A Part of Utah Built on Coal Wonders What Comes Next
PRICE, Utah —For generations, coal has been the lifeblood of this mineral-rich stretch of eastern Utah. Mining families proudly recall all the years they toiled underground. Supply companies line the town streets. Above the road that winds toward the mines, a soot-smudged miner peers out from a billboard with the slogan “Coal = Jobs.”
But recently, fear has ttled in. The state’s oldest coal-fired power plant, tucked among the canyons near town, is t to clo, a result of new, stricter federal pollution regulations.
As energy companies tack away from coal, toward cleaner, cheaper natural gas, people here have grown increasingly afraid that their community may soon slip away. Dozens of workers at the facility here, the Carbon Power Plant, have learned that they must retire early or ek other jobs. Local trucking and equipment outfits are preparing to take business elwhere.
“There are a lot of people worried,” said Kyle Davis, who has been employed at the plant since he was 18.照顾小宝贝
Mr. Davis, 56, worked his way up from sweeping floors to managing operations at the plant, who furnaces have been burning since 1954.
“I would have liked to be here for another five years,” he said. “I’m too young to retire.”
But Rocky Mountain Power, the utility that operates the plant, has determined that it would be too expensive to retrofit the aging plant to meet new federal standards on mercury emissions. The plant is scheduled to be shut by April 2015.
“We had been working for the better part of three years, testing compliance strategies,” said David Eskeln, a spokesman for the utility. “None of the ones we investigated really would produce the results that would meet the requirements.”
For the last veral years, coal plants have been shutting down across the country, driven by tougher environmental regulations, flattening electricity demand and a move by utilities toward natural gas.
This month, the board of directors of the Tenne Valley Authority, the country’s largest public power utility, voted to shut eight coal-powered plants in Alabama and Kentucky and partly replace them with gas-fired power. Since 2010, more than 150 coal plants have been clod or scheduled for retirement.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the stricter emissions regulations for the plants will result in billions of dollars in related health savings, and will have a sweeping impact on air quality.
In recent weeks, the agency held 11 “listening ssions” around the country in advance of proposing additional rules for carbon dioxide emissions.
“Co al plants are the single largest source of dangerous carbon pollution in the United States, and we have ready alternatives like wind and solar to replace them,” said Bruce Nilles,
director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, which wants to shut all of the nation’s coal plants.
“We have a choice,” he said, “which in most cas is cheaper and doesn’t have any of the pollution.”
广东警官学院分数线
Coal’s downward turn has hit Appalachia hardest, but the effects of the transition toward other energy sources has started to ripple westward.
Mr. Eskeln said Rocky Mountain Power would place some of the 70 Carbon facility employees at its two other Utah coal plants. Other workers will take early retirement or look for different jobs.
Still, the notion that this pocket of Utah, where Greek, Italian and Mexican immigrants came to mine coal more than a century ago, could survive without it, is hard for people here to comprehend.
“The attack on coal is so broad-reaching in our little community,” said Cay Hopes, a Carbon County co mmissioner, who grandfather was a coal miner. “The power plants, the mines —they support so many smaller business. We don’t have another industry.”
Like others in Price, Mr. Hopes voiced frustration with the Obama administration, saying it should be investing more in clean coal technology rather than discarding coal altogether. Annual Utah coal production, though, has been slowly declining for a decade according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
Last year, mines here produced about 17 million tons of coal, the lowest level since 1987, though production has crept up this year.
“This is the worst we’ve en it,” said David Palacios, who works for a trucking company that hauls coal to the power plants, and who business will slow once the Carbon plant clos. Mr. Palacios, president of the Southeastern Utah Energy Producers Association, noted that the demand for coal has always ebbed and flowed here.
“But this has been two to three years we’re struggling through,” he said.
Compounding the problem, according to some mining experts, is that until now, most of the state’s coal has been sold and ud within the region, rather than being exported overas. That has left the industry here more vulnerable to local plant closings.
五不准Cindy Crane, chairwoman of the Utah Mining Association, said demand for Utah coal could eventually drop as much as 50 percent. “For most players in Utah coal, this a tough time,” said Ms. Crane, vice president of PacifiCorp, a Western utility and mining company that owns the Carbon plant.
歹意Mr. Nilles of the Sierra Club acknowledged that the shift from coal would not be easy on communities like Carbon County. But employees could be retrained or compensated for lost jobs, he said, and new industries could be drawn to the region.
大堂鼓花生猪蹄汤Washington State, for example, has worked with municipalities and utilities to ea the transition from coal plants while ensuring that workers are transferred to other energy jobs or paid, if nearing retirement, Mr. Nilles said.
“Coal has been good to Utah,” Mr. Nilles said, “but markets for coal are drying up. Y ou need to get ahead of this and make sure the jobs don’t all leave.”
For many here, coal jobs are all they know. The industry united the area during hard times, too, especially during the dark days after nine men died in a 2007 mining accident some 35 miles down the highway. Virtually everyone around Price knew the men, six of whom remain entombed in the mountainside.
But there is quiet acknowledgment that Carbon County will have to change —if not now, soon.
David Palacios’s father, Pete, who worked in the mines for 43 years, has en coal roar and fade here. Now 86, his eyes grew cloudy as he recalled his first mining job. He was 12, and earned $1 a day.
“I’m retired, so I’ll be fine. But the young guys?” Pete Palacios said, his voice trailing off.
NARSAQ, Greenland —As icebergs in the Kayak Harbor pop andhiss while melting away, this remote Arctic town and its culture are alsodisappearing in a changing climate.
争分夺秒Narsaq’s largest employer, a shrimpfactory, clod a few years ago after the crustaceans fled north t
o coolerwater. Where once there were eight commercial fishing vesls, there is nowone.
As a result, the population here,one of southern Greenland’s major towns, has been halved to 1,500 in just adecade. Suicides are up.
“Fishing is the heart of this town,”said Hans Kaspern, 63, a fisherman. “Lots of people have lost theirlivelihoods.”
But even as warming temperatures areupending traditional Greenlandic life, they are also offering up intriguing newopportunities for this state of 57,000 — perhaps nowhere more so than here inNarsaq.
V ast new deposits of minerals andgems are being discovered as Greenland’s massive ice cap recedes, forming thebasis of a potentially lucrative mining industry.
One of the world’s largest depositsof rare earth metals —esntial for manufacturing cellphones, wind turbinesand electric cars — sits just outside Narsaq.
It has long been known thatGreenland sat upon vast mineral lodes, and the Danish government has mappedthem intermittently for decades. Niels Bohr, Denmark’s Nobel Prize-winningnuclear physicist and a member of the Manhattan Project, visited Narsaq in 1957becau of its uranium deposits.
But previous attempts at miningmostly failed, proving too expensive in the inclement conditions. Now, warminghas altered the equation.
Greenland’s Bureau of Minerals andPetroleum, charged with managing the boom, currently has 150 active licensfor mineral exploration, up from 20 a decade ago. Altogether, companies spent$100 million exploring Greenland’s deposits last year, and veral are applyingfor licens to begin construction on new mines, bearing gold, iron and zincand rare earths. There are also foreign companies exploring for offshore oil.
The Black Angel lead and zinc mine,which clod in 1990, is applying to reopen this year, said Jorgen T.Hammeken-Holm, who overes licensing at the country’s mining bureau, “becauthe ice is in retreat and you’re getting much more to explore.”
秋天的夜晚作文The Greenlandic government hopesthat mining will provide new revenue. In granting Greenland home rule in 2009,Denmark froze its annual subsidy, which is scheduled to be decread further inthe coming years.
Here in Narsaq, a collection ofbrightly painted homes bordered by spectacular fjords, two foreign companiesare applying to the government for permission to mine.
That proximity promis employment,and the company is already schooling some young men in drilling and in English,the international language of mine operations. It plans to build a processingplant, a new port and more roads. (Greenland currently has none outside ofttled
areas.) Narsaq’s tiny airport, previously threatened with closure fromlack of traffic, could be expanded. A local landlord is contemplatingconverting an abandoned apartment block into a hotel.
“There will be a lot of peoplecoming from outside and that will be a big challenge since Greenlandic culturehas been isolated,” said Jasper Schroder, a student home in Narsaq fromuniversity in Denmark.
Still, he supports the mine andhopes it will provide jobs and stem the rash of suicides, particularly amonghis peers; Greenland has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. “Peoplein this culture don’t want to be a burden to their families if they can’tcontribute,” he said.
But not all are convinced of thebenefits of mining. “Of cour the mine will help the local economy and willhelp Greenland, but I’m not so sure if it will be good for us,” said Dorotheaodg aard, who runs a local guesthou. “We are worried about the loss ofnature.”
