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UTAH DISASTER
DOESN'T SCARE OFF MINING STUDENTS
(Source: Susan Gallagher, The Associated Press, 9/4/07)

BUTTE, Mont. — Jared Bartel arrived at Montana Tech this month for a fmal semester that will take him to graduation and a job as a mining engineer.

Six months ago, Bartel firmed up a position with a Wyoming coal mine where he will be paid upward of $50,000 a year. His career aspirations remain as strong as ever despite the Utah mine disaster that focused new attention on the dangers of extracting resources from rock.

"There are inherent risks with mining," said Bartel, 23, of Hamilton in southwestern Montana. "But it's not nearly as dangerous as many jobs out there."

His attitude was common among freshmen and upperclassmen alike as mining students arrived on the Tech campus late last month while six men remained trapped in Utah's Crandall Canyon coal mine after a cave-in Aug. 6. Another collapse, 10 days later, killed three rescuers and injured six.

Officials at Montana Tech and mining schools elsewhere say the Utah disaster is unlikely to chill interest in a field brimming with opportunity in areas such as mine development, planning and administration. They say students tend to see themselves as invincible, and mine accidents reinforce the importance of their work as engineers, jobs that can send graduates underground alongside miners.

"Those accidents demonstrate the need for more and better engineering," said Rick Sweigard, who oversees mining engineering instruction at the University of Kentucky, one of 13 U.S. schools withaccredited programs in the field.

Mining fatalities increased 19 percent last year, in part because of West Virginia's Sago Mine explosion that killed 12 people, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Oil and gas extraction is included in the mining category and accounted for the most fatalities. Looking at broad industry sectors, the department found mining trailed the agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting group in deaths per 100,000 people employed.

Ron Brummett, career services director at the Colorado School of Mines, said job prospects for mining engineers are the best he's seen since he arrived at the Golden, Colo., campus in 1993. Last year's class had a 92 percent placement rate upon graduation, and within six months the rate was 100 percent.

What happened in Utah "underscores the need to know your stuff" and is no deterrent to a career in mining, said

Janet Robinson, who at age 50 is a freshman in Montana Tech. Previously a loan processor, she became interested in the mining program after visiting the campus with her son, a freshman in a different program.

Another student, Heather Buettner, said the Utah disaster colored her outlook, at least a bit. Buettner, who transferred out of the school's nursing program and into mining this year, said she won't work in an underground coal mine when she is an engineer a few years from now.

Besides coal operations above and below ground, opportunities for Buettner and other graduates may include jobs at metal mines, sand and gravel operations, transportation projects with underground features such as tunnels, mine safety and enforcement and mine reclamation.
Students here and at other campuses must take safety classes, with some schools using idle mines nearby for training.

"If they start volunteering at the [school] mine, they get safety instruction as soon as they show up on site," said Mary Polton, head of mining engineering at the University of Arizona.
Safety is part of the curriculum in the sophomore and junior years, and includes students at the university mine removing a "victim" in a staged rock fall, Polton said. As part of the simulation, the fire department responds, reporters ask questions, a state mine inspector shows up and an investigation begins.

For students who satisfy these and other requirements for a bachelor's degree, job opportunities abound.

"It's safe to say the demand exceeds the supply by about

PROBES AIM TO SHED LIGHT ON MINING
(Source: Mike Gorrell, Salt Lake Tribune, 9/2/07)

The search for missing people gives way now to the search for answers.

But that process of determining what went wrong at the Crandall Canyon mine and why is almost certain to be as exhausting and, at times, emotionally taxing as the heart-wrenching effort to rescue the six trapped coal miners.

Five investigative panels already are lined up to scrutinize the disaster, which cost nine lives, injured six miners and left at least 170 other Murray Energy Corp. employees out of work.

That there are so many probes is telling. Skepticism is rife that any of the individual inquiries is capable - or willing - to get at the truth of the matter.

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration's formal inquiry already is under way. But MSHA's investigations frequently are criticized for being too narrow and focusing strictly on what physically triggered the disaster itself and not exploring the regulatory culture that allowed such volatile conditions to exist.

That is particularly true in a case such as this in which one of the most provocative questions is: Why did MSHA approve changes to the company's mining plan, revisions that in retrospect seem foolhardy even to people who don't know anything about mining?

Why else would U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao take the unprecedented step of appointing two retired, widely respected MSHA employees to conduct an "independent review" of agency actions before the Aug. 6 implosion of the mine's walls and through the Aug. 16 collapse that killed three would-be rescuers?

Part of the reason is that internal MSHA reviews of two fatal mine accidents in a three-week span last year in West Virginia - the explosion that killed 12 at the Sago mine Jan. 2 and a fire that left two dead at Aracoma Alma Mine No. 1 on Jan. 19 - revealed numerous shortcomings in how the agency enforced mine-safety laws.

"In West Virginia, we learned that MSHA has failed to protect coal miners from those coal operators who are more interested in mine profits than in mine safety," said Alan Karlin, a Morgantown, W.Va., attorney who represented several Sago widows after that disaster.

Chao's action clearly did not satisfy Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, one of the congressional committees poised to probe Crandall Canyon. He wondered aloud how independent those reviewers could be when they were appointed by and are answerable to the Labor Department official over MSHA.

Then again, the multiple congressional inquiries into the tragedy are susceptible to second guessing and accusations of partisan politics.

Are the Democrats really interested in ensuring that mine-safety laws and policies drafted after disasters in 1968, '76, '84 (Utah's own Wilberg fire) and 2006 are sufficient and properly enforced? Or are they merely capitalizing on Crandall Canyon to sling mud at the Bush administration?

Why are the Republicans so quick to defend the mine operators and the political appointees running the agency? Doesn't that reinforce the perception that MSHA was less concerned about worker safety than advancing the business prospects of companies that often are big contributors to GOP candidates and their causes?

State officials also have entered the fray, forming a commission to determine what, if anything, Utah can do to make mines here safer.

Meanwhile, the sidelines will be filled with the following interested parties, who will have varying degrees of impact on the overall proceeding:

* The United Mine Workers of America, which believes Crandall Canyon epitomizes the plight of miners in an operation run by such an outspokenly anti-union owner as Murray Energy's Robert Murray, and which is eager to bolster its membership.

* The news media, which will not be as numerous or national as during the rescue effort, but which will be there from start to finish, doing their own digging, raising questions that span the gamut from relevant to ridiculous.

* Consultants and other private investigators retained by attorneys for the victims' survivors, the mine company and anybody else in a position to sue or be sued.

Amid all this swirling mass of information, accusation and deliberation will be the families of the dead, injured and missing miners - especially those of the six trapped miners, who still face the overriding question: Will the bodies of their loved ones ever be recovered?

Of all the proceedings, MSHA's probe will receive the most long-term attention. It also has the potential to arouse the deepest emotional conflicts because it will directly address the deaths of the six trapped miners and three rescuers, and their families usually receive face-to-face updates from investigators.

The challenge is well known to Richard Gates, an MSHA district manager in Birmingham, Ala. He was put in charge of the Crandall Canyon investigation less than four months after concluding a sometimes-contentious 16-month inquiry into the Sago mine disaster.

Celeste Monforton was the liaison between the survivors of the Sago victims and the team appointed by West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin to investigate the disaster. As such, she interacted frequently with Gates. She also observed the evolution of the families' relationship with him over nearly 16 months.

Gates entered a situation, Monforton said, in which many family members felt the rescue had not been handled well and were upset that their offers to go into the mine and retrieve their loves ones had been denied. Similar offers were made at Crandall Canyon.

The families initially viewed Gates as detached and bureaucratic, she said, a person whose technical qualifications for conducting an investigation surpassed his people skills. Tension pervaded early meetings between investigator and families.

"When we started, there would be screaming, crying, people pummeling him with questions. These meetings were always really hard," she said. "So many things went wrong at Sago, and Richard became the face of MSHA. He wasn't on the ground during the rescue, but he became the person that was the recipient of all the hurt, anger, all of that."

But, over time, families and investigator came to understand one another better. He became more responsive to their needs, in part benefiting from the state team's insistence on keeping kin completely in the know about what was happening. They came to recognize that his task was narrowly defined - to find the cause of the explosion, not really all of the background that led to it. That other information was left to MSHA's internal review.

Monforton said she called several Sago family members after news of Gates' appointment to oversee the Crandall Canyon investigation circulated through mining circles. She was rather surprised by the general reaction: Don't they have somebody else who could do it? Why would MSHA put him through this emotionally draining situation again when he just finished one?

"You can't go through the dramatics of doing that kind of investigation, being chewed out by family members, pushed and pulled politically and not have that wear and tear on you," said Monforton, recalling that when the official Sago accident report was released May 9, "I looked at all those [MSHA] guys and they were spent."

Four months later, Gates and colleague Joseph O'Donnell will be at it again, this time in Utah, a far sight farther from their Alabama homes than Upshur County, W.Va.

Monforton said she hopes the MSHA team - and state commission - will have a family liaison.

"It's a simple golden rule: If someone calls you, call them back. If someone asks you a question and you don't have the answer, have someone call them back with an answer the next day," she said. "The families want to feel a part of it so they don't read about what's going on in the investigation in the newspaper."

MSHA seems to have learned that lesson from Sago. Throughout the Crandall Canyon rescue effort, agency officials consistently made sure the families were briefed before the news media. Leaks were infrequent.

"It can really help how your report is viewed if the families have a role to play, if they feel they're getting information," Monforton added. "In the long run, it makes whatever the findings are easier to accept."

Kevin Stricklin, the MSHA official over coal-mine safety, told the newly formed state mining commission that he expects the investigation to begin this week, although its half-dozen members already have had online access to many Crandall Canyon documents that were on file.

The team will go through duty rosters and work logs to determine which miners and company employees were well acquainted with the West Mains area, where the trapped miners were working when the walls imploded.

The four miners who escaped that night will be of particular interest, since they were the last to see the trapped six alive. So will two miners who were first on the scene of the devastation and tried to climb over massive piles of rubble toward the section until they were forced to turn back by impassible conditions and deteriorating air quality.

It is important to interview these people while their memories of events remain clear, said Stricklin, noting that investigators "have the ability and charge to bring out anybody they want throughout the entire country [to investigate this accident]."

But that does not mean MSHA investigators have carte blanche access to whomever and whatever they want - hence some of the skepticism about their ability to get at the truth.

During the Aracoma inquiry, for instance, MSHA's report noted "numerous mine management officials declined to participate in voluntary interviews. MSHA has no legal authority to require persons to participate in accident-investigation interviews."

In addition, investigators had to go to court to force the mine owner to turn over crucial records, some of which the owner claimed did not exist. MSHA also learned that computer data tracking the mine's air-monitoring system "was found to have been deleted."

MSHA's investigators

The Mine Safety and Health Administration's Crandall Canyon mine disaster probe team:

* Richard A. Gates, district manager, Birmingham, Ala., head of investigation into the 2006 Sago disaster.

* Timothy R. Watkins, assistant district manager in Kentucky who has ventilation and retreat-mining experience.

* Gary E. Smith, supervisor in Pennsylvania with roof-control experience.

* Joseph R. O'Donnell, Sago investigation veteran from MSHA's district office in Alabama.

* Joseph C. Zelanko, Michael Gauna and Thomas A. Morley, all from MSHA's Office of Technical Support.

"It can really help how your report is viewed if the families have a role to play, if they feel they're getting information. In the long run, it makes whatever the findings are easier to accept."

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A CATEGORY 5 WARNING ABOUT
GLOBAL WARMING
(Source: Chris Mooney*, Special to the Los Angeles Times, 9/7/07)

If the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season ended tomorrow, we would still call it extraordinary. The year's first two hurricanes, Dean and Felix, both reached Category 5 classification. That's a record, one among many that these two storms helped establish.

To begin with, in the archives (which go back to 1851, with varying degrees of completeness) only three other seasons - 1960, 1961 and 2005 - had more than one of these monster storms. And no season can rival this additional feat: Both Dean and Felix struck land at full Category 5 strength.

There hadn't been a Category 5 landfall in what hurricane experts call the Atlantic basin (the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic north of the equator) since 1992's Hurricane Andrew ravaged southern Florida. Now we've seen two in two weeks.

The scariest factoid, however, is this : We've now witnessed eight Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic basin in the past five years (Isabel, Ivan, Emily, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Dean and Felix). You have to go back to the 1960s, with six recorded Category 5s, to find another decade that even approaches the present one in this regard. (And if you look beyond the Atlantic? In June, Cyclone Gonu was a Category 5 and the strongest storm ever observed in the Arabian Sea.)

In the face of all this, it's inevitable that global warming comes up. While each individual storm's immediate environment - water temperature, atmospheric patterns - will always determine its maximum strength, many scientists expect hurricanes to become more intense on average as global warming adds more heat to the tropical oceans. The question now - or more precisely, the argument - turns on whether that has already happened: Are the changes detectable? And, if they are (or aren't), what do we do about it?

For several years, experts have been hotly debating the nuances of the hurricane-climate relationship. An apparent trend toward stronger hurricanes (more Category 4 and 5 storms) seems most indisputable in the Atlantic region, with the dramatic 2005 season - featuring four Category 5s and the most intense Atlantic hurricane ever (Wilma) providing an exclamation point. Yet some scientists attribute the recent hyperactivity to an ocean-driven up-and-down cycle rather than to a changing global climate. After all, the 1960s also saw lots of very strong hurricanes.

Skeptics of a strong hurricane-climate linkage also assert that our records have some apples-and-oranges issues, as a result of changing measurement techniques over time. For example, Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center argues that 50 years ago, Hurricane Dean may have been classified as a mere Category 3 storm. If a storm hit a relatively unpopulated stretch of coast, as Dean did, there wouldn't have been a lot of land-based measuring devices in place, and aircraft would
have been afraid to penetrate a storm's eye and sample its true strength.

So even though this decade may hold the ''record'' for the most Category 5 storms, we must remember that a record is only what's recorded. It's no great leap to imagine that some very strong storms from the 1960s might be underclassified in our database.

And so even as monster storms slam our coastlines, the hurricane-climate debate - like so many other scientific debates that are highly relevant to political decision-making - remains shot through with uncertainty. It's frustrating if you want to chart an appropriate public response. But uncertainty needn't be entirely unproductive. It needn't leave us paralyzed.

Just because we can't reach scientific conclusions beyond a reasonable doubt about hurricanes and climate doesn't mean that, as citizens or as policymakers, we can't say anything at all. When you see data that are not just anomalous (which is to say record-breaking) but anomalous in such a way that they fit scientists' predictions, it would be foolish not to take note.

Although no single event can serve as direct evidence of changing climate, hurricane intensity records are, nevertheless, suggestive. To be sure, weak words like ''suggestive'' aren't easy for citizens or policymakers to mobilize behind. These days seem to demand absolutes. We ask, ''Which side are you on?'' and we want proof. Yet this time, what the data ''prove'' is that we must occupy - and learn to act from - the murky middle ground.

When it comes to the hurricane-global warming relationship, neither outright alarmism nor dismissive skepticism are warranted. Rather, taking the limited information that we have and making the most of it should lead to a stance of cautious, well-informed concern. Further research - or, perhaps, more mega-hurricanes - may seal the issue. But meanwhile, given how much we have at stake, we should already be moving to prepare and protect ourselves - even as we remain fully open to new evidence.

---* CHRIS MOONEY is Washington correspondent for Seed magazine and author of Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming.

NATION'S NUCLEAR WASTE STORAGE INDUSTRY IN A JAM -
AND UTAH IN THE SPOTLIGHT
(Source: Judy Fahys, Salt Lake Tribune, 9/11/07)

LAS VEGAS - The nuclear waste industry is preoccupied with one big question these days: What to do with trainloads of low-level nuclear waste that soon won't have anywhere to go.

"This is a national problem, requiring a national solution," said Alan Pasternak, technical director for utilities, academic institutions and other low-level waste generators in California.

And it was a problem that got lots of attention last week at a conference of regulators and contractors in the business of arranging for disposal of radioactive rubbish from reactors, medical tests and procedures and research - not the highly contaminated spent fuel rods.

Utah finds itself at the center of the discussion.

One reason is Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions, the country's biggest nuclear waste company and operator of a South Carolina nuclear waste site that is being phased out.

Another reason is that EnergySolutions operates the busiest of the nation's three commercial landfills for radioactive waste, in Tooele County, about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City.

EnergySolutions dropped plans to take hotter Class B and C waste in Utah four years ago. Two years after that, the Legislature outlawed the stuff altogether and dashed the hopes of a solution for the storage of low-level radioactive waste from nuclear plants, hospitals, universities and other users of hazardous radioactive material in 36 states.

Those waste generators need new options to dispose of Class B waste, which is composed of leftovers from medical tests and nuclear operations that is gauged to be largely harmless after about 300 years, under the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's classification program. They also want an alternative for Class C waste, which loses its hazard potential after about 500 years.

Under a national system that has been in place nearly two decades, radiologically hazardous Class B and C materials can't go to ordinary landfills but only certified ones - and access to those landfills is tightly limited. No new ones have been constructed since the Tooele County facility, back in 1988.

But the EnergySolutions landfill is not eligible to take the B and C waste. Following a public outcry, the Legislature two years ago outlawed radioactive waste that hazardous, although less dangerous Class A waste is allowed. (Its risk is negligible after 100 years, according to the NRC.)

A disposal site at the old Hanford atomic weapons complex in Washington state also is off-limits to B and C waste from the 36 states because of a federal law that requires waste to be managed within regions. It sets up a kind of fence that provides disposal for radioactive waste generated within region boundaries and serves as a barrier to block waste generated outside the regional fence from coming in.

South Carolina raised hundreds of millions of dollars for its schools by opening its gates to radioactive waste from outside its region. However, with the landfill filling up fast, the state decided several years ago to close it to all but three states in its regional group by June 30.

EnergySolutions petitioned South Carolina lawmakers last spring to keep Barnwell open to outside states but failed.

"We will not be seeking to extend the deadline in South Carolina for accepting out-of-compact waste at the Barnwell facility," said company spokesman Greg Hopkins.

This year, about 35,000 cubic feet of A, B and C waste is headed to Barnwell. Universities, government cleanups, hospitals and reactors are scrambling to find a place for their waste beginning next summer.

The organizations that serve, regulate and represent them swapped ideas here last week for dealing with the disposal crunch in presentations at the RadWaste Summit hosted by Exchange Monitor Publications, which publishes newsletters for the nuclear cleanup industry.

Hopkins said it's important for the nuclear industry to solve the problem in the long run. "It is an issue that the industry is going to have to work together on to resolve," he said.

Some of the options discussed last week in Las Vegas include:

* Storing B and C waste where it is until a disposal alternative is found. A new facility is expected to open in Texas in a few years, and a change in that state's law could make disposal available to the stranded 36 states.

* Minimizing waste by processing it at treatment plants.

* Blending Class B and C waste with less contaminated material to lower its hazard rating to A, so it can go to the Tooele County site.

* Allowing states with federally operated sites to accept some B and C waste from sites with federal ties.

Thomas Laetz, a senior policy analyst with the General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, told the group the nation could end the gridlock caused by the current multistate, multiagency approach with a comprehensive program for dealing with low-level waste. About one dozen countries rely on them to track volumes and disposal needs, among other management factors, he said.

But Christine Gelles, director of disposal operations for the U.S. Energy Department's environmental management office, questioned if there would be support for changing the current management scheme. She noted that Washington had not taken any actions on the GAO's suggestions about improving radioactive waste management.

She concluded, "It's gonna take the will of Congress."

UTAH, OTHER STATES WIN A SAY ON CAR EMISSIONS
(Source: Dave Gram, Associated Press, 9/13/07*)

Thirteen states, including Utah, scored a victory on in their battle to get automakers to comply with rules aimed at reducing global warming.

A federal judge in Vermont ruled that states can regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, rejecting automakers' claims that federal law pre-empts state rules and that technology can't be developed to meet them.

''There is no question that the GHG [greenhouse gas] regulations present great challenges to automakers,'' Judge William Sessions, sitting in the U.S. District Court in Burlington, wrote at the conclusion of his 240-page decision.

He added, ''History suggests that the ingenuity of the industry, once put in gear, responds admirably to most technological challenges. In light of the public statements of industry representatives, [the] history of compliance with previous technological challenges, and the state of the record, the court remains unconvinced automakers cannot meet the challenges of Vermont and California's GHG regulations.''

Following the judge's ruling, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. joined with the chief executives of 12 other states in sending a letter to automobile manufacturers asking them to support a commitment to address climate change.

"The public is demanding that states, in the absence of federal action, take real and meaningful steps to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases," the governors wrote in the letter. "Ensuring that our automobiles have a lower carbon footprint is an essential piece of our greenhouse gas reduction strategy."

The governors asked the automobile industry to withdraw their opposition to cleaner vehicle emission standards and work with states rather than continuing litigation.

"It is time for us to work together to reduce the transportation sector's contributions to global warming in our states," the governors wrote.

During a 16-day trial that concluded in May, auto industry executives testified that the regulations - adopted by California and 11 other states and pending in three others not including Utah - would not stop global warming but would impose devastating new costs on the industry.

Slated to start phasing in as of 2009, the limits would require a 30 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks by 2016, a standard the car makers have maintained would require average fuel economy standards for cars and the lightest category of trucks of 43.7 miles per gallon.

For the rules to take effect, the Environmental Protection Agency still must grant a waiver applied for by California under the federal Clean Air Act. California has won several such waivers in the past, allowing it to set up more stringent vehicle anti-pollution standards than the federal government's and then for other states to piggyback on them.

David Doniger, senior climate lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of several environmental groups that sided with Vermont, said the waiver request was given a big boost by an April 2 U.S. Supreme Court decision saying carbon dioxide was a pollutant worthy of regulation.

Doniger said the EPA could deny the waiver if it finds that achieving the carbon reduction standard was not technically feasible. But he said automakers ''threw everything they had,'' providing copious documents and experts to try to persuade the judge that was the case, and he didn't buy it.

Gov. Jim Douglas hailed the court's ruling. ''We were up against a very strong adversary in the auto industry, but the law and the facts were clearly on our side,'' he said. ''Most of Vermont's greenhouse gas emissions are from motor vehicles, so if we're going to reduce our carbon footprint, we need to set high but achievable standards for automobiles.''

Dave McCurdy, president and CEO of a main plaintiff in the Vermont suit, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said in a statement, ''It makes sense that only the federal government can regulate fuel economy. Automakers support improving fuel economy standards nationally, rather than piecemeal, and will continue to work with the Congress, NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) and EPA to reduce our oil dependence while increasing fuel economy.''

McCurdy said his group may appeal the decision.

Automakers maintained that cutting carbon requires improving fuel economy, since carbon emissions are proportional to the amount of gasoline burned. And they said fuel economy, under a 1975 federal law, is solely under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The states argued that they can regulate carbon emissions as a tailpipe pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

California upped the ante in 2005 by adding carbon dioxide to its list of regulated tailpipe emissions. Other states were required either to apply the enhanced California rules or revert to the federal standard.

Automakers filed suit in California, Vermont and Rhode Island. Vermont's case was the first to go to trial, after a federal judge in California put a similar case there on hold pending the outcome of the April U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell, whose office represented the state in the trial, called the ruling ''a major victory. They [automakers] will appeal, probably. But for folks who are concerned about global warming and environmental quality in this country and in the world, this was a good day.''

A hearing is set for Oct. 22 in a similar case in California. But Matt Pawa, a lawyer who represented three national environmental groups in the Vermont trial, said the Vermont ruling makes it likely the California case will be dismissed.

''The persuasiveness of Judge Sessions' decision, we expect, should carry the day'' in California, Pawa said.

He called the ruling ''a historic win for the planet, for Vermont, for the cause to curtail global warming, and for the right of states to set more stringent limits on all kinds of pollution, including greenhouse gas emission standards.''

---* STEVEN OBERBECK contributed to this report.

BONANZA PERMIT: CONGRESS SHOULD HOLD EPA'S FEET
TO FIRE FOR POWER PLANT
(Source: Tribune Editorial, Salt Lake Tribune, 9/23/07)

Late last month, when it approved a permit to build a new coal-fired furnace to generate electricity at the Bonanza power plant near Vernal, the Environmental Protection Agency insisted it did not have authority to regulate the new unit's carbon dioxide emissions.

That came as a big surprise, because the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled just a few months before that, under the Clean Air Act, the EPA does have authority to regulate carbon dioxide.

What was not surprising is that EPA had once again failed to do its duty. Under President Bush, the EPA has consistently dragged its feet on global warming (carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that accelerates global warming) and regulation of coal-fired power plants.

Fortunately, Congress is demanding to know why EPA is ignoring the Supreme Court, its duty under the law and climate science. Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has asked EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson to explain.

This issue is critical to Utah because of the new coal-fired generating plants that are planned in this and surrounding states. The Bonanza unit is a relatively small one that would generate 110 megawatts of power. But even at that it would produce 1.8 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, according to one estimate.

As Waxman's letter to Johnson points out, the proposed White Pine plant in Nevada, upwind of Utah, would produce 1,500 megawatts of power.

The proposed third unit of the Intermountain Power Agency plant near Delta would produce 950 megawatts. The Nevco plant proposed near Sigurd would produce 270 megawatts. Utah already has approved air-quality permits for both of these plants.

At the same time, Utah has signed an agreement with five other Western states to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent by 2020. Building these plants without requirements to use the best available control technology to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions would set those efforts back.

In short, EPA and Utah are working at cross purposes, and Utah is in the right.

EPA said in the Bonanza permit decision that it is working to develop an overall strategy for addressing carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act. If so, the agency should not be issuing permits that clearly undermine that strategy.

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MANUFACTURING SLOWS, CONSTRUCTION SPENDING DIPS
(Source: Salt Lake Tribune, 9/5/07)

Turmoil in the housing and financial markets appears to be spilling over to the broader economy, according to data released that showed expansion in the manufacturing sector slowed in August, while construction spending dropped sharply in July.

''The debate is over whether the economy will be soft, very soft, or in recession,'' said John Shin, a senior economist at Lehman Brothers who forecasts growth to slow to a 2 percent annual rate in the third quarter.

The Institute for Supply Management said its manufacturing index registered 52.9 in August, down from 53.8 in July. Readings above 50 indicate expansion.

The Commerce Department said construction spending dropped 0.4 percent in July, compared with June, the weakest showing since January. It was a bigger drop than economists had been expecting.

JOB CUTS KINDLE FEAR OF RECESSION
(Source: Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press, 9/7/07)

WASHINGTON - For the first time in four years, employers have cut jobs, raising new fears that a deep housing slump and a painful credit crunch could push the economy into a recession.

Pressure is building on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. Many economists predict the deteriorating employment climate will lead to a rate cut on Sept. 18.

A report released by the Labor Department showed the nation's payrolls shrank by 4,000 in August. It was the first decline in jobs since August 2003. Payrolls fell by 42,000 at that time as the job market was still struggling to recover from the 2001 recession.

''This was a lousy report,'' said Nigel Gault, economist at Global Insight.

The unemployment rate held steady last month at 4.6 percent, mainly because hundreds of thousands of people left the job market.

Job losses in construction, manufacturing, transportation and government swamped gains in education and health care, leisure and hospitality and retail. Employment in financial services was flat.

Employers are hiring less because uncertainty about the country's economic health is growing. The ailing housing market and credit problems that have unhinged Wall Street are the main culprits behind businesses' fresh sense of caution.

''Businesses are waiting for the dust to settle,'' said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics. ''I think a lot of businesses are moving to the sidelines to wait and see how things shake out.''

On Wall Street, stocks tumbled. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 249.97.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in a speech last week, said the Fed stands ready to do all that is needed to keep the six-year-old economic expansion alive.

Economists increasingly believe the Fed will cut a key interest rate, now at 5.25 percent, by at least one-quarter percentage point at the September meeting. The Fed has not lowered this rate in four years.

''The odds of a bad outcome have gone up, and, therefore, it makes sense for the Fed to take out some insurance,'' said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services. He predicts the Fed will cut rates by a bolder, half of a percentage point. ''Clearly the chances of a recession are higher than they were,'' he said.

Political pressure on the Fed also is mounting.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, urged the Fed to lower rates. ''A strong response is required - specifically a meaningful interest rate cut,'' he said.

Those with jobs, meanwhile, did see modest wage gains.

Average hourly earnings rose to $17.50 in August, up 0.3 percent from July. Over the past 12 months, wages increased 3.9 percent. Wage growth supports consumer spending, a major ingredient for a healthy economy. If the job market continues to lose steam, though, wage growth will eventually slow, too, economists said.

The new employment figures revealed the first major crack in the job market. It had been holding up fairly well during the housing slump, which has persisted for more than a year. But an eruption of credit problems - that had started with high-risk mortgages and has spread - has added to stresses faced by employers and the economy at large.

Credit is the economy's life blood. If it becomes more difficult to obtain, people might tighten their belts and companies might spend and invest less, including cutting back on hiring. That would crimp overall economic activity.

Under a worst-case scenario, the economy could slip into a recession this year. Earlier this year, former Fed chief Alan Greenspan had put the odds at one in three.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, in an interview with The Associated Press, said there was a ''low likelihood'' of a recession and that the ''most likely scenario is that we will get through this dip and we will continue to see growth.''

The economy, which grew at a brisk 4 percent in the April-to-June period, is expected to slow to half that pace in the three months from July through September. Against this backdrop, the unemployment rate is expected to creep higher, reaching close to 5 percent by the end of the year.

The 4,000 net jobs cut in August are a tally from both private and government employers. The government actually sliced 28,000 jobs, while all private employers added 24,000, the fewest since February 2004.

Disappointed economists were expecting total payrolls to grow by around 110,000 in August.

Factories led the way in job cuts; they slashed 46,000 positions last month, the most since July 2003. Construction companies eliminated 22,000 jobs, the most in six months. The carnage could turn out to be even worse because the report - based on information as of mid-August - doesn't capture the full brunt of the credit crisis, which intensified during the month.

Adding to the gloom: The economy produced 81,000 fewer jobs in June and July combined than thought.

UTAH BEATS NATION IN HIRING RATE
(Source: Tribune Staff and Wire Services, Salt Lake Tribune, 9/10/07)

Employers along the Wasatch Front plan to increase hiring in the next three months at a rate almost double the U.S. average, according to a national survey of 14,000 companies that will be released today.

With a stable quarter of hiring predicted nationwide at a rate of 27 percent, Utah and the West are poised to continue to outpace other regions, and the state continues to outpace most of its neighbors.

"There is a terrific need to fill a lot of positions" in Utah, said Manpower Inc.'s Robert Katz in explaining why employers here are planning to add positions at rates that dwarf their counterparts elsewhere.

In Salt Lake City, for example, 47 percent of companies said they intend to increase hiring in the next three months, 53 percent said staffing would remain the same and none of those responding to the survey said they planned to cut positions. In the Orem and Ogden areas, the numbers were even more robust, with 60 percent of employers in Davis County saying they would be doing more hiring and 50 percent of the companies in Weber County predicting they would. Only 3 percent forecast cuts in the county directly south of Salt Lake City, while 9 percent did so in Weber and neighboring Davis County.

The comparative numbers nationally were 27 percent planning to hire, 58 percent remaining the same and 9 percent planning to cut positions. In the West region, 33 percent of employers said they planned to increase hiring, with 10 percent saying they planned cuts.

"Utah continues to buck the national trend and is even outperforming most of the rest of the West," said Katz, director of Utah operations for Manpower, a Milwaukee-based global staffing firm. "It's been that way for about two years, but when you get up around 50 percent of the employers who plan to hire, that's one of the top rates in the nation.

"The state created 57,000 jobs last year and it appears it could create another 57,000 this year so long as there are enough bodies to fill them."

That has become a challenge for some employers in Utah, whose historically low unemployment rates for most of the past year have created a job market of full employment, meaning that almost everyone who is looking for a job can find one.

The national numbers seem to indicate that employers are holding off on making any big moves amid the ups and downs on Wall Street and a sagging housing market, said Jonas Prising, president of Manpower North America. Given the uncertainty about the economy, though, stable hiring is good news, he said.

The latest survey continues a 15-quarter stretch of fairly strong hiring intentions, in which more than 20 percent of companies surveyed said they plan to add to their staffs.

The quarterly survey, which has been conducted since 1962, shows little change from the last quarter is expected in a majority of job categories, including construction, finance, retail, education and services.

Mining and transportation companies and public utilities expect a slight downturn.

RATE CUT GOOD FOR UTAH
(Source: Steven Oberbeck, Salt Lake Tribune, 9/18/07)

The Federal Reserve's decision to lower its benchmark interest rate to prevent the country from slipping into recession may provide an additional boost for Utah's economy, which already is among the strongest in the nation.

The half-point reduction in the federal funds rate, which is the interest that banks charge each other for loans, is expected to provide a boost to economic activity nationwide as it lowers borrowing costs for consumers and businesses.

"Where this will help Utah's economy is around the edges," said Sterling Jenson, senior managing director of Wells Fargo Capital Management. "People who have mortgages tied to short-term interest rates should eventually see a reduction in their payments."

Utah's small businesses, whose loans often require that they pay a point or two above the prime interest rate - the lowest rate charged by U.S. banks to their best-rated corporate customers - eventually should see their finances improve as their payments are reset by lenders in response to the Fed's action, he said.

Also, consumers who have home equity loans tied to the prime or some other floating measure may see some interest-rate relief down the road as well, said Jeff Thredgold, economic consultant to Zions Bancorp.

"What this [interest-rate cut] does is give people a psychological boost," he said. "It offers them the sense that the Fed is watching over the economy and is concerned about what is happening."

Although the nation is embroiled in its worst housing slump in more than a decade, Utah's economy has yet to feel much of the impact of the national slowdown in home-price appreciation. The same is true with the record number of defaults in subprime mortgages made to the riskiest borrowers that have worried the financial markets for months.

The Fed's move helps remove for the time being fears that the troubled housing market and widespread credit problems could prompt consumers in Utah and elsewhere to cut back on spending and making investments. Those two scenarios, it has been feared, could throw the U.S. economy into a nosedive.

Now, with the Fed's reassurance, consumers can feel more confident about the future, Jenson said. And that might lead some to spend a little more as they conclude that their individual situations aren't as dire as they might have feared.

For those who want to purchase a home, the new interest rate "opens the door again for many qualified, creditworthy borrowers who may have been shut out over the past month to six weeks as mortgage rates climbed," said Gary Nielson, a vice president with Republic Mortgage Home Loans and president-elect of the Utah Mortgage Lenders Association.

"It is a positive move for those who want to buy a home, refinance or borrow to fix up a property."

On the jobs front, the Fed's reduction probably won't impact Utah much, said Austin Sargent, an economist with the Utah Department of Workforce Services. "Our unemployment rate is so low already that it is hard to imagine it going much lower."

The Utah Department of Workforce Services reported that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in Utah for August was 2.6 percent, down from 2.9 percent in August 2006.

Gary Teran, president of First Western Advisors in Holladay, said like many investors he was expecting the Fed to cut its federal funds rate by a quarter point, or 25 basis points. "It was surprising that they went for a half point. It certainly wasn't something that Alan Greenspan would have done," Teran said, referring to the former Fed chairman.

He noted that the S&P 500, one of the broadest gauges of the stock market, at its peak on July 25 closed at 1,518.90, while on Tuesday it closed at 1,519.78.

"What that means is that everything that was lost as a result of the subprime crisis in August has been recovered. And that is a good message that people should never panic either to the upside or the downside."

RECESSION FEARS LINGER
DESPITE MARKET RALLY
(Source: Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy News Service, 9/22/07)

WASHINGTON - Wall Street rallied last week before a tepid retreat, buoyant over the Federal Reserve's surprise half-point cut in interest rates, but several leading analysts warn that odds remain high for the nation to fall into recession by next year.

Although that view is not universal, fears persist.

After posting their largest one-day gain in nearly five years Tuesday, stocks kept climbing a day later before bargain hunters swooped in Thursday and Friday to temper the 3.1 percent gain from earlier in week.

Although the immediate market reaction to the Fed's dramatic action was encouraging, some analysts fear that problems rooted in shaky housing finance still could squeeze consumer spending and drag down the economy.

Others think that the Fed acted emphatically enough to avoid that. In coming weeks, economists will watch home sales, retail sales and especially employment numbers closely for signs of who is right. All are important indicators of consumer spending, which drives about two-thirds of the U.S. economy.

''There is a significant risk of a recession within the next year,'' Robert Shiller, one of the nation's most prominent finance experts, said before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

''I am worried that the collapse of home prices might turn out to be the most severe since the Great Depression,'' said Shiller, a Yale University professor and author who developed one of the leading national indices for home prices.

Home prices could fall another 13 percent nationally in real value by next August in many cities, he said. That's on top of a 6.5 percent decline already from the recent housing-boom peak. This could mean a loss of trillions of dollars in home value, Shiller said. And history shows that consumer spending contracts as home prices fall.

''The Federal Reserve will undoubtedly take aggressive actions, which will mitigate its severity,'' he said. ''But if home price deflation persists or intensifies, they may discover that the Achilles' heel of this resilient economy is the evaporation of confidence that can accompany the end of boom psychology.''

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony about the mortgage and credit markets before the House Financial Services Committee offered few hints about the central bank's next move. Bernanke said the credit crisis has created ''significant market stress'' and tried to reassure lawmakers and investors that regulators are willing to step in to curb the fallout.

The bigger cut has prompted concern that maybe the Fed knows something that everyone else doesn't. At a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., bluntly asked Bernanke if there was ''something out there that we are not aware of.''

''We took that action to try to get out ahead of the situation,'' Bernanke answered, noting that housing-sector problems have extended into other areas, such as commercial credit, threatening the economy.

Bernanke also warned that the rate cut wasn't a cure-all for Wall Street's recent turbulence. ''There is quite a bit of uncertainty,'' he said.

Wall Street is split over what the Fed will do when it meets again in October. Many predict a quarter-point rate decrease, but others expect the target fed funds rate to hold at 4.75 percent.

The main reason the central bank may be against another rate cut is the risk of inflation. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy prices, has been stable in recent months, but could accelerate if the effects of high food and energy prices trickle down to other consumer prices.

Some analysts reject the notion that danger is afoot.

''Jobs are huge now. That's what will end this thing,'' said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Wells Capital Management, an arm of San Francisco-based national bank Wells Fargo & Co.

Unemployment remained low nationwide at 4.6 percent in August (2.6 percent in Utah). True, the economy did shed jobs in August, the first time that's happened in four years. But it was a loss of only 4,000 jobs on balance, a statistically insignificant number that was important only because it showed that the economy is slowing.

Paulsen expects that an upward revision to those job numbers or a new month showing strong job growth soon will end recession fears, boost consumer confidence and overshadow news of housing-sector problems.

''You can collapse housing all you want, but unless the consumer goes away, it is not a disaster,'' Paulsen said. He thinks that the deep cut in the benchmark federal funds rate Tuesday showed that the Fed recognized ''that most of this is a confidence crisis, not a 'fundamentals' crisis.''

Others are less sanguine.

The Wachovia Economics Group, part of the Charlotte, N.C.-based national bank Wachovia, warned investors that ''the damage being done to the housing market is more severe than the recent numbers suggest.''

In a special report, Wachovia economists said Bernanke and five Fed governors met earlier this month with heads of the nation's major home builders and may have gotten a peek at sales and cancellation data.

''We believe those data showed a significant deterioration in home sales, which may be evident" when reports for new and existing home sales are released this week, the report said, predicting a drop of 10 percent or more for August. ''Such a drop raises the risks that we will see more spillover into related consumer spending and housing-related services than was earlier anticipated.''

Such a sour outlook might explain why the Fed surpassed most expectations that it would cut its benchmark interest rate by only a quarter point. Most analysts thought that the Fed remained worried about resurgent inflation, which has been moderating but still rose by 2.0 percent over the past year, at the upper edges of the Fed's comfort zone.

Inflation is the rise in prices across the economy. Tuesday's rate cut seeks to spark economic activity at a time when many commodities such as copper and wheat are already at record or near-record high prices. Oil prices also topped more $80 a barrel for much of last week.

''My feeling is that's tomorrow's problem, not today's, and enjoy it while you can,'' said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's. ''I don't think that inflation is an immediate problem, but down the road the Fed may have to undo some of this.''

The bullish Paulsen shares that view. ''Even if they solve the confidence crisis, they're going to have to retighten [rates] next year. I don't think you go from 'the economy is melting' to 'it's overheating' in a day.''

ECONOMIC INDEX HITS 2-YEAR LOW
(Source: The Associated Press, 9/25/07)

NEW YORK - Crumbling consumer confidence and slumping home sales could be a bad combination for the broader economy as the holidays approach, if the labor market contracts further and chokes off spending, economic data showed Tuesday.

Worries about jobs and the economy flared in September, driving a key barometer of consumer sentiment to its lowest level in nearly two years, a private research group said.

The bad news was compounded by a report from the National Association of Realtors that sales of existing homes nationally declined for a sixth straight month in August, pushing activity to the lowest point in five years. The Realtors showed a rise in median home prices, but a separate report by S&P/Case-Shiller said home prices fell 3.9 percent in July in its 20-city index, the biggest drop in 16 years.

Economists said that decline was probably a better reflection of where the housing market stands.

The Conference Board said its Consumer Confidence Index fell to 99.8, an almost 6-point drop from the revised 105.6 in August. The reading was below the 104.5 that analysts had expected.

It marked its lowest level since a 98.3 reading in November 2005, when gas and oil prices soared after hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast.

''Looking ahead, little economic improvement is expected, and with the holiday season around the corner, this is not welcome news,'' said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center.

Economists closely monitor confidence since consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.

Reports showing eroding consumer confidence and a further weakening of housing do not bode well for retailers, who are already bracing for a challenging holiday season. Merchants have seen spending slow all year amid falling home prices and higher gas and food bills. Financial turmoil in August and escalating problems in the credit market have made economists and retailers more nervous about the prospects for a decent holiday shopping season.

GOVERNOR HUNTSMAN ASKS BANKS TO HELP
EMERY AND CARBON COUNTY RESIDENTS
(Source: Business News Wire, 8/07)

Governor Jon Huntsman called on Utah bank owners to provide relief to residents within Emery and Carbon counties who may be facing financial difficulty due to lay-offs and a slowing economic market within the surrounding area. "These citizens have suffered greatly during the past two months," said Governor Huntsman. "We must work together to identify innovative ways to help them get back on their feet and maintain their livelihoods."

Governor Huntsman is working with Scott Anderson, CEO of Zions Bancorporation and Howard Headlee, President of the Utah Banker's Association to establish ways in which to help those in need. Penalty fees associated with insufficient fund transactions and an extension on loans payments for up to six months are a part of the proposed plan.