 values.

 22 My children live and work in Utah County, in

 23 the growing information technology sector on Wasatch

 24 Front. I believe that the growth in this field is

 25 directly associated with reliable, low cost electricity
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 1 available on the Wasatch Front.

 2 Increased electricity costs will increase the

 3 possibility that these jobs will no longer be as likely

 4 to stay in the region. Big data is big energy. The NSA

 5 facility did not locate at Point of the Mountains

 6 because of the available resources from the colleges.

 7 It located there because that is a low cost area for

 8 electric power.

 9 So it's not just the coal miners of Carbon and

 10 Emery County and Sevier County that are impacted by this

 11 decision.

 12 I have enjoyed the beautiful vistas and clear

 13 air of eastern Utah over the past 30 years. And I have

 14 always felt that the Huntington power station has a

 15 remarkably small impact on the environment.

 16 Have you been there? Have you seen it? In

 17 the summer there are many days that no plume of any sort

 18 is visible. In the winter, it appears to me that the

 19 only plume there is steam, as was evidenced by the

 20 picture of the Hunter power station. Huntington should

 21 be the poster child for environmentally friendly power

 22 as it currently stands.

 23 I drive I-70 probably more than anybody in

 24 this room. I am back and forth on that highway all the

 25 time. The vista of the La Sals is something that I
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 1 greatly appreciate. I have never driven that highway

 2 when I felt that vista was impacted in any way by the

 3 Huntington and Hunter power stations.

 4 I have seen the influence of fires in

 5 California. I have seen the influence of what I believe

 6 is pollution from LA, but I have not seen the impact

 7 from those power stations.

 8 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Your time has expired.

 9 RICK PARKINS: Oh, I'm sorry. I have one

 10 quick thing. I support the State Implementation Plan as

 11 submitted. I believe it will achieve the reductions

 12 required in the federal plan. Forcing the federal plan

 13 on the state without consideration of the state sounds

 14 to me like it's autocratic and insensitive.

 15 And forcing the PacifiCorp rate payers to pay

 16 700 million dollars without any real benefit seems

 17 inappropriate. 700 million dollars is a lot of money to

 18 those of us here. It may not be a lot to the federal

 19 government. Thank you.

 20 (Applause).

 21 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: The next person wrote

 22 down Jordan F. Is Jordan F here? Jordan just last name

 23 F initial.

 24 Ronnie Derasary. Ronnie Derasary. If you're

 25 leaving, you need to leave quietly please. We're still
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 1 in session here. Keith Brody, Brady. B-R-A-D-Y maybe.

 2 Keith Brady.

 3 KEITH BRADY: It is Brady, B-R-A-D-Y.

 4 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Sorry about that.

 5 KEITH BRADY: All right. My name is Keith

 6 Brady. I'm a commissioner with Emery County. And I

 7 support the state's implementation plan in its entirety

 8 and ask you to do the same. According to the SIP Rocky

 9 Mountain Power acted in good faith and has met or

 10 exceeded the reduction of particulate matter, SOx and

 11 NOx. They have complied, according to the SIP,

 12 implemented BART bag houses for particulate matters,

 13 scrubbers for SOx, and alternative methods that meet or

 14 exceed BART levels for NOx with low NOx burners and

 15 over-fire air.

 16 Rocky Mountain Power spent about 500 million

 17 dollars to meet or exceed the requirements of the

 18 particulate matter for SOx and NOx emissions. And the

 19 cost to implement the SCRs in the five units is

 20 estimated to be 700 million dollars. The cost is always

 21 passed to the rate payers.

 22 The further reduction of NOx with the SCRs

 23 would not make a visible difference. I have visited the

 24 plants and seen the operations and met with the

 25 employees. They have clean working environment, and the
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 1 employees seem to love their jobs.

 2 The economic impact to the Hunter and

 3 Huntington power plants is a large portion of our

 4 economy in Emery County. The economic impact Rocky

 5 Mountain Power has had to the economy in direct and

 6 indirect jobs is about 800 plus jobs. They have been a

 7 good partner in the area. I mention this because of the

 8 direct and indirect cost to the power plants. Coal is

 9 still the lowest cost producer of energy in our area.

 10 According to the regional health department

 11 there have been no deleterious health effects to the

 12 citizens of Emery County based -- by these power plants

 13 comparing to surrounding counties.

 14 Due to Emery County having these power plants

 15 located within its borders, it would seem logical Emery

 16 County would have the highest haze levels from these

 17 power plants. But our blue skies would say otherwise.

 18 The further you get in the power plant, the more

 19 disbursed the emissions become.

 20 There is no evidence. There is only

 21 speculation, model, and anecdotal information that the

 22 haze over these Class 1 areas comes from Huntington and

 23 Hunter power plants. It seems the majority of the

 24 numbers of the worst haze areas over the Class 1 areas

 25 last year were due to forest fires from California and
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 1 government control burns in Utah.

 2 If those areas want to reduce haze, they

 3 should look at themselves with the numbers of visitors

 4 and car emissions and look at ways to reduce emissions

 5 near the Class 1 areas.

 6 The problem we have is that people making

 7 rules for these areas have never been to these areas. I

 8 am disappointed in the EPA for many reasons by having

 9 their meeting here in Salt Lake. One reason in

 10 particular, by not having the -- this hearing is about

 11 the Hunter and Huntington plants.

 12 Two hours in Emery County would have shown you

 13 and given you firsthand knowledge and witness of our

 14 lack of haze that these power plants produce. The blue

 15 skies in our area is a rule not the exception. And I

 16 will be submitting photos with my remarks later so you

 17 can see them.

 18 And again, I encourage you to support the

 19 State Implementation Plan in its entirety. Thank you.

 20 (Applause).

 21 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Carol Walters.

 22 (Discussion off the record.)

 23 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: We're actually going

 24 to end the hearing for this afternoon, and we will be

 25 back here at six o'clock. So if you filled out a card
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 1 and you haven't spoken yet, you will be first up at six

 2 o'clock. So thank you all for coming. This hearing is

 3 closed.

 4 (Recess from 4:59 p.m. to 6:03 p.m.)

 5 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Good evening,

 6 everyone. We're going to get started. My name is

 7 Elyana Sutin, and I am from the EPA in Denver, Colorado,

 8 and I am presiding over this hearing tonight. I will be

 9 keeping things moving as quickly and as efficiently as

 10 we can so everyone has a chance to speak that would like

 11 to. This hearing is now officially in session.

 12 The subject of tonight's hearing is the

 13 Environmental Protection Agency's co-proposal for Utah's

 14 Regional Haze State Implementation Plan or SIP. Our

 15 rulemaking action co-proposes two different approaches.

 16 The first approach fully approves Utah

 17 Regional Haze SIP addressing the requirements of the

 18 Federal Rules For Regional Haze.

 19 The second approach partially approves and

 20 partially disapproves Utah's Regional Haze SIP,

 21 proposing a Federal Implementation Plan or FIP for those

 22 elements of the SIP for which we are proposing

 23 disapproval. You will hear more detail regarding the

 24 two approaches in the proposed action from Monica

 25 Morales, who is sitting at the table with me
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 1 momentarily.

 2 We ran out of fact sheets, but the fact sheet

 3 can be found on EPA Region 8 website, and this explains

 4 how you may submit written comments on EPA's proposed

 5 action and also gives the Federal Register citation for

 6 the proposed action.

 7 Jasyln Dobrahner is sitting at the back the

 8 room. Jasyln, you want to wave your hand? And she can

 9 assist you with obtaining any information on how to

 10 supply written comments or if you need a registration

 11 card if you wish to speak. I'll explain a bit more

 12 about the registration cards in a moment.

 13 The hearing is a means for EPA to listen to

 14 your comments on the proposed action that has been

 15 published as a Federal Register proposed rule. Before I

 16 turn it over to Monica, let me explain a bit about the

 17 process and a few ground rules.

 18 When EPA takes action on a State

 19 Implementation Plan or a Federal Implementation Plan, it

 20 is required to do so through rulemaking. This

 21 rulemaking is governed by laws passed by Congress. For

 22 SIPs, this is the Administrative Procedures Act. For

 23 FIPs, the Clean Air Act.

 24 In either case, EPA must publish a proposed

 25 rule in the Federal Register, take public comment on the
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 1 proposed rule, and publish a final rule in the Federal

 2 Register after considering the comments. In the case of

 3 a FIP, EPA is also required to conduct a hearing, which

 4 is what we're doing today. After considering all of the

 5 comments, EPA may decide to make changes to the proposed

 6 rule or it may decide to move forward and finalize one

 7 of the approaches in the proposed rule.

 8 We are here tonight to listen to your

 9 comments. We will attempt to answer any clarifying

 10 questions about the process or what's contained in the

 11 proposed action, but we are not here to explain the

 12 basis of the proposed action. The Federal Register

 13 notice does that. We cannot engage in a back and forth

 14 discussion of the proposed action or respond to your

 15 comments during this hearing.

 16 The purpose of the hearing is to receive your

 17 input. We will consider and then respond to all

 18 comments received during the hearing, as well as written

 19 comments in a final Federal Register notice. If you

 20 have already made comments, there is no need to repeat

 21 them today. We are recording our proceeding here

 22 tonight, so be assured that your comments will be

 23 considered.

 24 The court reporter sitting to my left will be

 25 preparing a transcript of tonight's proceeding. That
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 1 will be available to anyone who wants to see it. The

 2 transcript is part of the record, and will be included

 3 in the rulemaking docket. The rulemaking docket is

 4 where EPA collects materials it has considered in the

 5 rulemaking action, including public comments.

 6 The docket is available on the Internet for

 7 review at regulations.gov, or can you view a hard copy

 8 at EPA's Denver office. Specific instructions for

 9 accessing the docket are described in the Federal

 10 Register notice for the proposed rulemaking and on the

 11 fact sheet. The transcript of this hearing will also be

 12 available in the rulemaking docket.

 13 Before we begin taking your comments, first

 14 allow me to take a moment to set the stage; that is, to

 15 explain how the hearing will be run. After I speak,

 16 Monica, who is sitting with me, will explain the details

 17 of the proposed action. She will explain EPA's proposed

 18 action to approve of the state SIP as well as what EPA's

 19 proposing in its FIP based on the Federal Clean Air Act

 20 requirements for regional haze.

 21 I will then call people to speak based on the

 22 registration card that was filled out when you arrived.

 23 I will provide the registration card to the court

 24 reporter to assist in the spelling of your name. Please

 25 spell your name before beginning your remarks. If you
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 1 are reading from a written statement, it would be

 2 helpful, though not required, if you could provide a

 3 copy of your statement to the court reporter or our

 4 staff at the registration table after you have finished

 5 your remarks.

 6 Please speak slowly and clearly so the court

 7 reporter can accurately capture your statement. Also,

 8 there is space on the back of the registration card for

 9 providing short written comments. If you are only here

 10 to observe, there is no need to fill out a registration

 11 card.

 12 We have quite a few people here tonight. I

 13 don't know that everybody wants to speak, but I want to

 14 ensure that everybody has the opportunity to speak about

 15 the proposed action. So in order to do that, I need to

 16 keep people's comments brief, three minutes or less. At

 17 least for now. If we have time at the end, people can

 18 speak more.

 19 Please try to be as succinct and on point as

 20 you can. If I find that we are straying from the topic

 21 at hand, I will interrupt and ask that you please return

 22 to the issue before us. If we have time and everyone

 23 has had the chance to speak, I will allow people to get

 24 back up and finish.

 25 Gail Fallon, sitting to my left, will assist
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 1 me with monitoring speaker times by raising a yellow

 2 card when 30 seconds of time remains and raising a pink

 3 card when time has expired. So that's how we will

 4 proceed.

 5 Next to speak will be Monica Morales, who will

 6 explain the proposed action. Thank you.

 7 MONICA MORALES: Good evening. My name is

 8 Monica Morales. I am the unit chief of the Air Quality

 9 Planning Unit for EPA's Region 8 office in Denver. As

 10 you heard from Ms. Sutin, this hearing concerns EPA's

 11 proposed action on a portion of Utah's Regional Haze

 12 State Implementation Plan that addresses the

 13 requirements pertaining to particulate matter and

 14 nitrogen oxides and visibility impacts those pollutants

 15 have on wilderness areas and national parks, also known

 16 as Class 1 areas under the Regional Haze Rule.

 17 Our proposed action was published in the

 18 Federal Register on January 14th, 2016.

 19 The portion of Utah's Regional Haze State

 20 Implementation Plan or SIP upon which one of EPA's

 21 proposed action is based includes requirements for

 22 specific PacifiCorp's Hunter, Huntington and Carbon

 23 coal-fired power plants. These plants are located in

 24 central Utah. PacifiCorp operates Rocky Mountain Power

 25 in Utah.
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 1 Our January 14th, 2016, rulemaking action

 2 co-propose two different approaches. The first approach

 3 fully approves Utah Regional Haze SIP addressing the

 4 requirements of the Regional Haze Rule under 40 Code of

 5 Federal Regulations 51.309(g). And the second approach

 6 partially approves and partially disapproves Utah's

 7 Regional Haze SIP, proposing a Federal implementation

 8 plan, or FIP, for those elements of the SIP for which we

 9 are proposing disapproval.

 10 Under our first approach, EPA's proposing to

 11 fully approve the two Regional Haze SIP revisions

 12 submitted by Utah in 2015. Specifically, we are

 13 proposing to approve the following:

 14 The state's particulate matter best available

 15 retrofit technology, or BART, determinations for

 16 PacifiCorp's Hunter Units 1 and 2 and Huntington Units 1

 17 and 2, the state's nitrogen oxide BART alternative for

 18 PacifiCorp's Hunter Units 1, 2 and 3, Huntington Units 1

 19 and 2 and Carbon Units 1 and 2, the state's monitoring,

 20 recordkeeping and reporting requirements in part H of

 21 Utah's SIP for the particulate matter BART

 22 determinations and the nitrogen oxide BART alternative.

 23 Under our second approach, we are proposing to

 24 approve only the portions of the state SIP that pertain

 25 to the particulate matter BART and the associated
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 1 particulate matter monitoring, recordkeeping and

 2 reporting requirements for the BART sources. We are

 3 proposing to find that some aspects Utah Regional Haze

 4 SIP are inconsistent with the regulatory and statutory

 5 requirements.

 6 As a result, we are proposing to disapprove

 7 the state's nitrogen oxide BART alternative for

 8 PacifiCorp Hunter Units 1, 2 and 3, Huntington Units 1

 9 and 2 and Carbon Units 1 and 2, and the associated NOx

 10 monitoring, recordkeeping and reporting requirements for

 11 the nitrogen oxide BART alternative.

 12 We are proposing the promulgation of a FIP to

 13 address the deficiencies in those portions of the

 14 state's SIP which we are proposing to disapprove.

 15 The co-proposed FIP includes the following

 16 elements: Nitrogen oxide BART determinations and

 17 emission limits for PacifiCorp's Hunter Units 1 and 2

 18 and Huntington Units 1 and 2 and the associated

 19 monitoring, recordkeeping and reporting requirements

 20 applicable for these four BART units for which there is

 21 a FIP emission limit.

 22 As part of the public comment process, EPA is

 23 specifically requesting that interested parties provide

 24 any additional information or analysis regarding the

 25 proposed action. For example, modeled visibility
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 1 benefits of the BART alternative compared to BART and

 2 whether the interested parties think EPA should consider

 3 options that differ somewhat from the proposed BART

 4 alternative or the BART control technology option which

 5 could be finalized as the FIP if we disapprove the

 6 state's SIP submitted in our final action.

 7 EPA will consider all comments and information

 8 received, including additional options for control

 9 technologies and timing, before issuing a final action.

 10 We anticipate that there will be differing

 11 views regarding the state's BART alternative SIP and

 12 what course of action EPA should take. This is because

 13 of the complex nature of the BART alternative, the

 14 analysis that it supports and consideration of that

 15 analysis under statutory and regulatory framework and

 16 implications of EPA's actions.

 17 Given these considerations, EPA decided to

 18 solicit comments to support either a proposed action to

 19 approve the state's SIP in its entirety or a proposed

 20 action to partially approve and partially disapprove the

 21 state's SIP and propose a FIP.

 22 As is done with other states, EPA would work

 23 with the state on a revised state plan should a partial

 24 disapproval and FIP be finalized. If EPA finalizes our

 25 federal plan and the state finalizes a revised plan that
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 1 adequately addresses regional haze, our federal plan

 2 could be superseded upon approval of the state's revised

 3 plan.

 4 We are accepting written comments for 60 days

 5 after the proposed action was published in the Federal

 6 Register on January 14th, 2016, and written comments

 7 must therefore be received by EPA on or before March

 8 14th, 2016. Your comments are encouraged. We consider

 9 all comments in finalizing our action on the state's

 10 regional haze plan and our federal plan.

 11 Thank you. And we appreciate your attendance

 12 tonight, and I'll turn it back over to Ms. Sutin to call

 13 up our first commenter.

 14 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Okay. When I call

 15 your name, if you can please come to the podium and make

 16 your remarks. Our first speaker will be Kathryn Albury.

 17 KATHRYN ALBURY: My name is Kathryn Albury.

 18 K-A-T-R-H-R-Y-N, A-L-B-U-R-Y. Miss Chairman and EPA

 19 representatives, I thank you for being here today and

 20 listening to the words of a public -- of the public. I

 21 know this has been a long day for you, and you have

 22 heard many of the same ideas over and over again.

 23 Please keep in mind that we are the public speaking.

 24 We, the public are not paid to come here and speak.

 25 Since many of us have divested of our
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 1 interests in fossil fuels, we don't make any money from

 2 these power plants. We are speaking here because we are

 3 truly concerned about air quality in our state.

 4 The power plants in question today are far

 5 away and near the little towns of Huntington and Castle

 6 Dale in the shadow of the Manti-La Sal National Forest

 7 with eight national parks within 85 miles, all with

 8 beautiful vistas.

 9 Unfortunately, they are unable to keep their

 10 air in only Emery County, and with its haze their air

 11 gets blown around until it's spread all over the state

 12 and far beyond. Truly, whatever goes out of the

 13 smokestacks at these two plants goes all over the world

 14 and contributes to the greenhouse effect that is

 15 changing our climate.

 16 Our responsibility here is to protect the

 17 people, the people of Castle Dale and Huntington, the

 18 people on the Wasatch Front, the people of Utah, and the

 19 United States, and indeed the whole world.

 20 I understand there are two plans before you.

 21 One is business as usual. The other adds modern

 22 pollution control devices to these smokestacks. These

 23 are old plants, built in the 1970's well before there

 24 was so much concern about the now well understood health

 25 effects of dirty air.
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 1 These plants are owned by a tangle of mega

 2 corporations, and I'm sure their officers are concerned

 3 about how safety regulation relating to the burning of

 4 coal will damage their businesses. I hope they are just

 5 as worried about how business as usual degrades the

 6 quality of life in Utah and beyond.

 7 But times are changing. So what else is new?

 8 The times are always changing. We know now how to

 9 eliminate some of the health robbing pollutants from

 10 these smokestack emissions. So why not do that?

 11 I would ask that you go the next step and

 12 remove all CO2 emissions. Sadly, I think that is beyond

 13 the scope of today's hearing. I am sure that if the

 14 public were asking for more electricity, these companies

 15 would be glad to gear up and build more plants. This

 16 member of the public is asking for cleaner air.

 17 Hopefully the companies that own Hunter and Huntington

 18 plants would be as responsive to that request.

 19 I ask that you, as the regulatory agency

 20 protecting my best interest, hold them to that. Please

 21 adopt the second plan, the FIP. Thank you for your

 22 patience and your attention.

 23 (Applause).

 24 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Miss

 25 Albury. Next, we can have Carol Walters. Carol
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 1 Walters. Martha Waters. Richard Dillon. Lindon

 2 Emerson. Sandy Hill. Cory MacNulty.

 3 CORY MacNULTY: Thank you for the opportunity

 4 to comment today. I am Cory MacNulty. C-O-R-Y,

 5 M-A-C-N-U-T-L-Y. And I am speaking on behalf of the

 6 National Parks Conservation Association, a nearly

 7 100-year-old organization long committed to the

 8 conservation and protection of our country's national

 9 parks and their cherished resources, and our more than a

 10 million members and supporters across the country.

 11 We see only one real choice of the two options

 12 advanced by the EPA, and that choice is cutting 9,886

 13 tons per year of nitrogen oxide emissions, a 76 percent

 14 reduction from Units 1 and 2 at both Hunter and

 15 Huntington. The state's best available retrofit

 16 technology eligible sources under the Clean Air Act.

 17 Everyone from PacifiCorp to the state and EPA

 18 to the National Park Service and other public interest

 19 groups like NPCA acknowledge that pollution from Hunter

 20 and Huntington contribute to haze in eight national

 21 parks, including Utah's mighty five, Arches,

 22 Canyonlands, Bryce, Capitol Reef and Zion, as well as

 23 Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde and Black Canyon of the

 24 Gunnison National Park.

 25 This is pollution that obscures up to 87 miles
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 1 of the landscape that should be visible through Delicate

 2 Arch at Arches National Park, and from the Island in the

 3 Sky viewpoint at Canyonlands.

 4 PacifiCorp should be held to the same

 5 standards as over 250 similar facilities across the

 6 country which are required to operate selective

 7 catalytic reduction to cut nitrogen oxide pollution.

 8 We ask the EPA to reject the state's

 9 alternative proposal. It would cut zero

 10 visibility-impairing pollutants from two of the state's

 11 largest coal plants polluting our parks and unjustly

 12 claim that pollution reductions already achieved by the

 13 closure of the Carbon plant are a victory for our future

 14 and victory for the parks. The alternative is a lost

 15 opportunity, not a victory.

 16 With the concentration of extraordinary

 17 national parks in Utah that draw over 10 million

 18 visitors from around the world, and that add 730 million

 19 dollars to Utah's economy, we urge the EPA to require

 20 the same level of pollution controls on Hunter and

 21 Huntington as our neighboring states, and bring months

 22 of the additional cleaner air days to southwestern

 23 national parks.

 24 Now, if I may, I would like to add a more

 25 personal comment as a mother and as someone who loves
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 1 our national parks. Last year my family, including my

 2 two young sons, took spring break in Capitol Reef

 3 National Park, where we journeyed down Notom road, up

 4 the Burr Trail Switchbacks and hiked to an overlook

 5 along the Upper Muley Twist Canyon.

 6 The goal of that adventure was to see the

 7 length of the Waterpocket Fold, but when we reached the

 8 top, the expansive view was cut by haze, and the vivid

 9 layers of colors were muddy.

 10 I know that the coal pollution alone didn't

 11 cause that level of haze. But with Capitol Reef less

 12 than 85 miles from Hunter and Huntington, it was likely

 13 a contributing factor. We have the opportunity and the

 14 ability right now to significantly cut pollution from

 15 these coal plants and remove it from the equation.

 16 Living in Utah, my children will probably have

 17 another chance to see Capitol Reef from that vantage

 18 point, hopefully on a clear day. But many visitors only

 19 get one chance to create those memories. Thank you.

 20 (Applause).

 21 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you,

 22 Ms. MacNulty. Catherine Sharpsteen.

 23 CATHERINE SHARPSTEEN: Hello. I am Catherine

 24 Sharpsteen. Do you need me to spell my name?

 25 C-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E, S-H-A-R-P-S-T-E-E-N. I can't pretend
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 1 to have technical expertise, But I do know what it's

 2 like to view Utah's world class scenery through haze.

 3 When haze blurs those vistas, we have lost something

 4 vital, not just to our enjoyment, but to the very

 5 wellbeing of ourselves and of the land itself.

 6 I don't have expertise, but I do hold the

 7 value that short-term profits should never be considered

 8 over long-term health.

 9 I don't have expertise, but I do know that if

 10 there exists a technical solution for this pollution

 11 problem, such as selective catalytic reduction, it

 12 should be used. Better yet it would be to find an

 13 alternative to coal-fired power production. It may be

 14 more expensive, but we are worth it.

 15 I am taking your time to say this not because

 16 it's a unique thought, but because, for every commenter

 17 like me, there are many others who feel the same way,

 18 and -- but aren't able to comment.

 19 I am advocating for the most stringent

 20 controls on air pollution in coal-fired power plants on

 21 behalf of all of us. Thank you.

 22 (Applause).

 23 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Cindy

 24 King.

 25 CINDY KING: My name is Cindy king. K-I-N-G.
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 1 I am for the second option, the Federal Implementation

 2 Plan for Regional Haze for three reasons. Thirty years

 3 ago my husband was a Division of Air Quality official,

 4 sat on a panel called the integrated vistas for

 5 protection of our national parks. The state of Utah did

 6 nothing.

 7 Second reason. NOx is a precursor of haze and

 8 ozone and secondary particulates. If NOx is present,

 9 CO2 is present, known as a climate chaos compound as

 10 part of the public trust doctrine that is incorporated

 11 in the Clean Air Act.

 12 Three, the only cost looked at was Rocky

 13 Mountain coal power plants, between 7 and 8 million

 14 dollars. No other costs was looked at like tourism,

 15 Native America culture sites, public health or

 16 environmental degradation.

 17 Thank you so very much for your time.

 18 (Applause).

 19 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Jen Colby.

 20 Jen Colby. Pat Clay. Pat Clay. Jill Merritt.

 21 JILL MERRITT: Thank you for creating this

 22 public process for us, and for allowing me to speak on a

 23 nontechnical way from my heart.

 24 I am a product of what I think of very fondly

 25 as the Utah public education system. More than 50 years
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 1 ago, I sat with my classmates in bolted-down wooden

 2 desks at Irving Junior High and learned about Utah

 3 history. Miss Law was our teacher.

 4 She taught us about the geography of Lake

 5 Bonneville, the people who lived here before the

 6 pioneers came, the importance of achieving statehood,

 7 and the meaning of citizenship in a state, part of a

 8 larger entity, the United States of America.

 9 Other classes and other teachers have taught

 10 me that people belong to the land, not the other way

 11 around. That beautiful landscapes in our national parks

 12 need to be preserved for all people to enjoy, that the

 13 air over the parks can be protected from the dirty haze

 14 produced by coal plants. And that working within public

 15 structures can succeed in pulling humanity back from the

 16 very brink of disaster. I hope so. I guess we'll see.

 17 (Applause).

 18 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Ian Wade. Ian Wade.

 19 Allison Jones. Allison Jones. Margie McCloy. Margie

 20 McCloy. Victoria Sethunya. Did I say that right?

 21 Victoria Sethunya. Helen -- or excuse me, Helene Cuomo.

 22 Helene Cuomo. Jerry Urlacher.

 23 JERRY URLACHER: Close.

 24 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Sorry.

 25 MR. URLACHER: Hello. My name is Jerry
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 1 Urlacher. That's J-E-R-R-Y, U-R-L-A-C-H-E-R. I came to

 2 Utah in 1973, that's 43 years ago, after being released

 3 from active duty having served in the U.S. Navy in

 4 Vietnam. I came to Utah to pursue my education at Utah

 5 State University, and I have a degree in wilderness

 6 recreation management.

 7 And I came to Utah to enjoy this world class

 8 skiing and to spend time in Utah's spectacular

 9 wilderness, backpacking, hiking, canyoneering, outdoor

 10 pursuits that I didn't have much of an opportunity to

 11 pursue while growing up in rural North Dakota. And I

 12 have been exploring Utah's national parks and wilderness

 13 for almost 43 years, and I continue to do so in my

 14 current retirement.

 15 And over those years, I have observed a

 16 deterioration of the air quality. Fewer crystal clear

 17 days and an increase in the haze with skies that have

 18 become a little less blue. I feel that pollution from

 19 coal-fired power plants threatens our skies, our health

 20 and our livelihoods.

 21 Here in Utah we pride ourselves on the beauty

 22 of our world-renowned national parks. Visitors to our

 23 parks come from all across the world, and adds some 12

 24 billion dollars to the state's economy which supports

 25 about 130,000 jobs. And that's about one out of every
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 1 10 jobs in our state.

 2 Unfortunately though, now too many of our

 3 visitors aren't greeted by those amazing vistas and

 4 clear skies they came for, but by vistas that are now

 5 partially obscured by haze pollution from coal-fired

 6 power plants.

 7 I urge the EPA to implement the Clean Parks

 8 Plan and require cuts of coal-fired power plant

 9 pollution by requiring installation of industry-accepted

 10 pollution controls, SCR, pollution controls that are

 11 already in use at more than 250 coal burning U.S. power

 12 plants.

 13 We cannot wait until 2060, that's 2060, to

 14 protect our national parks and wilderness areas to

 15 return them to natural visibility. Thank you.

 16 (Applause).

 17 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Next Ashley Soltysiak.

 18 Is that wrong? S-O-L-T-Y-S-I-A-K. Nick Mills. Nick

 19 Mills. Mark Compton. Mark Compton. Steve Moore.

 20 Steve Moore. Jay Marple.

 21 JAY MARPLE: Good evening. My name is Jay

 22 Marple. J-A-Y, M-A-R-P-L-E. I work in the Price and

 23 live in Price, Utah area. I am general manager for

 24 Savage. You know, we're a Utah-based transportation and

 25 logistics company with 70 years experience in that area,
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 1 and we have more than 200 operating locations across

 2 North America and globally.

 3 We have worked closely with PacifiCorp and

 4 Bowie Resource Partners and have a long history of

 5 providing supply chain solutions for our customers'

 6 power plant and coal mining operations in Utah. Savage

 7 agrees with the position taken by PacifiCorp and Bowie

 8 on this issue.

 9 We believe the Utah Department of

 10 Environmental Quality Regional Haze State Implementation

 11 Plan provides a greater reasonable progress towards

 12 visibility goals at a significantly lower cost than does

 13 the EPA co-proposal that would require the installation

 14 of selective catalyst reduction.

 15 From 2007 to 2015 the requirements imposed by

 16 the Utah's Regional Haze State Implementation Plan and

 17 revision have been fully implemented. Therefore, we

 18 encourage the EPA to approve the state plan as

 19 submitted.

 20 The alternative measure included in the Utah

 21 Regional Haze State Implementation Plan revision would

 22 result in lower total emissions and improve visibility.

 23 It would also save PacifiCorp customers hundreds of

 24 millions of dollars as compared to the cost of

 25 installing equipment to meet SCR and NOx emissions
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 1 limits being proposed by the EPA.

 2 For these reasons we support Option 1 of EPA's

 3 proposed rule allowing for the implementation of Utah's

 4 state plan. It is in the best interests of Utah

 5 residents to avoid the unnecessary costs that EPA's

 6 second proposed option for NOx emissions would impose,

 7 without producing meaningful visibility improvements

 8 above those already achieved.

 9 On a personal note also, I do live in Carbon

 10 County. It's where my family is from. And right now,

 11 we have up to, you know, a hundred employees and

 12 families that work for us that depend on these power

 13 plants for jobs. So thank you for your time.

 14 (Applause).

 15 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next

 16 Sharon Clark.

 17 SHARON CLARK: Thank you for allowing me to

 18 speak to you this evening. My name is Sharon Clark.

 19 S-H-A-R-O-N, C-L-A-R-K. Living in Utah we value

 20 wilderness areas and breathing clean air. Technology is

 21 now available that will reduce 75 percent of harmful air

 22 pollution that is currently polluting our air at eight

 23 national parks, including Arches, Canyonlands and

 24 Capitol Reef National Parks.

 25 The Hunter and Huntington plants are
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 1 responsible for 40 percent of the dangerous haze-causing

 2 nitrogen oxide pollution emitted by the electricity

 3 sector.

 4 Pollution from the plants contributes to 11

 5 premature deaths and 233 asthma attacks every year,

 6 according to the Clean Air Task Force. One death is a

 7 tragedy, but this pollution contributes to 11 premature

 8 deaths per year. I don't know that you can put a price

 9 tag on that.

 10 Let us be proactive in taking care of the

 11 environment, our people and visitors to the great state

 12 of Utah, as our neighbors in New Mexico, Colorado and

 13 Arizona have done.

 14 I believe we should reject the State of Utah's

 15 proposal and implement the federal proposal that will

 16 support long lasting change and provide for cleaner air

 17 in the concerned areas. Thank you.

 18 (Applause).

 19 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next, if

 20 we can have Marjorie Rasmussen.

 21 MARJORIE RASMUSSEN: Thank you. Every time I

 22 visit one of our national parks, I am overwhelmed by

 23 their beauty. These are places as a Utah resident that

 24 I can visit in just a day's drive. How amazing is that?

 25 We have an opportunity to now ensure that
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 1 these areas are protected. Arizona does it. New Mexico

 2 does it. Colorado does it. Why not Utah?

 3 Our communities, our economy and our visitors

 4 deserve the Clean Parks Plan, the second one.

 5 Installing modern pollution controls on two aging coal

 6 plants in the disputable area will make the air we

 7 breathe cleaner, and it will keep the view spectacular

 8 for millions of people. The parks are for all the

 9 people.

 10 The EPA recently put in place the fair

 11 protections of the Clean Parks Plan. Allowing 5,000

 12 pounds of nitrogen oxide to pour out of these plants

 13 every hour of every day is frightening, and simply

 14 should not be considered an option.

 15 Closure of the Carbon plant was a benefit, but

 16 the state's plan to use this as a bank simply robs Peter

 17 to pay Paul and it doesn't make sense. It really

 18 doesn't.

 19 We all deserve better. These are the people's

 20 parks, our parks and our home. And that is why I am

 21 here in favor of the Clean Parks Plan and asking the EPA

 22 to be in favor of it also. Thank you.

 23 (Applause).

 24 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Next, if we can have

 25 Cordell Roy.
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 1 CORDELL ROY: Hi. My name is Cordell Roy.

 2 C-O-R-D-E-L-L, R-O-Y, last name. Improvement in

 3 regional haze benefits us all. Congress recognized

 4 national parks and wilderness areas because of their

 5 outstanding air-quality-related values as worthy of the

 6 highest level of protection. And because they are

 7 identifiable, specific areas located throughout our

 8 nation, those areas are indicators of regional air

 9 quality.

 10 Deterioration or lack of improvement of

 11 regional air quality adversely affects us all because

 12 air we can't see through really is not good for us to

 13 breathe. Of course, I advocate for protection of Class

 14 1 areas to the highest degree. I submit that we all

 15 benefit as visitors to those iconic Class 1 areas from

 16 air quality improvement. But also as residents of those

 17 regions. It follows that improved air quality inside a

 18 Class 1 area extends far beyond that area's boundary.

 19 Excuse me.

 20 Haven't these regional haze considerations

 21 been going on long enough? A State Implementation Plan

 22 that was supposed to begin in 2007 is still dragging on

 23 in 2016. Surely Class 1 areas in Utah deserve better

 24 than that.

 25 Thus, I urge EPA to reject Utah's proposed
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 1 Regional Haze Plan as it makes no meaningful improvement

 2 to the regional haze problem, and recommend the

 3 implementation of best availability retrofit technology

 4 by requiring selective catalytic reduction at Hunter and

 5 Huntington Units 1 and 2.

 6 (Applause).

 7 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next,

 8 Lucas Earl. Lucas Earl. Stan Holmes.

 9 STAN HOLMES: Good evening. My name is Stan

 10 Holmes. S-T-A-N, H-O-L-M-E-S. And I'm with the Utah

 11 Citizens Advocating Renewable Energy. I'd like to thank

 12 you for this opportunity for public input.

 13 Our group was formed two years ago to

 14 challenge Berkshire Hathaway's, operating here as Rocky

 15 Mountain Power, PacifiCorp, efforts to punish rooftop

 16 solar producers. We have several interests at UCare in

 17 regional haze reduction.

 18 Of course, we all look at the pollution

 19 threats to our families and our state. We also look at

 20 the ongoing obstacles to clean energy, clean air

 21 development because the fossil fuel industry has

 22 tremendous power in our otherwise sunny state.

 23 We have raised concerns about haze and

 24 haze-related issues on many occasions over the past

 25 couple of years. Our goal is to see that the true costs
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 1 of coal extraction, combustion and disposal are

 2 incorporated into policy formulation.

 3 The state government of Utah has not been

 4 particularly cooperative. We first weighed in with the

 5 public comment to the DAQ, Division of Air Quality, in

 6 December of 2014, on the Regional Haze SIP progress

 7 report. And in that submission, we recognized that the

 8 focus on haze is really in fact a focus on air quality

 9 degradation by pollution.

 10 Most adults know that haze means the air is

 11 polluted with contaminants that were not healthy for

 12 humans. And this document and three other documents are

 13 included on the CD that we are submitting for the

 14 hearing record.

 15 We are concerned that the health care and

 16 other economic costs, as well as environmental costs,

 17 associated with haze generating were not quantified or

 18 otherwise addressed.

 19 We felt and still feel that the societal costs

 20 of electrical generation units, EGUs, and the identified

 21 BART coal-fired plants specifically should have been

 22 identified and factored into the determination of

 23 reasonable costs of -- for the reducing levels of sulfur

 24 dioxide, nitrous oxide and other harmful pollutants.

 25 Just to move on quickly through this,
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 1 basically we asked for some addition of what are

 2 sometimes referred to as externalized societal costs.

 3 That was not done.

 4 We learned that in 2010 Senna Energy Economics

 5 had conducted a report for the state of Utah in which it

 6 assumed that there were hundreds of premature deaths

 7 connected to EGUs in Utah, as well as perhaps a billion

 8 dollars in health care costs. But on the bright side,

 9 to a certain extent, I suppose in a twisted way, is that

 10 most of those premature deaths were downwind in

 11 Colorado. So we have Colorado downwinders.

 12 We support Option 2 and would like the federal

 13 government to step in where the state has failed. Thank

 14 you.

 15 (Applause).

 16 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Mr. Holmes.

 17 Bob Brister. Bob Brister. Kyle, is it Lore?

 18 KYLE LORE: Lore. Kyle Lore. K-Y-L-E,

 19 L-O-R-E. Brief statement, sorry. Just a brief comment.

 20 I'm a chef by trade. Allowing the state to continually

 21 shortcut modernization in the mining and energy sector

 22 has led us to the point where we are known for bad air.

 23 As a chef and avid outdoorsman, it has a

 24 direct affect on my income and my quality of life. As a

 25 chef I am dependent upon locals and travellers spending
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 1 discretionary income. I have both watched and

 2 participated over the years as Utah has slowly moved

 3 from a resource-stripping-based economy to a more

 4 diverse business and tourist-based economy especially in

 5 the regions that are near the national parks.

 6 In all aspects this movement has insulated our

 7 economy from the boom to bust mining economy of the past

 8 and given us a better economic growth through the

 9 recession than other states.

 10 The state has been historically slow to change

 11 in matters of environmental impact. At some point the

 12 importance of the sustainable resource that our clean

 13 environment provides to a greater number of citizens, by

 14 bringing the adventure tourist dollars to all areas of

 15 our state, has to be seen as more important than

 16 allowing PacifiCorp and their parent company, Berkshire

 17 Hathaway, to do business as usual.

 18 Their own facilities in many other states are

 19 modernized and Berkshire Hathaway list among it's

 20 corporate principles regulatory integrity and

 21 environmental respect. What a great opportunity for

 22 them abide by those core principles.

 23 For the State of Utah Department of

 24 Environmental Quality to allow have them to have an

 25 ongoing 12 year hall pass on basic modernization is
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 1 unacceptable. The time to force their hands has come.

 2 We are demanding clean parks.

 3 (Applause).

 4 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Kenwyn Derby.

 5 KENWYN DERBY: Hi. Thank you. My name is

 6 Kenwyn Derby. K-E-N-W-Y-N. Last name, D-E-R-B-Y. And

 7 I am a citizen representing my family and friends. I am

 8 here to advocate for the second plan, the clean parks

 9 federal plan, and rejection of the state's alternative

 10 plan.

 11 I think about this a lot, and I think, what is

 12 the real question? This is a democracy, and while we

 13 are also a capitalist nation that encourages and

 14 benefits from entrepreneurism and outputs from energy,

 15 and we need energy.

 16 As a democracy, we should prioritize the good

 17 of the community, which here includes such a vast

 18 majority of our citizens as to almost equal 100 percent

 19 of us, over the profits of a very few.

 20 I sympathize with the coal companies workers

 21 and all of the associated companies that work with them.

 22 I sympathize with their fears regarding their

 23 livelihood. But I think we would be naive to think that

 24 a very profitable company will cease operations because

 25 they have to make some improvements that will decrease
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 1 their very sizable profit.

 2 If other coal burning facilities and

 3 especially similar and conservative states near us can

 4 install these modern pollution reduction controls, why

 5 not here?

 6 We need energy. But it doesn't mean we have

 7 to suffer with haze and reduced enjoyment of our

 8 gorgeous country that drives a lot of our economy, or

 9 most importantly, sickness and death of the workers

 10 themselves as well.

 11 These pollution controls do something. The

 12 company seems to argue that they won't make much of a

 13 difference. But then why do 250 other facilities have

 14 these already installed? It is in the state's interest

 15 to lower medical costs, to raise tourism revenues and to

 16 care about their citizens. And if the EPA won't side

 17 with health and environment over private profits, who

 18 will?

 19 We have a democracy because we work together

 20 to provide protections for ourselves. This is not an

 21 oligarchy. And there isn't a good reason to not go with

 22 the Clean Parks Plan. Thank you.

 23 (Applause).

 24 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Next, Charles

 25 Trentalman.
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 1 CHARLES TRENTALMAN: Thank you. That's

 2 Charles, common spelling, Trentalman.

 3 T-R-E-N-T-A-L-M-A-N. Thank you. I won't claim to know

 4 the difference between a FIP and a SIP. But I just

 5 wanted to talk about some of the direct costs to Utah's

 6 dirty air. The Department -- Utah Department of Health

 7 says that close to 10 percent of all residents in the

 8 state suffer from asthma. I am one of them. If you

 9 know someone with asthma, you know that Utah's bad air

 10 days make the problem worse.

 11 Asthma can be controlled with drugs. Last

 12 week I renewed my prescription for rescue inhaler to

 13 deal with sudden attacks, and a steroid inhaler to

 14 prevent attacks. These two medications are standard and

 15 very common, and I would be happy to show the receipts.

 16 Between my copay and what my insurance paid,

 17 these two drugs cost about $450 dollars. These were

 18 meant to last one month. Although I, like many people,

 19 stretch that out, because I don't have that much money

 20 either. So what? Insurance pays. But it gets the

 21 money from you and me in the form of insurance premiums.

 22 My own insurance is PEHP, which means my

 23 premiums cost money from Utah taxpayers to pay for my

 24 drugs. It's the same no matter which insurance you

 25 have.
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 1 When an asthma sufferer buys their drugs, we

 2 all pay. How much? If you do the math, monthly

 3 medications for Utah's nearly 300,000 asthma sufferers

 4 cost about 135 million dollars every month. That is

 5 money you and I pay every month. When the air is bad,

 6 we pay more.

 7 My night in an emergency room three years ago

 8 cost you and me and everyone in the state $5,000. And

 9 the surgery from pneumonia three months later was more

 10 than $40,000, all costs made worse by bad air. Thank

 11 you.

 12 (Applause).

 13 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next

 14 Matthew Hope.

 15 MATTHEW HOPE: How are you guys doing today?

 16 Ain't America awesome. Hear everybody. See what we got

 17 to say. I have a lot going through my brain right now.

 18 Should have written it all down, but whatever comes out

 19 comes out. I just want to talk to an open heart and an

 20 open mind. We all have our way of life. We all live in

 21 this world. We all do our best. Don't we?

 22 VOICE: Not always.

 23 MATTHEW HOPE: Not always. Live and learn,

 24 right? But the question is, if you take away my job,

 25 what am I going to do? Am I going to sit downstairs and
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 1 ask for food? I don't know what I am going to do. I

 2 got three kids to take care of.

 3 This is my way of life. I didn't plan for

 4 this. But here I am thrown in the mix, war of words,

 5 whatever you want to call it. But we're all healthy.

 6 We got our inhalers, I guess. I don't know. But we're

 7 healthy. We're here. Isn't that something? I mean, I

 8 think we need to focus on this and then focus on someone

 9 else.

 10 Come down to the coal mines. Come and see

 11 what we're about. If you don't know us, get to know us,

 12 and we'll get to know you, too. Because we're united,

 13 and if we're not, we're something worse. So let's be

 14 together. Let's find a solution because we all got to

 15 live. Thanks.

 16 (Applause).

 17 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Mr. Hope.

 18 Next Dave Thomas.

 19 DAVE THOMAS: Dave Thomas. D-A-V-E,

 20 T-H-O-M-A-S. I am speaking as a citizen. I am asking

 21 the EPA to reject the State Implementation Plan. I'd

 22 like to say that this is not easy for me. I live in

 23 Utah, but I was born and raised in Montana. My father

 24 was a coal miner. His father was a coal miner. He died

 25 of black lung disease.
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 1 My mother's father was a coal miner. Her

 2 brothers were coal miners. So I am well aware of the

 3 things that happen when coal mines and jobs close down

 4 and that sort of thing. But I am still asking the EPA

 5 to reject the State Implementation Plan.

 6 My basic logic on this is that I have

 7 absolutely no faith that the environmental regulators in

 8 Utah will do anything to clean up haze or air in Utah

 9 unless there is a federal presence.

 10 (Applause).

 11 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Tom

 12 Benhard.

 13 TOM BENHARD: Benhard.

 14 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Benhard.

 15 TOM BENHARD: I'd like to thank you for having

 16 me. Tom Benhard. B-E-N-H-A-R-D, last name. I

 17 appreciate the opportunity to take a few minutes. Like

 18 the couple of previous, I don't have anything written.

 19 But I would like to say I've participated with the Utah

 20 Physicians For Healthy Environment in this area and have

 21 done some presentations regarding the negative

 22 externalities; in other words, the health impacts of bad

 23 air. And even though the EPA is using the terms haze,

 24 as people have mentioned, it's a health issue.

 25 Whenever the AQI is up, there's cardiac
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 1 events, there's arrhythmias. There's also -- it's also

 2 been linked to, as mentioned, premature deaths. Also

 3 genetic mutations that can go down multiple generations.

 4 So -- and I empathize with the coal workers.

 5 But just realize that his family is also exposed to this

 6 air, and those mutations are going to be manifested in

 7 their families as well.

 8 As far as costs goes, you know, PacifiCorp, I

 9 lecture up there, is responsible for the extraction.

 10 But our taxpayer dollars are subsidizing those coal

 11 leases. And so I encourage the implementation of the

 12 FIP, the federal plan, and know that we need some

 13 federal oversight to clean up our air. And I thank you

 14 for your time.

 15 (Applause).

 16 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next, if

 17 we could have Jared Carson.

 18 JARED CARSON: Jared Carson. J-A-R-E-D,

 19 C-A-R-S-O-N. I am in favor of the State Implementation

 20 Plan. I currently work as a coal miner. Going to

 21 school to become an engineer. But it seems like, from

 22 my personal observation, the majority of us in favor of

 23 the state or of the federal plan speak of the value of

 24 air quality, and that's something that people on both

 25 sides value.
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 1 Ironically, one of the major reasons that

 2 people live in the communities that they do that provide

 3 your energy, the reason they live there is because of

 4 the high air quality.

 5 One of the problems a lot of people have in

 6 Salt Lake, they view bad air quality. They view Utah as

 7 having bad air quality. But the air quality, that's --

 8 you can see in Salt Lake Utah Valley, that's not coming

 9 from those power plants. And more restrictions on those

 10 power plants isn't going to change it. That's a

 11 separate problem.

 12 Also, most of the pollutants above these

 13 national parks we are talking about, admittedly from the

 14 directors of the parks, isn't coming from those power

 15 plants either.

 16 Utah has been working on improving the air

 17 quality. They did shut down one plant. That is

 18 significant. That does a lot more than just putting

 19 retrofitting. That removes all of the pollutants from

 20 that plant production.

 21 They speak of the plants about them being

 22 built in the seventies, complaining that they haven't

 23 been retrofitted since the seventies. They have been

 24 retrofitted in the 2000s. It is not the -- it is not

 25 what's being implied.
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 1 I value clean air. And you know, if I had to

 2 live in Salt Lake in this air, I would probably be

 3 willing to pay quite a bit to fix it. One of the

 4 reasons I don't live here is because of that. And many

 5 people on the -- who are proponents of more regulation,

 6 they seem to have the mentality of all possible controls

 7 at any cost. But we need to look at what the

 8 improvements are going to be, when they are only

 9 marginal improvements for a huge amount of money.

 10 There is talk about naivety. The owners,

 11 PacifiCorp, is not going to just pull out of their

 12 pocket and pay for it. That money is going to get

 13 passed on to all the rate payers. That money is going

 14 to come from everyone else. If we are not going to get

 15 value out of that money, there's no point in paying it.

 16 If technology improves and we can get better

 17 technology to make more meaningful progress on

 18 pollution, that money is already spent is pretty much

 19 wasted.

 20 So anyway, I am in favor of the State

 21 Implementation Plan, thanks.

 22 (Applause).

 23 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Kate Bowman.

 24 KATE BOWMAN: Hello. My name is Kate Bowman.

 25 That's K-A-T-E, B-O-W-M-A-N. And I am here to represent
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 1 Utah Clean Energy. We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan

 2 clean energy advocacy organization based in Salt Lake,

 3 and we have been working in Utah for 15 years.

 4 Thank you for coming to Salt Lake to hear

 5 comments on this important issue. Utah Clean Energy

 6 works to prevent wasteful energy use, create clean

 7 energy and build smart energy features.

 8 Climate change dictates that we make a quick

 9 and proactive transition to a diverse portfolio of clean

 10 energy resources, including distributing clean energy

 11 efficiency resources. Utah Clean Energy's work to this

 12 end is guided by a vision of healthy driving

 13 communities, empowered and sustained by clean energy.

 14 Our national parks are a unique and

 15 spectacular part of Utah's character and are the

 16 foundation of a exciting and growing recreation and

 17 tourism industry in Utah.

 18 Speaking personally, I, like many other

 19 people, love living here in part because of the

 20 incredible access to outdoor recreation in and around

 21 our national parks, and air quality is one of the

 22 reasons I am most concerned about continuing to live in

 23 Utah.

 24 Thus, in support of our vision of a healthy

 25 and thriving community, Utah Clean Energy supports
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 1 strong protection from the harmful and haze-causing

 2 pollution from Utah's Hunter and Huntington power

 3 plants. Thank you.

 4 (Applause).

 5 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Miss

 6 Bowman. Next, we can have Sarah Matsumoto. Sarah

 7 Matsumoto. Samantha Weintraub.

 8 SAMANTHA WEINTRAUB: Hi. My name is Samantha

 9 Weintraub. S-A-M-A-N-T-H-A, W-E-I-N-T-R-A-U-B. Thanks

 10 for giving me the opportunity to be here and make a

 11 comment. I am an ecosystem ecologist with a Ph.D. in

 12 ecosystem ecology and biochemistry. And --

 13 (Reporter asked for repetition.)

 14 SAMANTHA WEINTRAUB: Biochemistry is my

 15 specialty. I'm a Ph.D. researcher, although I am not

 16 here speaking from the university. I am here speaking

 17 on my own behalf. So just going to touch on two issues.

 18 One, I have some professional expertise and

 19 that's the effects of the nitrogen deposition on desert

 20 echo systems. And the other just has to do with, you

 21 know, quality of life here in Utah, which I can just

 22 speak to personally.

 23 So desert ecosystems are very sensitive to

 24 nitrogen pollution, nitrogen deposition, and this isn't

 25 a regional issue in the intermountain west. These coal
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 1 powered plants are -- not only in desert ecosystems in

 2 Utah but also throughout the Colorado Plateau. The

 3 nitrogen generated here doesn't stay here overall. It's

 4 all connected through our common air shed.

 5 And so a range of ecosystem services can in

 6 fact be affected by high levels of nitrogen deposition,

 7 the ability of biological soil crusts to maintain the

 8 soil and prevent erosion, plant community composition

 9 and carbon sequestration.

 10 There are a lot of issues. There's a -- we

 11 call this a nitrogen cascade. Nitrogen deposition can

 12 have a lot of cascading consequences on ecosystem system

 13 composition and function.

 14 And so I am concerned about high levels of

 15 nitrogen deposition, and I see these pollution controls

 16 as kind of a no-brainer way to reduce nitrogen

 17 deposition in Utah and more broadly out in the Colorado

 18 Plateau.

 19 And so I think because it's an issue that's

 20 broader than Utah, this justifies the federal government

 21 being involved and not leaving this to be an issue for

 22 the state only.

 23 And then, of course, as so many people have

 24 touched on, as a fairly new resident in Utah -- I have

 25 lived here just under two years -- it's so clear why so
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 1 many people move here. Because of our amazing natural

 2 resources, right? I have actually kind of fallen in

 3 love with Utah surprisingly.

 4 And so I would say nature here is our best

 5 resource, and allowing that to become degraded, if there

 6 is anything we can do to prevent that, we have to take

 7 action and apply the most stringent controls we can,

 8 especially when the technology is available and other

 9 states are doing it.

 10 So thank you so much. Have a good night.

 11 (Applause).

 12 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Tim Wagner.

 13 TIM WAGNER: Good evening. Thank you. My

 14 name is Tim Wagner. I serve as the executive director

 15 for Utah Physicians For Healthy Environment here in Salt

 16 Lake City. We are an organization made up of about 350

 17 medical professionals around the state, and several

 18 thousand supporter members and friends and just

 19 downright good people who support the things we do.

 20 I am not going to talk about the things I was

 21 going to plan on talking about this evening because I

 22 think you have heard a lot of good reasons why so many

 23 people support the federal plan, which would require

 24 Rocky Mountain Power to install SCR on these projects.

 25 We support almost any policy that's going to
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 1 advocate for the protection of public health and put

 2 that as a number one priority, and that obviously needs

 3 to be number one, we truly believe.

 4 I do want to talk a little bit about the

 5 health of some of the residents who live in the vicinity

 6 of Hunter and Huntington coal plants. I did a little

 7 bit of research, and based on some health statistics put

 8 out by the state, Carbon County is rated 27th out of 27

 9 counties in Utah for the health of its citizens. Its

 10 rate of premature death is more than twice the national

 11 average.

 12 Emery County isn't quite as high. It's rated

 13 18th out of 27 counties, and it's rate of premature

 14 death of its citizens is about 50 percent higher than

 15 what the national average is, even much higher than

 16 Utah's average. That concerns me.

 17 I am not going to stand up here and say that

 18 the reason for this is because of the pollution coming

 19 from Hunter and Huntington coal plants, but I believe

 20 they are a factor. I think that needs to be considered.

 21 But I also want to say that I believe that so

 22 many that have been here before you before today are

 23 using the argument this is about jobs versus clean air.

 24 I think that's bunk. That's not what this is about.

 25 And I think those who believe that the jobs
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 1 are going to go away, they have been led to believe a

 2 false scare put forth by those who don't want to spend

 3 any money to clean those plants up, where we are talking

 4 about spending 400 million dollars, 700 hundred million

 5 dollars or somewhere in between. We are talking about

 6 one huge job training for Carbon and Emery County.

 7 That's a lot of jobs, and the multiplier

 8 effect that would have a tremendous impact on long-term

 9 effects of the economy for Emery and Carbon County. So

 10 I believe we need to be considering what would the means

 11 of cleaning up the air but also what it could do for the

 12 local economies down there. That to me is a win-win for

 13 everybody. Thank you.

 14 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Gabrielle Roh.

 15 GABRIELLE ROH: My name is Gabrielle Roh.

 16 G-A-B-R-I-E-L-L-E, R-O-H. Thank you for this public

 17 forum. I would like to reject the state's proposal and

 18 urge the EPA to adopt the second FIP. As a fifth grade

 19 teacher and a grandmother of 11, I want to add my voice

 20 to those who advocate for more stringent emission

 21 controls for the Hunter and Huntington power plants.

 22 I want to give an example of why I feel like

 23 we need the EPA's presence. Several years ago, I had 30

 24 of my fifth grade students write personal letters asking

 25 Governor Herbert to persuade MagCorp of America to
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 1 follow the EPA guidelines for their smokestacks. In

 2 case anyone's not aware, we have had the number one air

 3 polluter in the nation right down the road from us in

 4 the west desert. My students never received personal

 5 answers.

 6 We had always had the tradition to write

 7 letters to the president, and I thought, how cool.

 8 Let's write to the governor and talk to him about

 9 something that was an important issue. My students did

 10 not receive personal letters. I received a nasty gram

 11 from the governor.

 12 My superintendent and my principal contacted

 13 me asking me why would I bother teaching my children

 14 about something that was an important source of income.

 15 I should spend my time teaching the children how

 16 important carpooling is. So instead of looking at the

 17 worst contributor to air pollution in the United States

 18 for a decade, probably more like 20 years, I was

 19 reprimanded and made to feel like I was going to lose my

 20 job.

 21 I share this to let you know our governor is

 22 not interested in clean air. He gives lip service to

 23 it. We need the EPA to be our voice. We need the EPA

 24 to stand up for our health, our livelihoods, our future

 25 generations, our health and quality of life.
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 1 I am not advocating closing the plants. I am

 2 asking the EPA to support our desire for cleaner air and

 3 a better environment. This means adopting Option 2.

 4 (Applause).

 5 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you, Ms. Roh.

 6 Next, Dan Robrecht and family.

 7 DAN ROBRECHT: So we are Dan, Rebecca, Rose,

 8 Agnes and Collin Robrecht. R-O-B-R-E-C-H-T. We are

 9 locals here. I am a physician. But I'll leave comments

 10 about my son's asthma and the effects that our air

 11 pollution has on that to our local air pollution

 12 discussions.

 13 I also am not in the best position to speak on

 14 the best ways to keep our national parks pristine,

 15 although I understand that nitrogen oxides are an

 16 important -- have an important role to play in that.

 17 What I did want to speak more on was, you

 18 know, as a family we have sat on the red rocks and

 19 looked under Delicate Arch at the distant, snow-covered

 20 mountains. We have climbed Angels Landing and

 21 Observation Point, and these are the memories that our

 22 lives are made of.

 23 What it comes to, what I hope to leave behind

 24 and the whole dream that the national parks are, I

 25 certainly hope we can leave them in the same wondrous
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 1 state that I have found them throughout my life.

 2 REBECCA ROBRECHT: Thank you.

 3 (Applause).

 4 ROSE ROBRECHT: Rose Robrecht. But I just

 5 wanted to say that recently I was -- I went -- I had an

 6 experience at the Havasu by the Grand Canyon, and we

 7 looked -- when we were at the top of the canyon, we

 8 looked over, and it was very like foggy. You couldn't

 9 see all the way across, like my mom had described it to

 10 me previously.

 11 So I think that if we can do something to

 12 improve the state of our air, that would be very

 13 wonderful as it's a miraculous view. Thank you.

 14 (Applause).

 15 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Next, if we could have

 16 Lindsay Beebe.

 17 LINDSAY BEEBE: Hi. My name is Lindsay Beebe.

 18 L-I-N-D-S-A-Y, B-E-E-B-E. I am a resident of Salt Lake

 19 City. I work for the Sierra Club, but I am here

 20 representing myself. And I moved to Utah about five

 21 years ago, not expecting to fall in love with it as much

 22 as I have. And that's all due to the really remarkable

 23 landscape and beautiful just scenery that we have here

 24 in the state.

 25 I am here today to urge the EPA to implement
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 1 the best available retrofit technology for Hunter and

 2 Huntington coal-fired power plants, the only two power

 3 plants in Utah that are eligible to be considered under

 4 the Regional Haze Rule of the Clean Air Act.

 5 According to the EPA's own designation, for

 6 many of our neighboring western states and at over 250

 7 plants across the country, the best available retrofit

 8 technology to address nitrogen oxide pollution is

 9 selective catalytic reduction, or SCR.

 10 The state's current proposal that aims to

 11 substitute cuts at the Carbon power plant, which is a

 12 non-BART-eligible plant, does not satisfy requirements

 13 for the better than BART alternative, and should be

 14 disapproved. The state's plan would not result in

 15 greater visibility improvements at our national parks

 16 and therefore should be rejected.

 17 The state overestimates costs and

 18 underestimates visibility improvements, in its --

 19 according to the EPA's own analysis. And in reality the

 20 cost per ton to remove nitrogen oxides from Hunter and

 21 Huntington are equivalent or actually well below that of

 22 similar plants in Wyoming and Arizona where the EPA has

 23 found SCRs to be warranted.

 24 The EPA has proposed two plans to address

 25 nitrogen oxide, but there's really only one choice that
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 1 would clear the air for Utah parks and citizens. I urge

 2 the EPA to please require selective catalytic reduction

 3 for our parks, for our lungs, and for our vibrant

 4 recreation and tourism economy that depends on clear

 5 skies. Thank you.

 6 (Applause).

 7 HEARING OFFICE SUTIN: Thank you. Sven

 8 Solvik.

 9 SVEN SOLVIK: Hi. I'm Sven Solvik. S-V-E-N,

 10 S-O-L-V-I-K. The corporate owners of Hunter and

 11 Huntington plants are not the only corporations that

 12 feel that profit is more important than healthy, clean

 13 air. Recent revelations of Volkswagen Corporation's

 14 deceptions regarding diesel emissions sparked worldwide

 15 outrage.

 16 The primary pollutant emitted by these cars

 17 was nitrogen oxide, which was 70 times greater than the

 18 EPA was led to believe. California's, oh, no, excuse

 19 me. Volkswagen will be paying hundreds of millions and

 20 possibly billions of dollars in fines or penalties as a

 21 result of these deceptions.

 22 California's Department of Environmental

 23 Quality estimated that 5,000 tons of nitrogen oxide

 24 emissions per year will be produced from the half

 25 million Volkswagen diesels in the state. Hunter,
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 1 Huntington plants produce more than three times the

 2 amounts of annual emissions as these 500,000 dirty

 3 diesels.

 4 So the question is, I don't think the EPA's

 5 going to let Volkswagen get away with this kind of

 6 nitrogen oxide pollution. Are they going to let the

 7 owners of Hunter and Huntington produce three times as

 8 much nitrogen oxide? Thank you.

 9 (Applause).

 10 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Elizabeth Watson.

 11 ELIZABETH WATSON: It's Elizabeth,

 12 E-L-I-Z-A-B-E-T-H. Watson, W-A-T-S-O-N. So I have

 13 actually worked for the chemical industry. I have a

 14 bachelor's degree with a major in chemistry. Worked for

 15 chemical industry for about -- almost 25 years.

 16 And I have worked with the environmental

 17 community. I have worked with EPA. I have worked with,

 18 you name it, in the Washington, D.C. area. And I worked

 19 on stratospheric ozone and global climate change issue

 20 for about 10 of those, more than 10 of those years.

 21 And I feel -- and I am here now. And forget

 22 my children. My grandchildren are here, my two

 23 granddaughters.

 24 And I think that we have got the technology.

 25 And I think we need to implement it, wherever we can.
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 1 And I believe it's cost of doing business. I think if

 2 it benefits both the natural resources that we are all

 3 drawn to here and if it can in any way increase the

 4 health of this community, I think we have got to do

 5 whatever we can, whenever we can because there are so

 6 few opportunities in this state.

 7 And I think what industry needs to understand

 8 is that is good business. And at the end of the day, it

 9 limits their liability. And when we can all get on the

 10 same page, I am certain we can -- my father was a

 11 machinist. I understand unions. I understand having

 12 jobs, second generation, Italian immigrant. And I think

 13 we've got to come up with win-wins. We all have to be

 14 on the same page.

 15 And I think that the coal miners may think

 16 that they have to give up their job or they have to give

 17 up their pay, possible pay increases or benefits. And I

 18 think that that's just false thinking.

 19 I think at the end of the day we all are going

 20 to go down with this or we're going to go up with this.

 21 And I really believe we have a really good opportunity

 22 for EPA to come in and go ahead and implement their

 23 plan. Because without it, I think that the first

 24 step -- and I think without it I think the rest of us

 25 that live in this valley that have all kinds of health
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 1 issues because of the haze, a lot of it is industry

 2 pollution.

 3 This is one of the dirtiest places I've

 4 actually been in. And I have been even in Katmandu

 5 where it's two stroke engines, and we've -- I've been to

 6 Houston, New Jersey, New York state. And we can do a

 7 whole lot better. And there's no excuse not to.

 8 And at the end of the day I think it's good

 9 business. It's ethical and it's moral, and at the end

 10 of the day it reduces industry's liability and they

 11 should care about that over everything else. And it's

 12 their legacy, and it's ours too. Thank you.

 13 (Applause).

 14 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Dr. Howie

 15 Garber.

 16 HOWIE GARBER: I'm Howie Garber, H-O-W-I-E,

 17 G-A-R-B-E-R. I am a physician and a board member of Utah

 18 Physicians For Healthy Environment. Requiring Rocky

 19 Mountain Power to clean up their act has obvious health

 20 benefits for the people who live near these power

 21 plants. Keeping the status quo benefits only Rocky

 22 Mountain Power.

 23 Using best available technology confers health

 24 benefits and clears the air for all the citizens of the

 25 world who visit our wonderful national parks. Air
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 1 pollution, particularly regional haze and mercury

 2 toxicity, are not local problems. They're regional

 3 problems and appropriately regulated only by the EPA.

 4 Isn't it time for our state DAQ to show that

 5 individuals matter more than special interests? Thank

 6 you.

 7 (Applause).

 8 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Okay. Next, can we

 9 have Dr. Brian Moench.

 10 BRIAN MOENCH: Thank you. I am Dr. Brian

 11 Moench, president of the Utah Physicians for a Healthy

 12 Environment. Our physicians group is profoundly

 13 disappointed that our state agency has endorsed the plan

 14 that does not require SCR installation at the Hunter and

 15 Huntington plants, with the justification that it would

 16 cost Rocky Mountain Power 340 million dollars.

 17 But our state agency knows full well there is

 18 considerable economic and human cost to the pollution

 19 from these plants. This may be a hearing on regional

 20 haze, but that haze has serious public health

 21 consequences. In fact, a 2010 study tracking deaths,

 22 heart attacks, asthma attacks, and hospital admissions

 23 precipitated by pollution from just these two plants,

 24 concluded that the economic repercussion of these

 25 outcomes cost the victims 212 million dollars per year,
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 1 including 27 annual deaths. Over 20 years that's over

 2 4.2 billion dollars and 540 lives lost.

 3 So DAQ has endorsed a plan that excuses Rocky

 4 Mountain Power from having to spend 340 million but

 5 hands to the public a bill of over 4.2 billion and ends

 6 the lives of 540 people.

 7 Yet even these calculations are a significant

 8 underestimation because they do not quantitate the many

 9 other health consequences that have been proven to be

 10 precipitated from these plants' pollution since that

 11 study was published, such as a myriad of pregnancy

 12 complications and poor pregnancy outcomes, Cancer,

 13 chromosomal damages that can be passed on to subsequent

 14 generations, and neurodegenerative diseases like

 15 diminished intelligence, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's,

 16 attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder and even

 17 autism.

 18 These plants emit about 200 pounds of mercury

 19 into the atmosphere every year, 4,000 pounds in 20

 20 years. SCR can be expected to reduce not just the NOx

 21 from these plants but also the mercury.

 22 Several years ago, the CDC and the EPA

 23 concluded that one in six American women of

 24 child-bearing age harbor enough endogenous mercury that

 25 it would be expected to cause harm to her baby's brain
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 1 development.

 2 The U.S. geological survey tested fish from

 3 300 streams throughout the country in 2009 and found

 4 mercury in every single fish. As of 2014, 24 waterways

 5 in Utah had advice against eating the fish because of

 6 high levels of mercury.

 7 The Great Salt Lake already has the highest

 8 levels of mercury in any inland body of water in the

 9 country. The country's only mercury advisories against

 10 eating waterfowl are right here in Utah.

 11 The nation is currently looking at the

 12 lead-contaminated water scandal in Flint, Michigan and

 13 realizing that government officials at the state, local

 14 and national levels ended up causing irreversible

 15 neurologic harm, which is a euphemism for brain damage,

 16 to thousands of children because of incompetence,

 17 ignorance, arrogance and callousness towards the

 18 victims.

 19 Mercury is by far the most neurotoxic

 20 substance we know, up to 1000 times more toxic to fetal

 21 brain developments than lead. If the EPA allows a plan

 22 that does not factor in health protection, they will be

 23 encouraging the same kind of perception that our

 24 government doesn't really care about the people it

 25 should be serving. Thank you.
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 1 (Applause).

 2 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next, if

 3 we could have Patrick Sullivan.

 4 PATRICK SULLIVAN: Hello. I'm Patrick

 5 Sullivan. P-A-T-R-I-C-K, S-U-L-L-I-V-A-N. I am Utah --

 6 or a resident of Utah. I am here to tell you about my

 7 personal experiences. I am one of the stats you have

 8 heard about tonight.

 9 I've grown up, born and raised with asthma.

 10 It's not a big deal for me because I have had it my

 11 whole life, but it has had such consequence as me

 12 missing recess in elementary school, finding I can't run

 13 up a hill without having to go to ER, worrying about

 14 getting a cold because of my respiratory problems will

 15 exacerbate that, Just crazy stuff. So that's just me

 16 personally.

 17 As you have heard, that's not me alone in the

 18 state. Actually it's sort of fairly common. A lot of

 19 my friends have asthma. It's ridiculous. And as I am

 20 sure you know, there is the strong correlation of these

 21 pollutants that come out of the power plants and asthma.

 22 Wherever these pollutants are, asthma increases in the

 23 population. And so that for medical reasons, that's why

 24 I would urge you to vote for the Clean Parks Plan.

 25 Now, on to reasons or, yeah, reasons we can
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 1 all look to. Excuse me. Now on to -- excuse me, I'm

 2 sorry. Public speaking. Anyway, the visibility issue.

 3 I consider myself a bit of an outdoors enthusiast and as

 4 of recently, because of my medicine, that would have

 5 been considered an oxymoron, because I also have asthma.

 6 But we have the technology to fix me. So why not fix

 7 these plants?

 8 I grew up hiking all around southern Utah,

 9 whether it be national parks, state parks, random desert

 10 patches. And a common theme on all of these trips is my

 11 dad would often say, "Well, Pat I used to be able to see

 12 clear over to Henry Mountains." Or we could see 200

 13 miles past where can you see now.

 14 But on a clear day you will be able to see it.

 15 A sad reality is I've had three or four of those clear

 16 days in my life, and I wish I could have more of those.

 17 I wish I could enjoy these views, and I wish everyone in

 18 the state to enjoy views that this natural landscape

 19 provides us.

 20 And so for these reasons, I would urge you to

 21 go for the Clean Parks Plan. Yeah. Thank you.

 22 (Applause).

 23 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Mary Paul.

 24 MARY PAUL: My name is Mary Paul. M-A-R-Y,

 25 P-A-U-L. I'm a citizen. I am also a 4th generation
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 1 Utahan, and like my pioneering ancestors I'm hoping to

 2 help forge positive change for future generations.

 3 I am not here to disrespect the hard working

 4 coal industry workers in attendance. My own sister was

 5 a coal miner for a number of years. Why I am here is to

 6 stand up for all citizens, in particular our most

 7 vulnerable, the poor, the elderly and children.

 8 My own daughter suffers from pollution-induced

 9 asthma and respiratory infections. Every day we commute

 10 across the valley so I may work and my daughter may go

 11 to school somewhere above the smog level.

 12 Unfortunately, many citizens do not have such luxury.

 13 It is imperative that immediate effective measures are

 14 taken to put Utah's coal plants on track with current

 15 standards 250 other facilities are already meeting

 16 across the country.

 17 It is unacceptable for Utah's taxpaying

 18 citizens, such as myself and my family and my loved

 19 ones, to suffer debilitating medical bills and lost

 20 wages from caring for loved ones because coal industry

 21 executives refuse to take responsibility for the

 22 hazardous byproducts of their business. Thank you.

 23 (Applause).

 24 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. It's 7:30.

 25 We're going to take a 10 minute break so the court
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 1 reporter can rest for a minute. We'll be back in 10

 2 minutes.

 3 We did announce that the hearing was until

 4 eight o'clock. We have quite a few people that still

 5 would like to speak. So we're going to stay until 8:30.

 6 If folks can stay until then and give their testimony,

 7 that would be great. If you can't, we understand and

 8 we're sorry. We did our best to try and accommodate

 9 everybody. But hopefully you can stay until 8:30 if you

 10 want to give comments. Thank you.

 11 (Recess from 7:34 p.m. to 8:34 p.m.)

 12 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: If everyone could have

 13 a seat, we're going to get started again. If I can have

 14 Katie Christensen.

 15 KATIE CHRISTENSEN: My name is Katie

 16 Christensen. K-A-T-I-E, C-H-R-I-S-T-E-N-S-E-N. And

 17 tonight you have all been presented by the -- with the

 18 facts about our competent air community. You may have

 19 committed them to memory. By now you've heard them all.

 20 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Ms. Christensen, I'm

 21 sorry to interrupt. The folks who are not listening,

 22 please leave the room. Thank you. I'm sorry. Go

 23 ahead.

 24 MS. CHRISTENSEN: You have also heard from

 25 honest workers who are afraid of maybe losing their jobs
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 1 or have taken cuts in pay. I'd like to offer an

 2 additional perspective. When we think of the word

 3 industry, we think of coal or we think of oil. However,

 4 there is another industry we may have overlooked this

 5 evening. I believe the solutions are not either/or but

 6 both, and so I appeal to your sense of fairness tonight.

 7 I'd like to speak as an ally of another

 8 industry and that is tourism. In Utah we value being

 9 good neighbors. And we are not talking about shutting

 10 down coal plants. We are not talking about limiting

 11 jobs. This is simply a question of asking industry

 12 executives to be good neighbors by installing up-to-date

 13 reasonable pollution control. This is the same

 14 technology already used in over 250 plants.

 15 If coal plants are going to be allowed to

 16 operate near national parks, they must take every

 17 reasonable precaution to mitigate the effects to those

 18 parks. If the coal industry is going to center the

 19 discussion around the economic impact as our primary

 20 value, then we must not allow one industry to stamp out

 21 another.

 22 According to reports by the University of Utah

 23 business school entitled the State of Utah's Tourism,

 24 Travel and Recreation Industry, nonresident tourists and

 25 travelers spent 7.5 billion dollars in the Utah economy
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 1 in 2013. Travellers spending generated a record 1.2

 2 billion dollars in state and local taxes. For context

 3 that's higher than California, Texas, Illinois and even

 4 New York generated in travel-based employment.

 5 More than 40 percent of the total private jobs

 6 in Daggett, Garfield, Grand, Kane, Wayne and Summit

 7 counties were in the leisure and hospitality sector in

 8 2013. Tourism-related revenue grew 22 percent from 2009

 9 to 2013. As long as our parks exist, tourism will be a

 10 profoundly important part of Utah's economy.

 11 Should the guests of Utah, our tourists from

 12 all over the world, find the beauty they come to see

 13 compromised by coal generated haze, they will be less

 14 inclined to come again, and the economic impact will

 15 potentially -- it will impact the tourism industry,

 16 dwindling it because people will not want to come back.

 17 They will not want to come from all over the world just

 18 to see haze.

 19 I do want to add on a personal note that we

 20 know better than mercury and we know better than air

 21 pollution. We know better than those things, and we

 22 have the technology to protect people.

 23 Speaking on a very personal note, I want to

 24 add, once you lose your health, you don't get it back.

 25 And if you get it back, you may not have what you had
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 1 before. To me, it's unthinkable that industry would

 2 battle installing pollution control devices when they

 3 could impact the health of children, elderly, and even

 4 young adults aren't immune from the impacts. So thank

 5 you for taking our comments.

 6 (Applause).

 7 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Brandy Hill.

 8 BRANDY HILL: Hello. My name is Brandy Hill.

 9 I am speaking on behalf of myself. I'm a graduate

 10 student at the University of Utah, and my focus is in

 11 environmental chemistry and sustainability. I'm not a

 12 Utah native. I'm from Michigan, and my family and I

 13 moved here six years ago. And I have never seen air

 14 pollution anywhere that I have seen like here. It's --

 15 it's something that we worry about all the time in our

 16 family.

 17 But aside from that, just in my graduate

 18 school study, I've learned a lot about the EPA and the

 19 role that environmental policy has in our nation. And

 20 just simply put, the -- our air doesn't have state

 21 boundaries. And based on that premise alone, I think

 22 that the EPA should be involved here in Utah and that

 23 the EPA should be involved in every state in a

 24 collaboration across the nation to help improve

 25 technologies to reduce emissions. Thank you.
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 1 (Applause).

 2 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Kyle

 3 Hayes.

 4 KYLE HAYES: My name is Kyle Hayes. No

 5 relation to regional haze. I am a student at the

 6 University of Utah. Recently our sustainable campus

 7 initiative fund issued a grant for $11,000 for air masks

 8 so that students on red quality air days can take

 9 transportation, biking, walking, and it can be healthy

 10 for us.

 11 Now, it's my hope that you would implement the

 12 federal plan over the state plan. Many reasons. Chief

 13 among them would be that this will be a statement of the

 14 people, of the direction that we are looking to move.

 15 We will be going over the head of our state

 16 environmental agencies, which are very reluctant to

 17 march forward, towards a goal that's been stated by our

 18 president, that's been stated by many of the countries

 19 of the world at our Paris conference, and it's about

 20 time that Utah gets involved.

 21 In regard to the lack of jobs in the coal

 22 industry, my rebuttal to that would be the fastest

 23 growing industry in the country which is renewables.

 24 So it's my hope that we will adopt the Clean

 25 Parks Plan and we will no longer have reasons to wear
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 1 these ridiculous air masks just to ride a bike during

 2 the winter. Thank you.

 3 (Applause).

 4 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Marykate Glenn.

 5 MARYKATE GLENN: Thank you. My name is

 6 Marykate Glenn. M-A-R-Y-K-A-T-E, G-L-E-N-N. And I

 7 biked here with one of those ridiculous face masks on.

 8 It helped a little bit.

 9 I have heard wonderful arguments from

 10 everyone, I won't repeat the points that they made. I

 11 am also compelled by the argument that the costs of

 12 health care are not taken into account. The costs of

 13 environmental resources being lost are not taken into

 14 account. Therefore, I would urge EPA to enforce the FIP

 15 plan.

 16 I have an old truck, and to pass emissions, I

 17 have to, you know, replace -- I have a catalytic

 18 converter. I have to have regular maintenance and

 19 upkeep to do my part. And I would hope that the EPA

 20 would enforce the coal companies to do the same. Thank

 21 you.

 22 (Applause).

 23 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Fulassi

 24 Fashawn. Fulassi Fashawn. Nathan Gilbert.

 25 NATHAN GILBERT: Hello. My name is Nathan
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 1 Gilbert. N-A-T-H-A-N, G-I-L-B-E-R-T. Forgive -- thank

 2 you for having this forum, and please forgive me for

 3 speaking extemporaneously on this topic tonight.

 4 I am originally from eastern Kentucky, The

 5 coal section of the state. I have lived in Utah for 10

 6 years, over 10 years, and I fell in love with the

 7 beautiful vistas and the natural wonders that are

 8 available in this state. And I strongly support Option

 9 2, the Clean Parks Plan, that the EPA is proposing.

 10 I know we have heard a lot of arguments today.

 11 There's not much more I can add, but it's not going to

 12 stop me from talking anyway.

 13 So business is always going to take the path

 14 of least resistance. In this case that means what's

 15 going to eat less into their profits. So of course they

 16 are naturally going to be against any kind of

 17 regulation, even though we have technology to improve

 18 the air quality of the state in that specific area of

 19 the state.

 20 I'll go out on a limb here to say that I don't

 21 think anyone in this room has personal power over what

 22 Rocky Mountain Power does. About the only time they

 23 care what I think is if my bill is past due. That said,

 24 collectively we have power through the United States

 25 Government, of which you are the environmental
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 1 regulatory body, and I would urge you to enforce Option

 2 2 and follow our collective will.

 3 So again, I thank you for this public forum,

 4 and I urge the Option 2 Clean Parks Plan. Thank you.

 5 (Applause).

 6 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Next Nicholas

 7 Bradberry.

 8 NICHOLAS BRADBERRY: Hi. My name is Nicholas

 9 Bradberry. N-I-C-H-O-L-A-S. Bradberry,

 10 B-R-A-D-B-E-R-R-Y. I'm a citizen, and I am not going

 11 to -- I am going to talk on behalf of most of the

 12 younger generation that is eventually going to have to

 13 inherit these issues from coal emissions being generated

 14 and destroying our environment.

 15 I am not going to really try to voice my

 16 concerns on the effects due to pollution. The EPA, I am

 17 sure, have heard the conversations for both for and

 18 against. And Utah people have done an amazing job of

 19 voicing all the concerns that we have about this issue.

 20 I want to go and say, I do not blame coal

 21 miners and I do not blame the coal industry for the

 22 emissions created currently. I understand why coal

 23 miners are fighting to keep power on and to keep their

 24 jobs that allow them to provide for their families. I

 25 would even go as far as to say as the coal industry has
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 1 done us helpful in terms of getting us to where we are

 2 currently. I understand that these families are

 3 Americans just as much as us.

 4 I can understand the need for clean air. So

 5 at this time, I reject the state plan but at the same

 6 time I reject the federal EPA plan. The entire state of

 7 Utah will benefit from removing these pollutants and gas

 8 for the long term.

 9 However, I do not agree with the EPA ruling in

 10 the situation. I think EPA has not done enough to stand

 11 up for the common people. The requirements to install

 12 these air quality improvements to coal plants Hunter 1

 13 and 2 will not solve our problem, and they will

 14 eventually lead to higher prices for the production of

 15 electricity in the state of Utah.

 16 I feel this does not address the actual issue

 17 we're trying to do at the moment, which is reverse the

 18 decline of air quality, not reduce. So instead I offer

 19 an alternative plan that the EPA should take under

 20 advisement. The goal for installing selective catalytic

 21 conduction in coal plants would reduce pollutants but

 22 not rid the people of them entirely.

 23 I would suggest that the part of the 400

 24 million to 700 million dollars that these plants would

 25 use to retrofit their old plants be put -- be instead
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 1 put towards subsidizing the production of clean energy

 2 like solar, winds, geothermal, tidal and nuclear

 3 energies.

 4 Additionally, part of the funds should go to

 5 research and development of clean transportation methods

 6 to further reduce the air quality -- overall air quality

 7 climate change affects.

 8 Lastly, a portion of this money should be

 9 given back to the community for their health concerns

 10 and environmental damage that has been caused.

 11 This has to be matched with a reduction of

 12 coal plants over the next five years to be replaced

 13 entirely with the methods already stated. It's been

 14 proven time and time again this will create more jobs

 15 for Utahans and provide the families working for coal

 16 plants with an alternative for there jobs.

 17 This is what we call a win-win scenario. The

 18 entire community will benefit from these changes. We

 19 don't have time to revisit this issue in several years.

 20 The change has to be made now while the issue is still

 21 correctible.

 22 We are the taxpayers. We are Americans. We

 23 decide what is done with our money, and we decide what

 24 is done with our land. Thank you.

 25 (Applause).
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 1 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Warren

 2 Becroft.

 3 WARREN BECROFT: Hello. My name is Warren

 4 Becroft. I am the president of the University of Utah

 5 Student Clean Air Network and a bartender here in Salt

 6 Lake. I -- with a new federal moratorium on coal leases

 7 on federal lands, the future of the coal industry in

 8 Utah is limited to the extent of existing leases on

 9 public lands.

 10 With this in mind, I support the Federal

 11 Implementation Plan and reject the SIP or the State

 12 Implementation Plan on the grounds that the State

 13 Implementation Plan unproportionally places burden upon

 14 citizens to reduce emissions while allowing industry to

 15 increase emissions over the same period.

 16 The sulfur-containing aerosols that are the

 17 primary factor in scattering light and decreasing

 18 visibility because of air pollution are caused

 19 predominantly by coal extraction and combustion. That's

 20 all I have to say. Thank you.

 21 (Applause).

 22 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Rebekah

 23 Boyd.

 24 REBEKAH BOYD: My name is Rebekah Boyd.

 25 R-E-B-E-K-A-H, B-O-Y-D. I'm a student at BYU, and I am
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 1 part of the Echo Response Club there. So one of my kind

 2 of mottos is to be happy and go outside. And when I

 3 learned about the air quality in Utah and how it's some

 4 of, if not the worst, air quality in the U.S., I was

 5 very concerned and shocked.

 6 And as I -- since I have grown up here and I

 7 spend countless hours outside, I love the national

 8 parks. I visit them multiple times a year. Many of my

 9 strongest memories have been formed there. And I would

 10 just like to be able to be confident and secure in

 11 knowing that I can continue to live here and eventually

 12 raise a family here.

 13 And so I do not support the State

 14 Implementation Plan, and I would like the Clean Parks

 15 Act to go forward. So thank you.

 16 (Applause).

 17 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Dave Pacheco.

 18 DAVE PACHECO: Can I give my time to someone

 19 who has been waiting longer than me?

 20 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: If you would like.

 21 DAVE PACHECO: Sure. I would like to defer my

 22 time to Beth Haynes here.

 23 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Beth Haynes.

 24 BETH HAYNES: Thank you. Yes, I was here at

 25 one o'clock and have delayed after a couple of hours.
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 1 So I appreciate your making time for me.

 2 My name is Beth Haynes. B-E-T-H, H-A-Y-N-E-S.

 3 I was born and raised in Illinois, but about 25 years

 4 ago I traveled west for the first time to the Rocky

 5 Mountain National Park, and that trip made a lifelong

 6 impression on me. I became enthralled with the

 7 mountains, wildlife and wild places. I vowed to visit

 8 all the national parks in the United States and so far

 9 have made it to 24. I also dreamt that some day would I

 10 live near mountains in wonderful landscapes like that.

 11 About 18 years ago I discovered my inner

 12 athlete, and I have run many marathons, triathlons,

 13 kayaking and you get the idea. I love being outdoors

 14 and active. The last year life events led me to the

 15 conclusion that it's now or never.

 16 So after living for 50 years in Illinois, I

 17 resigned my job of 21-plus years, put my house on the

 18 market and said good bye to my wonderful friends and

 19 family. I arrived in Utah in June, after visiting

 20 Yellowstone and the Tetons on my way. I took some time

 21 between jobs and have visited all five of the national

 22 parks in Utah since June.

 23 What amazing, unique landscapes that we have

 24 here. I can't even explain the joy I get from simply

 25 seeing the mountains every day, whether from my house or
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 1 being immersed in them.

 2 It shocks me that air pollution is such a

 3 hotly debated topic here. Personally it's very

 4 upsetting to consider not being able to run outside

 5 because of poor air quality when I moved here for the

 6 outdoor recreation. And it's always in the back of my

 7 mind. Is this the day I'll breathe that particle that

 8 will cause me to have cancer 10 years down the road or a

 9 heart condition?

 10 Aside from the health threats, I remember when

 11 we were at Bryce this summer looking at unbelievably

 12 far-reaching vistas, and my partner informed or

 13 explained to me the reason I couldn't clearly see Powell

 14 Point was not the space between us, but due to air

 15 pollution, the haze. It was then I noticed a slightly

 16 brownish color in the air.

 17 How could this country with so much raw

 18 beauty, places that are completely unique, which have

 19 been set aside, preserved and protected as national

 20 parks for all of us, be infiltrated by air pollution?

 21 This denies everyone, whether traveling from Illinois,

 22 Utah or another country, the opportunity to view our

 23 national parks for the reasons they were created.

 24 They have value, both intrinsic and economic.

 25 Who would visit the rim of the Grand Canyon if you
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 1 couldn't see down into it? Who would trek to Angels

 2 Landing at Zion National Park if all you could see was

 3 the rock you stood on.

 4 These power plants have an opportunity to make

 5 a big difference in our future for either good or bad,

 6 and I ask that you choose for the good. Thank you.

 7 (Applause).

 8 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Next is

 9 Samantha, and I'm sorry. I can't see your last name.

 10 SAMANTHA HAWKINS: Hawkins?

 11 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Yeah, Hawkins, sorry.

 12 SAMANTHA HAWKINS: Hi. I'm Samantha Hawkins.

 13 S-A-M-A-N-T-H-A, H-A-W-K-I-N-S. I am here to urge you

 14 to reject the state proposal. I am a college student.

 15 I go to Brigham Young University. And the outdoor

 16 recreation industry has been a huge part of my entire

 17 life. It's shaped my world view. I have grown up going

 18 to the national parks a couple times a month, and I am a

 19 big part of the outdoor recreation community.

 20 I think that it's important to recognize that

 21 these are not just parks for the outdoor recreation

 22 community though. They are Utah's lands and they are

 23 also America's lands. And every American should have

 24 the opportunity to go to Bryce Canyon and look at one of

 25 the best night skies in the entire world. And in
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 1 addition to that, they are not only America's lands, but

 2 we need do our part as part of the worldwide community.

 3 As you know, COP21, Paris climate change

 4 conference, 200 countries committed to reduce their

 5 emissions, and though it has yet to be ratified by

 6 Congress, we still have -- I think we have a commitment

 7 to keep to our world to reduce our emissions.

 8 So I would urge you to reject the state

 9 proposal as part of a local community and the American

 10 community and the worldwide community. Thank you.

 11 (Applause).

 12 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Chad Taylor. Chad

 13 Taylor. Brian Ellison.

 14 BRIAN ELLISON: Thanks. My name is Brian

 15 Ellison, second generation Utahan, and I live in Salt

 16 Lake City. I want to come today to show my support for

 17 the Clean Parks Plan. I've really loved southern Utah

 18 for a long time. I was fortunate enough, starting when

 19 I was three, my parents bought some land down there, and

 20 we used to go down and camp when I was a little kid. So

 21 I was lucky enough to have a lot of great adventures in

 22 the Capitol Reef, hiking there, playing in the mud,

 23 whatever, all the fun things kids want to do.

 24 But I think I started really falling in love

 25 with the place as I was a little older. As a teenager
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 1 in college I got to go down there on my own and on

 2 different times would get up on top of these mountains,

 3 and I could see so far, you know.

 4 Just one time in particular, I was up above

 5 Capitol Reef I could see out past Capitol Reef, I could

 6 see the Henry Mountains, I could see out there towards

 7 the desert, and I could see kind of the curvature of the

 8 earth. And I just realized how blessed this is.

 9 There's been a lot of times I have gone back

 10 to some of those places, but most of the time it's hazy,

 11 because you can't see that kind of distance. I mean the

 12 view is still wonderful, but it seems like, you know,

 13 for whatever reason, you got to have the jet stream

 14 going in the right direction on the right day to really

 15 get the best view out of those places.

 16 But, as I said, I fell in love with that, and

 17 I like it so much my wife and I actually got married

 18 down in Capitol Reef. Something important to us there.

 19 We took our family down. We wanted to share that with

 20 all of them. Besides saying thanks for my parents for

 21 all they had done to get us down there, something we

 22 could share with all our cousins and everyone else in

 23 the family.

 24 Today I am continuing to share the love of the

 25 place with my children. I have a three and
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 1 six-year-old, and when I am gone, the land that's down

 2 there will belong to them. You know, I'm hoping they

 3 will continue to pass it on through the family, and, you

 4 know, hopefully they will get to see those really clear

 5 views on every day, not just the day when the wind's

 6 blowing the right way.

 7 I know that miners and other people talk a lot

 8 about jobs and the economy and how that's important to

 9 them, and I understand that. My grandpa, he worked

 10 mining in uranium in southern Utah, and he was -- he had

 11 three kids, and that was how they paid the bills. They

 12 were actually living in a tent out by the mine, and that

 13 was how he got his money and how he ended up, you know,

 14 raising a good family. So I understand how people, you

 15 know, want those jobs and want to keep them.

 16 But I've also seen from my personal experience

 17 in Torrey, just outside of Capitol Reef, how much

 18 tourism can really change an economy there. When I was

 19 young, you know, I remember the population signs at a

 20 hundred on this side of town and there was one gas

 21 station, one hotel and one restaurant. They were closed

 22 a lot of time during the year. Well, now there's

 23 several. Probably have a dozen hotels, dozen bed and

 24 breakfast, many restaurants, coffee shops. There's

 25 tourist people who take you rock climbing or mountain
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 1 biking or ATVs.

 2 So I really think that the -- when it comes to

 3 looking at the economy, tourism will continue to grow

 4 forever, whereas a lot of the natural resources will go

 5 away and can actually cause problems to, you know,

 6 discourage the tourism.

 7 So I want to show my support to the Clean

 8 Parks Plan be adopted. Thank you.

 9 (Applause).

 10 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. Is it Jim

 11 Webster?

 12 JIM WEBSTER: My name is Jim Webster. J-I-M,

 13 W-E-B-S-T-E-R, like the dictionary. I am a resident of

 14 Salt Lake, environmental planner. I am a graduate in

 15 landscape architecture and environmental planning from

 16 University of Oregon and Harvard. I have been working

 17 in the coal industry as a planner. I have looked at

 18 alternative sites for residential living in Kemmerer,

 19 and also in Carbon County. So I am familiar with that

 20 industry.

 21 I can tell you that there's a huge contrast

 22 between the fossil fuel industry and other industries

 23 with whom I have worked as an environmental planner and

 24 coal and phosphate projects and things of that nature.

 25 The petrochemical industry, for whatever reason,
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 1 including coal, seems to be entitled, and they don't

 2 really address the environmental issues in the same way

 3 that other very polluting industries do. For whatever

 4 reason, I'm not sure.

 5 I had the misfortune of living on Red Butte

 6 Creek when the Chevron oil spill happened. I have lived

 7 there for 40 years. I have been diagnosed with multiple

 8 myeloma. Fortunately that has been abated, at least I

 9 hope. I keep watching. I go in every six months for

 10 blood tests. I just went in yesterday. There's just

 11 not a whole lot more we can do.

 12 What we're hoping for is not clean air.

 13 That's a euphemism. What we're looking for is

 14 relatively clean air. That's about all we seem to be

 15 able to hope for. So I applaud the EPA to be last week

 16 meeting on PCE plume. EPA is doing a wonderful job in

 17 addressing that in the community involved and associated

 18 with that.

 19 I have been involved with geothermal as well

 20 as a consultant, the Steamboat Springs project in

 21 western Nevada. It's an excellent way. That's also the

 22 binary plant where you don't use up the resource. You

 23 reinject, and it's a totally renewable situation.

 24 One of the renewables that we don't seem to be

 25 willing to look at is low head hydro. That's another
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 1 one in addition to solar and tidal and all the other

 2 opportunities we have.

 3 One of the things we have talked about is

 4 economics. Some of these jobs could be created, as the

 5 president has pointed out, if these jobs were diverted

 6 from extraction to solar industry. But another aspect

 7 to that is, I have had clients come into this valley,

 8 and pick them up at the airport, and have them drive

 9 very few miles, and all of a sudden have them say, "Turn

 10 around, I am going home. The air is so bad here. We

 11 don't want to be associated with this valley."

 12 And that's something that doesn't show up

 13 necessarily in the economic statistics of the state, and

 14 economic development. And so I just would think that we

 15 need to do whatever we can and be as aggressive as we

 16 possibly can, whether it's the EPA plan or something

 17 even more aggressive, and grateful to have the

 18 opportunity to address this group. Thank you.

 19 (Applause).

 20 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you. It's

 21 getting loud again out there. Maybe we need to tell

 22 them to move or close the door. Josh Anderson.

 23 JOSH ANDERSON: Hello. My name is Josh

 24 Anderson. J-O-S-H, A-N-D-E-R-S-O-N. I am a firefighter

 25 paramedic, right here in Salt Lake City, and I'd just
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 1 like to share a perspective from that that relates to

 2 this. And that's that when I got into the fire service,

 3 about 10 years ago, for that we go into every bay in any

 4 fire house, and you would find the walls pretty much

 5 covered in soot, black. And the reason for this is

 6 because of the diesel fumes in the exhaust in the fire

 7 trucks.

 8 Kind of interesting note is that back in the

 9 seventies and eighties when respiratory protection first

 10 became, you know, really big and got to all the

 11 volunteer fire departments, they thought that they would

 12 see huge reductions in the number of firefighters'

 13 deaths and early firefighters' deaths due to lung cancer

 14 and whatnot, because we now had respiratory protection

 15 in fires.

 16 But now what they found is that those deaths

 17 didn't really decline all that much because we were

 18 still dealing with the nitrous oxide emissions in the

 19 fire houses that were emitted by the fire engines. And

 20 so in the last few years, the EPA started requiring

 21 nitrous oxide and similar systems to what's going to

 22 be -- what's proposed to be installed in the coal plants

 23 here.

 24 And so what I am here for is to speak in

 25 support of EPA Option No. 2, because the effects in the
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 1 fire house have been drastic. They actually just in the

 2 last couple of years painted all the walls in our fire

 3 houses, and they are still white. It's pretty amazing

 4 because all the fire engines have been converted to

 5 these systems that convert the nitrous oxide, as well as

 6 the other particulates in there that are very similar to

 7 the particulate and the pollutants that you'll find

 8 coming out of these coal plants.

 9 So once again, just want to sum up, the NOx is

 10 the same. NOx that's in the fire engines that we were

 11 able to clean up there is the same as in these coal

 12 plants. And if you think otherwise, you are just going

 13 to be kind of fooling yourself, because firefighters'

 14 deaths were directly attributed to those things.

 15 And as far as the jobs go, jobs are going to

 16 be shifted, not lost. There actually -- there is a huge

 17 solar farm going in down in southern Utah. So if

 18 anybody needs a job, I'm sure we can shift that over

 19 there. Any of the money that would be spent on this you

 20 could put over there as well, if that's going to put

 21 PacifiCorp out of business. So thank you for your time.

 22 (Applause).

 23 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you.

 24 Mr. Pacheco, you are our last speaker. Do you still

 25 want to speak?
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 1 DAVE PACHECO: Sure. My name is Dave Pacheco.

 2 D-A-V-E, P-A-C-H-E-C-O. I am fourth generation Utahan.

 3 I didn't prepare remarks tonight, but I just speak from

 4 the heart. A couple things jump out to me. And I

 5 haven't studied the plans.

 6 My grandfather was a coal miner also, out here

 7 in the Lark mine in Bingham Canyon. He passed away from

 8 a number of injuries that he had in the mines and also

 9 had black lung. You know, he always used to say to me,

 10 you know, do what you think is right. Do what you think

 11 is best.

 12 And I've just always taken that to heart.

 13 Subsequently I am environmental activist. I am

 14 full-time organizer for environmental causes related to

 15 public lands here in Utah. And I can relate to the same

 16 sort of things that were going on with our public lands

 17 as going on with this decision that you need to make

 18 here in regards to our air, and that is, think about the

 19 long-term effects.

 20 The jobs are there. The people who spoke

 21 earlier are genuine. They spoke from the heart, just

 22 like these folks here are tonight. The jobs can be

 23 transferred. The jobs will change. Change is

 24 inevitable.

 25 What we can't do is continue to stick our
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 1 heads in the sand and say things are going to continue

 2 to be just rosy the way that we are, the way we've

 3 always done it, because it's decided that profits are

 4 made from.

 5 Our job tonight is to let you know what the

 6 people think, and not what the profits dictate. And I

 7 think that's where we need to make the decision here. I

 8 am so in support of the clean parks option, Option No.

 9 2. I think that's the right way to go.

 10 My partner spoke earlier about going to the

 11 parks out here. I have been to the parks for a long

 12 time in Utah. I've visited them several times a year.

 13 I've seen changes. I've seen changes in the way that I

 14 can't -- I can't see as far as I used to. From those

 15 same points I couldn't see Navajo Mountain this year

 16 that I was able to in the past, from Bryce, from those

 17 overlooks.

 18 There's a reason for that, and the reason is

 19 that we're increasing our output of coal. And those

 20 power plants in that region, they have been fingered as

 21 the, you know, the guilty party, and I think we ought to

 22 err on the side of caution there.

 23 The point was made earlier about tourism, and

 24 I just want to reinforce that the state of Utah itself

 25 is out promoting our national parks in earnest. They
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 1 call it the mighty five. And they are bringing people

 2 here from all over the world, and that is the future of

 3 this state.

 4 Of the -- we all speak about one thing. We

 5 all have one thing in common here in Utah and that this

 6 is a beautiful place, and the decisions we make today to

 7 keep it that way are going to be the most important

 8 decisions of our state going forward; not to think in

 9 the nineteenth century about burning coal for our fuels,

 10 but to look forward into the twenty-first century where

 11 we are now and make decisions today that will benefit

 12 those future generations.

 13 Because it's not about the job we have today.

 14 It's about the job and the place that we leave for our

 15 future generations. Thank you.

 16 (Applause).

 17 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: Thank you all for

 18 coming. The hearing is officially over. If you want to

 19 submit written comments, please do so. We ask that you

 20 submit them sooner rather than later so that EPA has

 21 more time consider them in our decision. And we

 22 appreciate your patience. It was -- there were a lot of

 23 people here.

 24 FEMALE VOICE: Can I ask a quick question? I

 25 submitted comments through your website and when it sent
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 1 me my return as to show me a document of what I sent as

 2 an e-mail, it eliminated all of the links to articles

 3 and stuff that I put in my entire e-mail. Why is that?

 4 GAIL FALLON: If you want to call me, I'll

 5 give you my number. If you check the handout, Gail

 6 Fallon on there, I can try and work through that with

 7 you on the phone maybe.

 8 FEMALE VOICE: Can I just send it to your

 9 e-mail to that and then see if it gets to you without

 10 eliminating the links?

 11 GAIL FALLON: That would be fine.

 12 HEARING OFFICER SUTIN: The written comment

 13 period closes March 14th. Thank you, everybody. Good

 14 night.

 15

 16 (The hearing concluded at 8:21 p.m.)

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 1 C E R T I F I C A T E

 2 STATE OF UTAH )

 3 COUNTY OF SALT LAKE )

 4 THIS IS TO CERTIFY that the foregoing proceedings

 5 were taken before me, Teri Hansen Cronenwett, Certified

 6 Realtime Reporter, Registered Merit Reporter and Notary

 7 Public in and for the State of Utah.

 8 That the proceedings were reported by me in

 9 Stenotype, and thereafter transcribed by computer under

 10 my supervision, and that a full, true, and correct

 11 transcription is set forth in the foregoing pages,

 12 numbered 2 through 231 inclusive.

 13 I further certify that I am not of kin or otherwise

 14 associated with any of the parties to said cause of

 15 action, and that I am not interested in the event

 16 thereof.

 17 WITNESS MY HAND and official seal at Salt Lake

 18 City, Utah, this 8th day of February, 2016.

 19

 20

 Teri Hansen Cronenwett, CRR, RMR

 21 License No. 91-109812-7801

 22 My commission expires:

 January 19, 2019

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