Dallas' EFH offers to keep 500 jobs if EPA changes pollution rule

Sep 14 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Elizabeth Souder The Dallas Morning News

Energy Future Holdings will be happy to keep 500 employees on its payroll and to continue operating coal plants and mines, if federal regulators would change a new pollution rule.

That's what David Campbell, chief executive of EFH's power generation business, told the Texas Senate Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday in Austin. He and some Texas regulators said the Environmental Protection Agency has been unwilling to bend during weeks of negotiations on the Cross State Air Pollution Rule.

The EPA announced earlier this year that Texas must cut sulfur dioxide emissions 47 percent by January. The Dallas company said the only way to comply so quickly is to shut down plants and mines.

"The rule stands as it is. Unless the EPA changes it, we'll have to take these actions," Campbell said.

The EPA has said it will work with Texas' largest power generator on following the rule, designed to prevent thousands of premature deaths because of asthma. Texas environmental advocates accused Energy Future Holdings of political posturing and a lack of foresight.

Meanwhile, 500 jobs could be at risk in rural East Texas.

"There are no other jobs for these people," said Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, whose district includes two of the power plant units and two mines that could be closed.

"You go tell these people that they can't feed their families or send their kids to school," he said during the hearing, when environmental activist Tom "Smitty" Smith of Public Citizen said the 40-year-old coal plants should be retired.

Smith accused EFH of using jobs as a negotiating chip.

"Everybody is puffed up, and said, 'Here's our position: The sky is going to fall,'" he told the committee. "The second act is where you really end up working out the deals and start to understand the dynamics."

Randall Pierce, business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers representing 1,620 EFH mining and power plant workers, said the company's power generation business, Luminant, waited two weeks to make the announcement, hoping the EPA would give.

"They didn't want to put this out and upset people and destroy a bunch of the employees' lives, their whole careers at Luminant," said Pierce, a 30-year employee.

"Really, the number in my opinion, the 500, I feel like is probably low, and that could even increase," he said.

At issue is the amount of time EFH has to comply with the rule. Luminant's Campbell said it would take three years to install pollution controls, but the EPA added Texas to the rule just six months before implementation. EFH has sued the regulators. The company said Tuesday that idling the plants will cause earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization next year to drop $260 million.

Texas Railroad Commissioner Barry Smitherman, who was chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas when the EPA published the rule, said he tried to discuss the problems with federal regulators in June.

"We asked them to please take another look at this, and we pointed out the procedural flaws. I never got a response to that," he told the Senate panel.

Environmental activists agreed six months isn't enough time to upgrade plants. But EFH had years to come up with a strategy to cut pollution, said Jim Marston, energy program director for the Environmental Defense Fund. He said other Texas companies began planning years ago to cut sulfur dioxide emissions and now sit in a much better position.

"For years, the company fought [pollution rules] and gambled with its shareholders' money and its employees' jobs," Marston said in a public statement. "Rather than take responsibility for its gamble, the company is blaming the consequences on EPA."

Not so, Campbell said during the hearing.

"There are ... those who will say we should have known this was coming. My answer to this point is simple. EPA's own draft rule in 2010 did not include Texas," he said.