Governor Gary Herbert was in attendance at the Republican Lincoln Dinner that was held at the USU Eastern campus. After dinner he was able to answer a few questions about important issues that pertain to both Carbon and Emery Counties.

Herbert was asked about when he started his political career there were not many Republicans in Carbon and Emery, he elaborated more, “You know when I was a County Commissioner I was elected in 1990 there was no Republicans in Carbon County. We saw Emery County start to change in the mid-90s and became more Republican and we thought can Carbon County be far behind. As we see what’s happened here recently there certainly has been a change and more Republicans here in Carbon County. Really the Republicans are the ones kinda fighting for coal and natural resource development so there’s probably a natural turn of events here because of our willingness to develop our natural resources seems to be more of a conservative issue here in Utah than a liberal issue.”

The Bears Ears in San Juan County has caused quite a stir over the last few months at the State Capital. Herbert was asked what his thoughts were on the subject, “Well it’s interesting that I just talk to Valerie Jerrett, she’s a special assistant to President Obama and good friend with President Obama and Michelle and I told her that look, let’s not have another Clinton episode where the Governor finds out by reading the New York Times that there is a new national monument. She assured me that would never happen, this is not the Clinton administration she said. She also said I come from local government I know how important it is in fact to work with local communities on these kinds of things and get their input. So I feel at least comfortable that there is going to be at least some opportunity for local input and consideration of discussion.”

A special session has been called by Herbert for Wednesday, May 18 at 4:00 pm at the Utah State Capital to address the Bears Ears proposal further. “If we’re just arguing over a size and amount of acreage, we can probably figure that out. But let’s not trash can the entire 18-million-acre proposal for the sake of one national monument. I think that would be very short sided on the President’s part. As I mentioned to Secretary of Interior Sally Jewel, we can do 1.9 million acres or we can do 18 million acres, we can add 301 miles of stream bed access which the President can’t do. We can have nearly 20,000 acres of buffer around Arches, we can do a lot of better things, it’s a 4 to 1 ratio of conservation. So if you really care about the landscape and you really care about conservation, do not do the national monument and throw out the window three years of hard work by our congressional delegation,” stated Herbert.

Carbon and Emery Counties are known as coal country and with the war on coal, our power plants in jeopardy, Herbert was asked how do we fortify what we have so our economy stays and we can add to it. “Carbon based fuels and/or nuclear power will be the base load of energy generation in this country for the next generation to come and maybe longer. Certainly here in Utah one of the reasons we are having great economic success according to Forbes Magazine is because we have a lower than the national average cost of power mainly because we have coal. And if you’re going to burn coal it ought to be Utah coal, which is high BTU, it burns hot but has low sulfur content it burns clean. It’s a lot cleaner burning coal if you go to any of our Power Plants, go to any of them, blue skies, you don’t see anything coming out of the stacks. We’ve cleaned up the production of energy using coal dramatically. I can tell you that I do not like what I’ve heard out of Hilary Clinton’s mouth, when it says we are going to close down coal mines an put coal miners out of work. Because my good friends like Tom Wolf in Pennsylvania a Democrat, Earl Ray Tomlin, Democrat Governor of West Virginia, both states have a lot of coal that they are trying to sell. They don’t like this war on coal either and the war on our power plants, so I think in a bipartisan way we can push back against this federal over-reach and frankly some of it is not based on science, the idea that we somehow are getting pollution up in the Salt Lake Valley out of Castle Dale in Emery County is probably pretty foolish,” stated Herbert.

 

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