Governor Gary Herbert toured several businesses in Carbon and Emery County June 15, that have been impacted by the Obama Administrations war on coal. In Emery County the governor stopped to tour Wheeler Machinery Company in Huntington.
This company has been hard hit by the down turn in coal production or the war on coal. In Carbon and Emery County there are now many vacant and for sale homes.
There is also a noticeable reduction of customers in the local businesses. When coal-mining jobs are lost in Carbon and Emery counties it impacts the entire community with other jobs being lost as well.
Brian Campbell, the Wheeler Company vice president of product support and Stephen Martinez the Wheeler Company plant manager welcomed Utah Governor Gary Herbert and gave the Governor and those with him a walking tour through this nearly idle factory. During the walking tour, the governor stopped occasionally to visit with working Wheeler Company employees.
The governor was accompanied on this tour by two County Commissioners Mark Whitney from Beaver County and Leland Holly from Garfield County.
When Governor Herbert arrived in Huntington, at the Wheeler machinery company, the Emery County Republican Party Chairman Bill Dellos, Karen Dellos, Phil Fauver, Marilyn Fauver, Emery County Sheriff Greg Funk and Castle Dale Mayor Danny Van Wagner met him.
Governor Gary Herbert said it is great to be in Emery County again and to have the opportunity to view this beautiful Wheeler manufacturing facility.
Wheeler Machinery Company is the large white and blue building on the north side of Huntington that manufactures equipment for extracting coal from coal mines. Their equipment has been utilized in coal mines in Utah, Wyoming and several other states. This large manufacturing facility that usually employees around 100 people currently employs only a crew of 45 people. Wheeler Machinery is also a dealer for Caterpillar earth moving equipment.
To those who do not want coal to produce electricity and would rather have solar or wind generating electricity.
When the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow then the coal-fired power plants are called upon to supplement the needed electricity.
The governor posed a question, how do you identify power that has come from solar, wind, nuclear or coal once that power is in the electrical grid? He answered the question by saying once that power is in the grid you cannot identify it as it is then just called electricity.
Governor Herbert said, when other sources of power fail the electrical base load for this country comes from carbon-based fuel such as coal, natural gas and or nuclear power. The great advantage of coal is that it is a stable resource for generating electrical power.
Every kilowatt-hour produced in this country is backed up by coal. When the other sources don’t work, they turn on the coal.
Governor Herbert indicated to the group that he and his Economic Council have long been working to preserve our very important coal industry in Utah.
Governor Herbert said we’re doing what we can to reverse the war on coal. He said, I have met with the president of the United States, the vice president, the secretary of energy and realizing we do not see things the same way.
The common sense application of energy says to us, with today’s technology and the science surrounding carbon based fuels, tells us that coal and natural gas will be the base load for electricity in this country for at least the next generation.
You cannot produce the supply of energy needed today without carbon-based fuels. When you have Hillary Clinton a candidate for the highest office in the land that has indicated if she is elected she will close down all the coal mines and put coal mines out of business. That is foolishness.
Coal is the lowest-cost source of fuel for generating power.
The regional haze issue has come out of the clean air act. The environmentalists use it in and attempt to make an improvement in our Utah parks. The amount of haze there cannot be measured by the naked eye.
Billions of dollars could be spent in an attempt to reduce or eliminate the haze, but it would not be successful. The haze in Utah comes on the prevailing winds from the West.
Utah is fighting 26 lawsuits on variety of issues and among those are people suing to shut down the power plants.
There are other people suing in a variety of ways to eliminate access to coal mines so that we cannot develop new resources.
Part of that has been the closure of 2477 roads and the protecting of sage grouse. They do this to stop access in places where drilling could take place in an effort to find new resources.
Most of this litigation is designed to stop any and all natural resource development.
The public lands issue is not progressing as fast as we would like. I am the first governor to sign a bill allowing for the transfer of public land to the state. We believe that the 1976 law, the Federal Lands Practice Management Act is unconstitutional.
Our congressional delegation is on a parallel track to see what they can do legislatively. Congressman Rob Bishop believes he has the votes to pass this legislation with some compromising. This is a common sense way of resolving the problems at same time protecting our views, vistas and open up natural resources that are there to be developed and at the same time we will be good stewards of the earth.
We are involved in 26 lawsuits at the present time. If we get involved in a lawsuit over our public lands, it’ll be five or 10 years before that would play out.
The question about the loss of jobs in rural Utah, the governor said the government should get out of the way of the free market and let the local members of the community come up with the ideas.
Then we have ways to assist the private sector to create jobs. We have a group called the governor’s Rural Partnership Board, which is chaired by Lt. Governor Spencer Cox. They are asking of the local government and people. What can we do to help you as a partner?
The proposals for improvement in the economy should come from the local government and people. We have a role to help expand businesses. We have the Business Expansion and Retention or BEAR program. We have some grants to help young businesses get started.
We have the tools in place, but we have to have the ideas and input from the local government and people as to how we can help.
Gov. Herbert visits Wheeler in Huntington
"Gov. Gary Herbert visits Wheeler Machinery in Huntington."