CLEVELAND, March 21 — The Teamsters Rail Conference is urging the Obama Administration to reconsider tough new environmental regulations for coal-fired power plants that could negatively impact railroad workers.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently issued a final rule establishing Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS). According to Teamsters Rail Conference President Dennis R. Pierce, “This rule has the potential to cost our membership a staggering number of jobs by significantly decreasing the amount of coal used in electricity generation.”
In a March 16 letter to President Barack H. Obama, President Pierce alerted the White House of the potentially devastating impact the MATS rule could have on rail workers who are members of the BLET and BMWED, Divisions of the Teamsters Rail Conference. Pierce also serves as National President of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET).
“Nearly one in five railroad jobs are related to coal haulage; if these jobs are lost, it is not likely that new business generated on our nation’s railroads will ever make up for the loss of coal,” President Pierce wrote.
According to the EPA, 40 percent of coal-fired power plants in operation in the U.S. are not equipped to comply with the new MATS requirements. Bringing the plants into compliance would be so expensive that some power companies already have announced that they intend to close plants because complying with the regulation in the short time permitted by the rule would be too difficult and expensive.
President Pierce stressed that, in these tough economic times, America needs more jobs, not less.
“We fully support (the White House’s) high-speed rail and green jobs initiatives,” President Pierce wrote. “The MATS requirements take the nation in the opposite direction and our members simply cannot bear the costs of these emissions regulations. Accordingly, I ask you today for your support for the petitions for reconsideration of the new source MATS emission limits that will be filed with EPA. We also ask you to include coal in your ‘all of the above’ plan for America’s energy future so that a balanced energy policy can be maintained.”
The Teamsters Rail Conference represents more than 70,000 locomotive engineers, trainmen and maintenance of way workers on commuter, passenger and freight rail lines across the United States.
For a copy of President Pierce’s letter to the White House, please visit:
www.ble-t.org/pr/pdf/Obama_MATS_Rule.pdf