Lawrence Berkeley Lab to help train apprentice electricians

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Four apprentice electricians start work on Nov. 2 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as part of a training program set up by the lab and Alameda County.

The deal means apprentices in the county can get some of their required 8,000 hours of on-the-job training at the lab.

Apprentices also take 900 hours of classes at Chabot College in Hayward.

LBL, on the hill above the University of California, Berkeley campus, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Alameda County Electrical Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee. The training program is sponsored the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Northern California chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association.

Jim Krupnick, Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s chief operating officer, thought up the program with Victor Uno, the business manager of IBEW’s Local 595 union. Uno worked 10 years as an electrician at the lab.

The county program has a training facility in San Leandro, run by Byron Benton.

Conservation groups are suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Utilities Program (RUS), claiming the agency's plans to underwrite the construction of new coal-fired power plants threaten both the environment and the rural agricultural communities it is supposed to support, according to news from Earthjustice.

Earthjustice, an environmental law organization, filed the lawsuit in an effort to force RUS to closely consider the potential environmental damage created by any new coal plants built in the U.S. The group is representing Citizens for Clean Energy, the Montana Environment Information Center and the Sierra Club.

“We hear a lot of talk about the low cost of coal, but the environmental costs of coal are terribly high,” said Anne Hedges, program director for the Montana Environmental Information Center. “In addition to climate change, you have to worry about dangerous air pollution and water contamination from millions of tons of toxic coal combustion waste.”

At the center of the dispute is RUS' plan to cover 85 percent of the construction costs of the Highwood Generating Station near Great Falls, Montana. The old-technology (as opposed to newer, “clean” coal technology) plant carries a projected price-tag of $600 million-plus, and the RUS funding would come from federal tax dollars.

The RUS has similar plans to finance the construction of at least seven new coal plants nationwide.

Opponents say the RUS did not consider any alternative, renewable sources of energy such as wind, which is both readily available and affordable in the region. They add the project would also generate more than six times as much energy as the area requires, and runs contrary to the current White House position that any new coal plants should be privately funded rather than built with tax dollars.

“Building a coal plant is the opposite of rural development,” said Rich Liebert, chairman of Citizens for Clean Energy and a farmer and rancher in the area. “We've been hard hit by drought, and it's only going to get worse for farmers as global warming makes it hotter and drier. The Rural Utilities Service is supposed to have agricultural interests at heart, but instead of promoting clean renewable energy that directly benefits local agriculture, it's promoting coal.”

The proposed coal plant also would be built on the site where the Lewis and Clark expedition camped while making its way around the Great Falls of the Missouri River. The National Park Service has said destroying the National Historic Landmark site would result in “an irreparable loss to the national heritage of our country.”

“This is the kind of needlessly destructive project that makes you think there ought to be a law against it, and in fact there is,” said Earthjustice attorney Abigail Dillen. “The federal government is required to seek out options to protect air and water and historic resources, and RUS is not living up to that responsibility. We've gone to court to make sure that taxpayers do not bear the burden of a misguided investment in dirty coal plants.”

Earthjustice, “Conservation Groups Challenge Federal Subsidies for Dirty New Coals Plants.” URL: (http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/007/conservation-groups-challenge-federal-subsidies-for-dirty-new-coal-plants.html)