Navajo Nation weighs costs and benefits of coal mining on its land
By Kari Lydersen
As a child, bonnie Wethington remembers hunting for “star-crossed fairy
rocks” and catching lizards in thigh-high grass below the majestic Ship
Rock and Church Rock on the Navajo Nation, near Four Corners (where
Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet).
Now in her 40s, Wethington, a member of the Nation, laments that the
grass is sparse and scrubby, and there is hardly a lizard in sight. She
says the changes in the land have much to do with the noxious plumes
pumping out of two massive coal-burning power plants in the area, and
the harvesting of coal from a wide gash in the red and gold earth that
runs for miles near her family’s land.
“Now we just have a barren wasteland and acid rain from the power
plant,” she says, adding that Navajo consider small reptiles their
evolutionary forebears — so their disappearance is ominous.
“The land is changing,” she says. “The rabbits are dying, the lizards,
the cattle are dying off, even the horny toads are dying, and we
consider them our grandfathers.” Then she adds: “I used to think
Navajos were immune to cancer. Now I’ve had a few relatives die of
cancer. I think it’s the power plant.”
The Navajo, like a number of Native American tribes in the Southwest, has found itself in an ironic conundrum.
While this swath of Native land is largely dry, windswept and difficult
to farm, it sits in an area rich with mineral and fossil fuel resources
— coal, natural gas, oil and uranium. Although Native Americans believe
in protecting the earth like a mother, exploiting these resources has
provided one of few economic lifelines for a number of impoverished
Native communities.
The Southern Ute tribe in southwest Colorado is flush with income from
its natural gas leases. About 1,300 tribal members enjoy monthly
payments of about $1,400 and, after age 60, a generous pension of about
$65,000 a year; plus the use of a spacious fitness center, Montessori
school, hospital and other amenities. That’s thanks to the Southern Ute
Growth Fund, a private equity investment fund that, since its 1999
inception, has leveraged its gas income into a $1.45 billion portfolio,
including real estate, construction and oil exploration. (The tribe
declines to break down how much of this investment is in natural gas.)
A large wooden seal adorning the tribe’s headquarters shows a gushing
oil well and gas pipelines, along with livestock and mountains — its
traditional tribal identifiers.
But historically, it was outsiders who exploited Native Americans lands, leaving environmental and social havoc in their wake.
The Black Mesa Coal Mine on Navajo and Hopi land, east of Phoenix near
the New Mexico-Arizona border, is a prime example. The mine fed coal to
the Mohave Generating Station located 273 miles away in Laughlin, Nev.,
via a slurry pipeline — meaning the coal was ground and mixed with
water to form a slushy liquid that could be pumped through the
pipeline. Each year, the tribes sacrificed about a billion gallons of
their sparse water supply to blend and pump the coal to Laughlin, where
it was burned to produce electricity for a large swath of the West.
Meanwhile, one in three Navajo homes — about 18,000 total — has no
electricity, according to the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority.
In 2005, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) closed the Mohave
Generating Station — built by multinational Bechtel — because of its
high sulfur dioxide emissions. With the station closed, Black Mesa’s
coal production has been suspended until the Peabody coal company can
find another customer.
Also on the reservation, 130 miles north of Black Mesa, the Four
Corners and San Juan coal-burning power plants produce electricity that
is transported to regional customers on high-tension power lines that
pass right over many unwired Navajo homes.
(These are the plants Wethington blames for destroying the local
ecology and causing cancer. Numerous studies have also linked emissions
from coal-burning power plants to higher rates of asthma and other
health problems. The Black Mesa mine has no connection to these plants.)
Desert Rock
Now the Navajo tribe is considering a $4 billion coal investment that
proponents claim would give the tribe ownership over — and significant
profit from — its mineral resources.
Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. supports the proposed Desert Rock
generating station, which is spearheaded by the New York firm Sithe
Global Power, in partnership with the tribal Dine Power Authority. The
station would generate 1,500 megawatts of power, burning local coal
harvested by BHP Billiton — one of the world’s largest mining companies
and the current supplier of the Four Corners and San Juan plants.
Shirley, a controversial figure who made Desert Rock a central platform
of his 2006 re-election campaign, describes the plant as a way to “put
food on the table and put shoes on little feet.”
Proponents say the tribe would earn $50 million a year in coal
royalties, taxes, jobs and related investment. Plus, if it can come up
with the capital, the tribe could purchase up to 49 percent interest in
the venture. Fliers handed out by proponents promise jobs that could
pay $60,000 a year.
“This is the first energy development we’ve been able to personally be
a part of,” says tribal chapter president Lucinda Yellowman Bennalley.
“We’re very excited.”
Bennalley and other proponents of the plan say many of their relatives
who have left the reservation because of a lack of jobs want to return,
and they hope jobs at Desert Rock would make that possible.
But the proposal has divided the tribe, shattering long-standing
friendships and alienating neighbors. During a March meeting with
journalists, Shirley described Navajo opponents of the plan as
“dissidents.”
Meanwhile, these critics say they have suffered ongoing harassment and
intimidation from tribal police. George Hardeen, spokesman for
Shirley’s office, says that claims of harassment — including murdered
dogs and cattle — were investigated by independent veterinarians and
were found to be groundless.
Lucy Willie, 65, who lives near the proposed Desert Rock site, was part
of a December 2006 encampment protesting the Desert Rock plan. Armed
tribal police threatened to take her to jail, she says.
If the Desert Rock plant opens, not only would it bring emissions, but
BHP Billiton could also significantly expand its coal mining operations
across its 25-square-mile lease.
Brad Bartlett, an attorney with the Energy Minerals Law Center, charges
that BHP Billiton has done a poor job of safely storing waste from the
open pit and underground mines it currently operates on Navajo land,
and of restoring the tapped-out sites it has mined to supply the Four
Corners and San Juan generating stations with coal.
“None of this land has been restored to its pre-mining usage,” Bartlett
says. “The waste has everything in it: mercury, selenium, cadmium,
radiological contaminants. The ash is stored in unlined ponds and the
dust goes everywhere. Eventually they will probably leave the Navajo
Nation with the cost of the cleanup.”
Willie, who has tended sheep on the same land since she was 7 years old, doesn’t want to see the ecosystem destroyed this way.
“Five-fingered creatures are supposed to nurture a healthy
environment,” she says. “Navajo are not meant to be wanderers. We
always come back to a place we call home. Generations down the line, I
hope this will still be here for them.”
The Navajo Nation is divided into 110 chapter houses, with each chapter
acting essentially as a small local government. The Burnham chapter,
which encompasses the proposed Desert Rock site, voted against the
idea. Then the boundaries were redrawn so the site lay within the
Nenahnezad chapter, which voted for it.
However, the tribe still needs an air permit from the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA). On March 18, the Diné Power Authority and
Desert Rock LLC (a subsidiary of Sithe) sued the EPA, claiming it has
delayed the permit for four years and is obligated to act.
On March 12, prior to the filing of the suit, Navajo President Shirley,
who flew to Washington, D.C., to meet with EPA administrator Stephen
Johnson, characterized the federal government’s failure to shepherd
through the project as a violation of the tribe’s sovereignty.
Likewise, he claims outside environmentalists are stirring up
opposition among tribal members.
“Outsiders are coming in, foreigners giving money to Navajo to say no,”
Shirley told a group of journalists on the reservation shortly after
his meeting with the EPA. “The majority of Navajo support it. What do
you want us to do, continue to stay quagmired in poverty? I want to get
us standing on our own two feet.”
Wind and sun
In 1988, the grassroots group Dine CARE formed to protect local forests
and fight a proposed toxic waste incinerator near Dilkon, a town in the
southwest part of the reservation. (“Dine” roughly means “people,” and
it is the way Navajo refer to themselves. CARE stands for Citizens
Against Ruining our Environment.
)
Last fall, the group released a study on renewable energy potential on
the Navajo Nation. It describes “world-class” solar resources in the
Arizona side of Four Corners, and reservation-
wide “abundance of moderately to highly valuable solar and wind resources, all largely untapped to date.”
“The Navajo Nation is poised to be a leader in renewable energy,” says
Dailan Jake Long, who grew up near the Desert Rock site and recently
graduated from Dartmouth College. “Solar and wind could supply Navajo
homes with electricity without the negative consequences of Desert
Rock.”
Wind energy potential is low in the area immediately surrounding the
proposed site, but other parts of the Navajo Nation are considered
promising for wind turbines. However, a lack of access to high capacity
power lines prohibits the large-scale sale of energy to the interstate
grid.
Proponents say Desert Rock would be a “clean coal” plant — which refers
to plants that use technology with an integrated gasification combined
cycle and “scrubbers” — to greatly reduce emissions of mercury, nitrous
oxide and sulfur dioxide. Desert Rock’s environmental impact statement
says it would emit 12.7 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.
Though the Bush administration has pushed coal as the fuel source of
the future, concerns over pollution and greenhouse gases have meant a
nearly de facto moratorium on the building of new plants.
Utilities have canceled or suspended plans for at least 45 coal-fired
power plants nationwide. Various state governments have adopted
greenhouse gas reduction platforms that would make it difficult, if not
impossible, for new plants to be built.
In 2006, California led the way by prohibiting the purchase of energy
from plants spewing more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per
megawatt of energy produced.
Long and other Desert Rock opponents argue that now is the time to turn
to renewable energy for economic self-sufficiency. In late April, Long,
25, will discuss the Diné CARE study and ideas for renewable energy at
the United Nations in New York.
“The nation could invest in lifelong clean jobs and sustainable
development projects that don’t desecrate the land and relocate people
off the reservation,” he says. “This is the opportune time.
[Nonrenewable] resources can only last so long. We’re not just about
resistance, we’re creating blueprints for our nation, roadmaps for the
future.”
Kari Lydersen writes for the Washington Post out of the Midwest bureau
and just published a book, Out of the Sea and Into the Fire: Latin
American-US Immigration in the Global Age.
