Foes
blast Desert Rock
Public forum in Durango draws opponents in force
By Chuck Slothower, Durango
Herald , 07/19/2007
The Bureau of Indian Affairs got an
earful from Durango residents Wednesday as one person
after another streamed to the microphone to speak out
against the proposed Desert Rock Energy Project.
The federal agency hosted a public
hearing to gather comments about the power plant. It
followed on the May release of a draft Environmental
Impact Statement, a key step toward construction.
The EIS said the power plant would have
several environmental impacts on the surrounding area
in northern New Mexico, but nothing significant enough
to stop the project.
Speakers at the hearing Wednesday were
having none of that.
"Nobody wants a power plant,"
said Nathan Caceres, who lives in Burnham, N.M.
Forty-nine people signed to speak. Of
the first 39, only one voiced support. The hearing drew
a crowd of about 150.
Desert Rock would generate 1,500 megawatts
of electricity from a site on Navajo land about 30 miles
southwest of Farmington. Sithe Global Power, a New York-based
international corporation, and Diné Power Authority,
a Navajo company, are pushing the $2.5 billion coal-fired
power plant.
Environmentalists fiercely oppose the
project, saying it will worsen pollution emitted by
two older power plants in northern New Mexico. Desert
Rock representatives say it will provide much-needed
jobs and tax revenue to the Navajo Nation while generating
electricity for booming Southwest cities such as Phoenix
and Las Vegas.
The mountain of negative comments offered
Wednesday added to opposition expressed by local governments.
La Plata County commissioners, Durango city councilors,
Cortez city councilors and the Vallecito Community Council
all have passed resolutions opposing construction.
Speakers voiced concern about haze,
mercury pollution, global warming and a litany of other
feared effects of the power plant.
While Desert Rock representatives have
repeatedly emphasized the economic benefits of the plant
to the impoverished reservation - including 420 permanent
jobs and $43 million a year in tax and royalty payments
to tribal government - several Navajos said they didn't
want the power plant.
"Who's asking for jobs?" said
Victoria Alba, part of a Navajo family that lives near
the proposed site. "People on the reservation all
have jobs. We're ranchers."
The lone person to voice support for
the project, Herbert Pioche, also a Navajo, said he
wanted Navajos to have the opportunity to live in nice
houses with running water and electricity. Hospitals
and schools need electricity, he said.
The Navajo Tribal Council voted overwhelmingly
to approve the power plant.
Frank Maisano, spokesman for Desert
Rock, said the Durango City Council was hypocritical
for opposing the Navajo government's desire to build
Desert Rock while the Durango area gets much of its
tax revenue from natural-gas drilling.
At the hearing, City Councilor Leigh
Meigs defended the council's decision, saying, "We
not only have a right to speak out, we have an obligation
to speak out."
Thomas Johns, Sithe Global senior vice
president for development, said opposition to new power
plants may have the "perverse effect of damaging
the environment."
Preventing new plants from being built
means utilities must continue to rely on older, dirtier
plants that might otherwise be retired from service,
he said in an interview.
Maisano said he hopes the BIA will issue
a final Environmental Impact Statement around the end
of the year. Several speakers urged the BIA to extend
the public-comment period scheduled to end Aug. 20,
even though the EIS has been available since May 15.
The EIS is 1,400 pages.
One comment posted on an anti-Desert
Rock Web log doubted public comments would do much good.
"There is little reason to believe that these hearings
will be little more than pro-forma inputs to an unresponsive
EPA."
The Environmental Protection Agency
is helping analyze the project, but the BIA office in
Gallup, N.M., is leading the federal government's approval
process.
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