Life near toxic plant illustrated need for environmental safeguards

By Vernon Lee

Sunday, Sept. 17, 2017 | 2 a.m.

I was an employee at the Reid Gardner coal-fired power plant for over 20 years. I am also a member of the Moapa Band of Paiutes Tribe and lived for many years on our reservation, less than a mile from the now-shuttered plant.

The reservation, about 45 miles northeast of Las Vegas, was established in 1873, a time of intense industrialization in the U.S. After minerals were found on the eastern side of our reservation near Gold Butte, our borders were reduced by executive order from 2.2 million to only 1,000 acres in 1875. The land was taken for extractive and polluting industries.

Since then, the global industrial revolution has exploited the land and polluted every corner of the world. Times have changed, now our oceans and skies are sick, sea levels are rising, wildfires are more frequent and hurricanes are getting more intense. It is time to change again for the future of mankind.

Pollution is being driven by investment in fossil fuels, the predominant contributors to global warming. Many of the most powerful corporations and world’s wealthiest people are heavily invested into the coal, gas and oil industry. Unlike fossil fuels, the wind and the sun are free, and thus investors are not able to make as much money from their development as energy sources. This has made these corporations rich and powerful, and they do not want to lose their ability to control our political system through their campaign spending.

I saw the negative effects of fossil-fuel pollution firsthand daily when I worked at Reid Gardner.

I would call my neighbors on bad-air days and tell people to get their kids indoors and shut their windows. There was often a stink of rotten eggs over the reservation. These smells were caused by dangerous hydrogen sulfide and other gases emitting from the coal plant’s evaporation ponds, which are essentially chemical soup pits where coal ash and other combustion wastes were placed in water to settle. Hydrogen sulfide is heavier than normal air, so it settled near ground level and acutely affected people.

Hydrogen sulfide affects memory and respiratory functioning. This made the impact to our reservation’s children especially terrible, as their academic and athletic performances suffered as a result of this exposure. Kids were not chosen to be on the football team, students had trouble excelling in school and qualifying for scholarships.

Our tribe worked together over the years with Sierra Club, and legislation finally passed in 2013 to schedule the closure of the plant. NV Energy ceased operations at the facility in February of this year. Although it was the largest source of carbon pollution in Nevada, Reid Gardner was a comparatively small plant, and several coal power plants across the country are much larger and still have plans to continue polluting for decades.

The Environmental Protection Agency is the watchdog to hold this pollution in check. Although the nation’s carbon pollution consistently decreased and several coal plants closed during the Obama administration, the current political climate is signaling that fossil fuels are coming back. The Trump administration has proposed massive cuts to the EPA, which if signed into law would be catastrophic.

Instead of cutting this agency, we need to be taking drastic measures to bring pollution under control now. The longer we wait, the more climate change will accelerate and the harder it will become to slow it down.

Hurricanes like Irma would get even stronger, and polar ice will melt even faster. Instead of cutting its budget, the EPA should be strengthened now more than ever.

The power and authority of America is for the people, our rights and our safety. Congress and the presidential administration should be enacting new policies and laws that will allow the world to heal. It is not too late. If industry backs off, the environment can still regenerate and global warming can still be slowed down.

Vernon Lee is a former member of the Moapa Bands of Paiutes Tribal Council.