I would like to give you my personal take regarding proposed upcoming EPA regulations on reducing current electric power operations.
In July, the EPA will tell us what they demand from Arkansas power production after earlier issuing plans to cut coal fired plants production by a huge amount. I believe the EPA is asking the state of Arkansas to cut twice the plants than it is the state of Kansas. No one can answer my questions, or anyone else’s questions, as to why we have such an unbalanced demand on this state. Oklahoma isn’t happy either over what the EPA is demanding it to shut down.
It is a very strange situation we find. The federal government is meddling in where an agency can enforce what it says is a nation-wide regulation without Congress passing such a law.
The Texas Legislature has passed a resolution to ignore it completely, saying states have rights to do that. Several states are looking hard at it and several state attorney generals including, ours here in Arkansas, are suing the EPA to stop this order since it made no efforts to learn the economics of what this ruling will cost the consumers.
The only thing they can say is we need to cut the carbon down. That is theory.
A few years ago it was global warming and an ex-vice president said we’d have palm trees thriving on Lake Michigan shores of Chicago. That theory blew up and now it is climate change.
In the 1970s, Congress spent millions to find out why it was so cold. What did they find? It was weather change.
If the coal plants are shut down, look for much higher electric bills for your farm or residence. How much more? It will escalate, by my own horseback method of figuring, 25 to 30 percent. Some say more than that.
We have coal plants the EPA wants to shut down with no compensation. You and I, as co-op members, have our money in the plants.
Will the EPA pay us for doing that? No.
Will the EPA continue to pay the property tax we pay on the plants to the communities where they are situated when they sit there cold and empty? No.
Will they pay the wages to all the people who work in them until they find equal employment? No.
A pile of coal means you will have electricity production. A gas pipe, like in the winter before in some areas, went dry and they had every coal plant running to make it up. Natural gas prices can fluctuate in price meaning less stability in electric costs.
They failed miserably to pass a carbon tax which would have made some folks millionaires and charged all of us to pay that penalty.
My concern is for all the people on fixed incomes, retired or disabled. This experiment could hurt those already pressed by a high living cost with burdensome prices caused by an unproven theory that would not hold up in reality.
May God Bless your family and the USA.
Editor’s note: Dusty Richards is a member of the Ozarks Electric Co-op’s board of directors in Fayetteville, Ark. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Ozarks Farm & Neighbor.
