BY ROGER CLARK
“On Black Mesa we, as a society, are engaged in destroying some of our oldest sustainable Native American cultures so that people in Phoenix and Las Vegas can water their hundreds of golf courses, swim in swimming pools, and pretend they live in a desert miracle.”
-Judith Nies, “Unreal City”
A little-known chapter in the history of the Colorado River began when Arizona business leaders plotted to get U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill to build the Central Arizona Project. In 1946, they formed the Central Arizona Project Association to win over public opinion and lobby Congress to authorize construction of the 336-mile-long canal and 14 water pumps.
The first pump was built at the reservoir above Parker Dam on the lower Colorado River. Eventually, the aqueduct snaked its way across the Sonoran Desert to its terminus south of Tucson. The project was completed in 1993 at a cost of about $4 billion, proving that water does indeed flow uphill toward money. Today, it lifts nearly a half billion gallons of water each year and delivers it to fields, faucets, and water banks located hundreds of feet higher than the reservoir.
The controversial plan would have bookended Grand Canyon National Park with two dams and would have reduced the river’s flow in the national park to nearly nothing. Overwhelming opposition to flooding the Grand Canyon forced decision-makers to reconsider. They decided instead to build the Navajo Generating Station (NGS).
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation enlisted five utilities from California, Nevada, and Arizona to finance and co-own the largest—and most polluting—coal plant in the West. The massive steam plant was built in 1974 on Navajo land, just east of Glen Canyon Dam, near Arizona’s northern border. Coal to power the plant is strip-mined from Black Mesa, located another 85 miles to the east, on the ancestral homeland of Hopi and Navajo people. Thousands of residents were exiled to make way for mining. Those who kept living nearby have been breathing coal dust for more than a generation.
It has dumped hundreds of millions of tons of climate-changing gasses into the Earth’s atmosphere. Its emissions impair visibility in the Grand Canyon and release harmful toxins into the air and water. People who live nearby are more likely to suffer from respiratory disease.
On February 13, 2017, Salt River Project, Arizona Public Service, Tucson Electric Power, and Nevada Power announced their decision to close NGS by the end of 2019, or possibly sooner. They determined that purchasing and burning coal to make electricity was now too expensive. In today’s energy markets, lower-cost natural gas, solar, and wind are cleaner sources of electricity and are more profitable than burning coal. Central Arizona Project managers welcomed the NGS announcement because they expect to save money by shifting to less expensive electricity.
It will also cause the coal mine to close, cutting off millions of dollars in royalties paid to the Hopi and Navajo governments. Shuttering both the power plant and the mine will wipe out well-paid jobs for hundreds of hourly wage earners who live in one of the most economically exploited regions of the country.
“We need to see what the economics of this situation are and find a pathway forward that works,” a spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation told the Los Angeles Times. “Everything potentially would be on the table,” he said, which includes keeping the coal plant operating until a plan to replace revenues and jobs is in place.
As a non-voting member of the tenancy agreement, Reclamation has no say in the decision to close NGS when the lease ends on December 22, 2019. Salt River Project, the plant’s majority owner and operator, is one of the country’s largest public utilities. It has said that it would consider keeping NGS running up until the end of the lease, if the Navajo Nation will agree to renew it beyond 2019 to allow time to decommission NGS. Salt River Project has set July 1, 2017 as the deadline for renewing the lease, or it will shut down NGS and start demolition this year.
In anticipation of the coal plant’s eventual retirement, Reclamation and other federal agencies have been assessing ways to create new jobs and revenues in partnership with tribal communities. But, until February, they and tribal governments believed that they had decades to plan for the transition. Nonetheless, Reclamation’s initial assessment identified dozens of projects, and it is assisting several to move forward. It worked with the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority in developing its first utility-scale solar project near Kayenta, Arizona. When completed later this year, it will reduce the tribal utility’s need to buy more expensive electricity during periods of peak demand, and it will generate revenues by selling surplus power to Salt River Project.
Other prospects include opportunities for Hopi and Navajo-owned solar projects near major transmission hubs and on land surrounding NGS. Reclamation and other public agencies may be able to assist in financing projects, securing power purchase agreements, and providing access to federal transmission lines.
In addition to exploring options for replacing NGS, Reclamation has a long-standing commitment to deliver a reliable supply of clean water to Hopi and western Navajo communities. The existing pump in Lake Powell that supplies water to run NGS could be used on the front end of a new Central Arizona Project-like system to move water to higher elevations for distribution to places on tribal land where fresh water is sorely needed.
To lift Lake Powell water uphill to the height of Black Mesa, community-owned, solar-powered pumping stations could be distributed along established utility corridors. A new water main might be built along the 80-mile route of the electric train that currently hauls coal from the base of Black Mesa to NGS. Native-owned energy-efficiency and water delivery services, solar electric, construction and plumbing businesses, and high-speed communication and information systems could flourish.
In time, repurposing stranded transmission lines and reclaiming other assets could help replace some of the losses that will be incurred when the mine and coal plant close. Unfortunately, no amount of money can compensate the thousands of families who were forcibly evicted to make way for strip-mining so others might prosper.
Perhaps those who’ve benefited from NGS should help usher in a new era of sustainability by moving water uphill with equity, equanimity, and equal opportunity and justice for all.
Roger Clark directs the Grand Canyon Trust's Grand Canyon program.
Also in this issue:
Hillary Hoffmann on the hidden wonders of the Colorado Plateau's national monuments. Read now ›