{"id":21767,"date":"2020-03-08T13:34:34","date_gmt":"2020-03-08T19:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skyhinews.com\/?p=63628"},"modified":"2020-03-08T13:34:34","modified_gmt":"2020-03-08T19:34:34","slug":"will-just-transition-be-a-just-transition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/local-news\/will-just-transition-be-a-just-transition\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Just Transition be a \u2018just\u2019 transition?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Community members packed the house in Craig Middle School’s cafeteria Wednesday night for the Just Transition meeting. More than 200 people showed up to the meeting to talk about the needs of the community moving forward.<\/strong>
Courtesy Joel Dyar<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

If one thing was clear Wednesday night during the Just Transition community open house at Craig Middle School, it was that Moffat County residents will fight for survival and won\u2019t take its quality of life direction from the Front Range.<\/p>\n

More than 200 people turned up to take part in the two-hour meeting hosted by the Just Transmission Advisory Committee, which has been established as a result of Colorado House Bill 1314. The bill\u2019s primary goal is to provide transition assistance to workers and communities impacted by Colorado\u2019s move away from coal-based electrical generation by 2030.<\/a><\/p>\n

While the community knows that disruption is certain, it doesn\u2019t take the sting out of the state\u2019s regulatory bite.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe name of this is Just Transition. We know we are going through a transition, we just want to know how \u2018just\u2019 it\u2019s going to be,\u201d Craig City Councilor Ryan Hess said. \u201cWe\u2019re taking the blow for zero emissions. We\u2019re filling that burden. We\u2019re doing our part and we\u2019re losing our jobs. I hope this doesn\u2019t become a political process and it\u2019s more of a humanitarian effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a meeting where the tone could have been one of discouragement and anger, the crowd was largely focused on ideas for a sustainable economy in Craig and Moffat County while imploring the committee to help create new industry and new jobs that represent the fabric and values of the community.<\/p>\n

Kindra Jazwick attended the meeting without her husband, who was at work as a coal miner. She urged the committee to look at jobs that reflect local workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve heard the shtick. And we don\u2019t want that anymore. We know we are facing hard times. We know because we\u2019re living it,\u201d Jazwick said. \u201cWe need to incentivize businesses to come in here and give our guys a place to work. These are blue-collar guys, they aren\u2019t going to do white-collar jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ideas shared during the meeting included: making Northwest Colorado a hub for light manufacturing and carbon fiber industry innovation, seeking federal and state funding to position Moffat County as the capitol of low water, grass and silage research, incentivizing and recruiting new business by improving the current rail and transportation infrastructure and paying special attention to addressing the mental health needs of those in the community struggling with transition.<\/p>\n

\n
Scott Cook speaks during Wednesday\u2019s Just Transition meeting.<\/strong>
Samantha Johnston \/ Craig Press<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

While the Just Transition group won\u2019t be making policy or have a say in decisions regarding the future of coal in Colorado, they are tasked with assisting communities affected by the coal transition.<\/p>\n

Wade Buchanan, Just Transition Advisory Committee Director, acknowledged the committee needs to prove itself to Moffat County. He said they have a \u201cdirect assignment from the legislature\u201d to find ways with these communities to make sure they thrive and \u201cbe part of the Colorado family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Committee members said several times that Wednesday\u2019s meeting would not be the only visit to Moffat County. However, with the draft plan due in July 2020 and no future meetings listed on the website, it\u2019s unclear what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope they listened to us last night,\u201d Craig Mayor Jarrod Ogden said Thursday. \u201cWe don\u2019t need a survey or a study to know what to do. We already know. Craig was here before the plant was built and it will be here after the plant is gone. What does our picture look like in the future? The best picture we can paint.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ogden is crystal clear that the ideas and the will already exist. The missing pieces are connections to the policy makers, investors and economic leaders who will help make big things happen and the financial support to put ideas into action.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a community that is working better together and more unified than ever before,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t need lip service. If you can\u2019t help us, then don\u2019t be a speed bump. Get out of the way and go Just Transition someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citizens also voiced concern about the perception that environmentalists aren\u2019t fans of most of Moffat County\u2019s big industry \u2013 ranching, mining, hunting and coal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s taken us a hundred years to learn how to do resource extraction. The environmental community does not like any of this and is trying to shut all of this down as of yesterday,\u201d said Moffat County resident Ran MacDonald. \u201cAccording to the assessor\u2019s office, 46 percent of our property tax revenue is associated with resource extraction. If we lose that all in 20 years, we are going to take a kick to the gut in terms of our economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The topic that silenced the room fastest was mental health. Psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner Janelle Hoaglund encouraged the committee and the community to recognize the need to care for children and young adults who will see their parents struggling with the transition. She cautioned that without a plan, the community could face increased substance abuse, depression and suicide.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a coal miner\u2019s daughter, by gosh. My dad worked damn hard for everything we had. I would not be standing here today if it wasn\u2019t for all of his overtime he put in at Twentymile Coal Company,\u201d she said. \u201cThat man gave his life to that mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brad Campbell, who relocated to Craig from Nucla, has been through one power plant shutdown already and offered insight on keeping the community together.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of stuff we can do ourselves \u2013 start businesses, spend money, do things for our neighbor. Take care of things that we already have here,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cTake care of each other and take care of yourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Sky-Hi News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Community members packed the house in Craig Middle School’s cafeteria Wednesday night for the Just Transition meeting. More than 200 people showed up to the meeting to talk about the needs of the community moving forward.Courtesy Joel Dyar If one thing was clear Wednesday night during the Just Transition community open house at Craig Middle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21767","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 03:07:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KRKY Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}