April 07, 2011 11:01 PM UTC

Coal Industry Gasping To Oppose "Clean Air, Clean Jobs"

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

We’re watching for news on a bipartisan bill, House Bill 1291, that’s headed to the House floor after passing the House Health and Environment Committee earlier in the week. This is a final piece of implementing legislation for last year’s grand bargain between environmental groups, Governor Bill Ritter, and Xcel Energy to replace coal-fired electricity generation along the Front Range with natural gas by 2017. The bill would grant approval to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Regional Haze State Implementation Plan (SIP).

Really the only interest that loses in the aforementioned deal is the coal industry, so their easily-identified supporters have fought this every step of the way–and lost. They lost at the General Assembly when the original legislation passed last year, at the Public Utilities Commission, and at the Air Quality Control Commission. Polls show lopsided majorities love this plan.

We fully expect they’ll lose again in the House, where HB-1291 is sponsored by Speaker Frank McNulty, but this is where any obligatory attempt to kill it by the industry’s well-paid lobbyists will be made. Apart from a few legislators with actual coal mines in their district, their efforts stick out like a sore thumb–as their uncompensated friends are, when you get down to it, quite few.