A Part of Utah Built on Coal Wonders What Comes Next
By DAN FROSCH
Published: November 27, 2013
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 settled in. The state’s oldest coal-fired power plant, tucked among the canyons near town, is set to close, 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 seek other jobs. Local trucking and equipment outfits are preparing to take business elsewhere.
“There are a lot of people worried,” said Kyle Davis, who has been employed at the plant since he was 18.
Mr. Davis, 56, worked his way up from sweeping floors to managing operations at the plant, whose 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 Eskelsen, a spokesman for the utility. “None of the ones we investigated really would produce the results that would meet the requirements.”
For the last several 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 Tennessee 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 closed 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 sessions” around the country in advance of proposing additional rules for carbon dioxide emissions.
“Coal 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 cases is cheaper and doesn’t have any of the pollution.”
Coal’s downward turn has hit Appalachia hardest, but the effects of the transition toward other energy sources has started to ripple westward.
Mr. Eskelsen 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 Casey Hopes, a Carbon County commissioner, whose grandfather was a coal miner. “The power plants, the mines — they support so many smaller businesses. 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 seen it,” said David Palacios, who works for a trucking company that hauls coal to the power plants, and whose business will slow once the Carbon plant closes.
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 used within the region, rather than being exported overseas. That has left the industry here more vulnerable to local plant closings.
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.
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.
Washington State, for example, has worked with municipalities and utilities to ease 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. You 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 seen 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 these young guys?” Pete Palacios said, his voice trailing off.
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