Environment vs. jobs?

Apr 23 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Ted Evanoff The Indianapolis Star

A proposed coal gasification plant promises to bring in 200 jobs and give this quiet pocket of southwest Indiana a leg up.

Yet the folks talking in Charlotte Speicher's barbershop see good and bad in a project Gov. Mitch Daniels touts as economic relief for "the poorest part of the state."

Speicher says many customers favor the economic gains. But a concerned handful, a vocal minority, fear the prospect of dirtier air in a city already home to American Electric Power's massive power plant and smokestack.

Could a coal gasification plant make the air worse? Many don't know but worry that it will.

"I'm unalterably opposed," said Steven Obermeier, a Speicher customer. "This is a crapshoot by any measure."

Now the citizens of Rockport and the region around it are divided. Four counties are home to about 140,000 residents. Some worry about the air. Many worry about the economy.

Almost every town in the region has lost factory jobs, although the four counties -- Dubois, Perry, Spencer, Warrick -- together have an enviable jobless rate of 6.9 percent, compared with 8.5 percent statewide in March.

Rockport never quite bounced back from Peerless Pottery's closing, Speicher said. The 102-year-old manufacturer of toilet fixtures laid off 167 workers in 2004 and was moved to Mexico.

Harold Goffinent, Rockport's mayor, now shrugs off environmental objections. The Sierra Club, Citizens Action Coalition and other groups sent members to protest this week at the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission's field hearing at Jasper, the regional hub about 30 miles north of Rockport.

After the opponents spoke, Goffinent went to the podium and made a simple declaration.

"I'm looking at jobs," he told the commissioners. "I'm looking at economic development."

Goffinent figures the investors behind the gasification project, Leucadia National, are right -- this won't be another polluting plant.

"We're trying to take a high-sulfur coal and make it into a clean product," said William Rosenberg, of E3 Gasification, a Leucadia partner.

Leucadia's Indiana Gasification LLC contends the Rockport plant, if it is built, would send less pollution into the sky than three Vectren power plants using the same amount of coal as Rockport. Environmentalists question those claims.

In the towns between Rockport and Jasper, citizens express only a general awareness of Leucadia's plans to build a $2.6 billion plant.

Wesley Conen, 54, Bretzville, a warehouseman in an office furniture plant at Huntingburg, said he hears the give-and-take among some colleagues. He chalks up the opposition to human nature.

"We're old-fashioned here. Against change," Conen said. "But you have to have change. I have to think about what's good for my son. He's only 12. I may not get anything out of it, but my kid and my grandkid, they may get more out of it."

Kim Keith, 54, Salem, disagrees. Asked the projected cost of Rockport, he balked at the $2.6 billion figure. "I don't agree we need it at that price," he said.

Doris Bellamy, 59, Petersburg, favors bringing in the 200 coal jobs the Rockport plant would support.

Out of the labor force and retired since the Old Ben mine closed, Bellamy said she just applied for work at Peabody Energy, the state's largest coal miner. Indiana coal mines employed about 3,200 workers in 2008, up from 2,900 a decade earlier, reports the U.S. Census Bureau.

Daniels said he thinks the opposition to Rockport gasification is actually opposition to coal mining.

"Those opposing this plant will not be happy until the last coal miner, truck driver or coal company employee are losing their job," the governor said, adding, "My goal from the beginning has been to bring some jobs and hope to the poorest part of the state.

When the project almost died, Daniels revived it with a plan now before the IURC for approval. It calls for a state agency to buy the gas made from coal at Rockport and resell it daily on the national market.

Monthly gas bills for 1.5 million households, farms and businesses throughout the state would edge up or down according to whether the agency made a profit or lost money for the month.

Bringing in 200 jobs might not sound like many, but it could help revive Rockport.

"I think it would be good," said Dan Payne, 54, as he sat for a haircut in Speicher's shop. "Anything to bring jobs in here."

Speicher agrees.

"We've got a dog here in town that'll lay down on Main Street and go to sleep," Speicher said. "There's not enough traffic anymore to bother it."