Speaking
Diné to Dirty Power: Navajo Challenge New Coal-Fired
Plant
by Jeff Conant, Special to CorpWatch
April 3rd, 2007
In a makeshift hut on a hilltop in the high desert near
Farmington, New Mexico, local schoolteacher David Nez
projects a PowerPoint presentation on a blanket nailed
to the wall. Outside the door, a small wind and solar
generator silently provides the electricity for his
computer-aided presentation. Less than a mile away,
a different technology rules. Smoke plumes mark the
horizon from huge coal-fired power plants, as an enormous
crane rips into the Navajo coal mine, the largest open
pit mine in the western U.S.
If plans go through for a massive new
plant, co-owned by Houston-based Sithe Global Power
and the Diné Power Authority (DPA), another coal-fired
facility will generate electricity on the lands of the
Diné indigenous peoples (also known as the Navajo
by the colonizers). This tribal enterprise has split
the Navajo Nation, with some praising the opportunity
for economic development and others decrying the inevitable
effect on environment and values.
Elouise Brown, Hank Dixon, Nez and a
few of their Navajo elders have gathered in the rustic
hut to figure out how to block the new construction.
Brown found out about the project in December when she
came on a man drilling a test well on her family’s grazing
land. She cornered the worker and forced him to leave.
That same day she established a blockade at the site
now known as the Dooda Desert Rock vigil (Dooda means
“no” in the Diné language). Even without the
new project a dense curtain of brown smog hangs over
the desert between the site of the vigil and the distant
silhouette of Shiprock peak.
The plant would burn 5.5 million tons
of Navajo coal per year and produce 1,500 megawatts
of electricity for the fast-growing cities of the Southwest.
"You will hear that the Navajo Nation supports
this power plant, but grassroots people do not support
this," said Nez, who lives 20 miles from the site
of the proposed plant.
Hank Dixon, a young Navajo whose family’s
land is impacted by the project, called the decision-making
process “undemocratic.”
George Hardeen, spokesman for the office
of Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, says it was
precisely that: the Tribal Council voted 66 to 7 to
invite Sithe. “It’s just that [the Dooda Desert Rock
resisters] happen to be on the side that lost the vote.”
With frequent rallies in the state capitol
at Santa Fe in support of the Dooda Desert Rock Resisters,
awareness of the issue is growing. Dixon, Brown, and
Nez think that when people get the facts, a majority
of Navajo will oppose the plant. They are planning to
tour of the entire Navajo Nation – an area the size
of the state of West Virginia – to educate their tribe.
The PowerPoint they are preparing will
include such words as “mercury,” “arsenic,” “acid rain,”
“sludge,” and “smog” that have no equivalent in Diné,
but have an all-too familiar impact on Navajo health,
land, and culture, Hank Dixon says. “Our Navajo people
give a blessing every morning with corn pollen to welcome
the dawn.” Squinting out at the brown cloud, he adds,
“With that smog blocking the sunrise, we can’t even
see the dawn.”
Big Coal is Big Business
The proposed Desert Rock plant is one
of the more than 150 new coal-fired power plants planned
to go into production in the U.S. by 2030. With growing
awareness of the role of global warming and air quality
concerns, many of these projects have sparked campaigns
like the one envisioned in the New Mexico hilltop hut.
The rush to build new coal plants is
being largely underwritten by private equity firms –
big investors that raise money from pension funds and
wealthy individuals. The Blackstone Group, a Park Avenue
investment firm owns 80 percent of Sithe Global. Forbes
has recognized Blackstone chief executive officer Stephen
Schwarzman as the 73rd richest man in the U.S., with
a personal net worth of $2.5 billion. From his perch
in one of the most expensive townhouses on Park Avenue,
formerly owned by John D. Rockefeller, Schwarzman oversees
a lucrative empire that includes 47 companies, with
more than $85 billion in revenue from holdings as varied
as Aunt Jemima pancake mix, Houghton Mifflin Publishing,
and Universal Studios.
Despite the Blackstone Group’s dizzying
wealth, Sithe is asking the state of New Mexico for
an $85 million tax break to build the Desert Rock plant.
The Navajo Nation has already offered Sithe a 67 percent
tax reduction and a bargain basement price of $2.70
per thousand gallons for the water that will be used
in the plant. (The tax break failed to pass a March
2007 vote, but may be brought back by politicians down
the road)
Frank Maisano, spokesperson for Sithe
– and a man with a long history battling emissions standards
for the energy, automotive, and other polluting industries
– says the company needs tax breaks to make the project
commercially viable.
“You have to understand that this is
a three billion dollar project, so the revenue it generates
for both the State and the [Navajo] Nation will be extremely
significant. Even with the 67 percent tax reduction,
it makes Sithe the largest taxpayer on the Navajo Nation.
This reflects the size of the project and its importance
to the Navajo.”
For Sithe and other energy companies,
there are many advantages to building power plants on
tribal land. For one thing, the Navajo reservation is
rich in coal – much of it owned by BHP Billiton of Australia,
the world’s largest mining company. For Sithe, a key
attraction is the status of tribes as sovereign nations
that are not required to follow U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) emissions standards.
“They only recognize our sovereignty
when they want to dump toxic waste on us,” says Lori
Goodman, spokesperson for Diné CARE, (Diné
Citizens Against Ruining our Environment), She charges
that Sithe is benefitting from “Dick Cheney’s secret
meetings with the energy companies” that resulted in
the Energy Policy Act of August 2005. A provision of
this act known as the Tribal Energy Resource Agreements
(TERA) made it unnecessary for Indian nations to follow
national laws such as the National Environmental Policy
Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act.
Sithe counters that the Navajo have
a sovereign right to profit from their resources. “It’s
easy for environmentalists to say you can’t use that
coal because it’s dirty,” says Sithe spokesperson, Maisano.
“But the Navajos have coal in the ground, and that is
a huge economic development resource for them.”
Navajo spokesperson Hardeen agrees.
“The Navajo Nation government has to take care of its
people by raising revenues and providing services, and
that’s what this project will do.”
Economic Opportunities
Sithe expects that the proposed Desert
Rock plant will create 400 permanent jobs and generate
$50 million per year for the tribe – a third of the
Navajo Nation budget – over the facility's 30-40 year
life span. Maisano points out that the plant is unique
in that the Navajo Nation will be part owners.
“It’s not just about $50 million a year,”
he says. “It’s an attitude and an approach. It's adding
to coal and water leases, to construction jobs, to quality
of life.”
“This project will kick-start the Navajo
Nation economy,” says Hardeen. “Having a project of
this size – the largest project in native America –
is a huge cornerstone of the Navajo Nation’s goals.
There’s really nothing else that can compare to this.”
"This is not just about one project,"
says plant opponent Hank Dixon. "It’s about the
people surviving as Navajo. We have half a million Navajo
and they’re proposing a plant that’s going to employ
400 people. That’s not even a dent in our economic development
problems.”
“If you’re going to build an infrastructure
to run a nation," adds David Nez, "you can’t
do it on $50 million a year. We’re like a third world
country, selling our natural resources really cheap.
If we really want to do that we should make these companies
pay what it’s worth.”
But Nez raises a more fundamental
objection: “Is the goal of the Navajo people to get
rich? Because quality of life, even if you’re poor,
means clean air, clean water, beautiful scenery. Is
Sithe going to buy water for our children in the future?”
The Four Corners – A National Sacrifice
Area
Even if activists manage to derail the
new plant, the Four Corners region is already “a national
energy sacrifice area,” says Mike Eisenberg of the San
Juan Citizens Alliance, a local community group. His
group has been protesting the Four Corners power plant
and the San Juan generating station, located within
sight of each other just outside Farmington in San Juan
County, which are two of the most polluting plants in
the western U.S.
American Lung Association figures show
that 16,000 people in the county, or close to 15 percent
of the population, suffer from lung disease, most likely
from plant emissions. The 2,040 megawatt Four Corners
plant emits 157 million pounds of sulfur dioxide, 122
million pounds of nitrogen oxides, 8 million pounds
of soot and 2,000 pounds of mercury a year. The 1,800
megawatt San Juan generating station releases over 100
million pounds of sulfur dioxide, more than 100 million
pounds of nitrogen oxides, roughly 6 million pounds
of soot, and at least 1000 pounds of mercury. Add to
this the 18,000 oil and gas wells spread throughout
the region and you have “massive cumulative impacts
that will never be reversed,” says Eisenberg.
The Navajo Nation seems to have no accesible
records of local health impacts.
“We don’t have numbers, because Indian
Health Services is notoriously under-funded and isn’t
keeping track [of the health impacts]," says David
Nez. "But when I was a kid no one here had asthma.
Now lots of kids have it.”
CorpWatch calls to reach Indian Health
Services for comments were not returned.
Dr. Marcus Higi of Cortez, Colorado,
who worked as a physician on the reservation for four
years, agrees with Nez. "I've seen the worst asthma
cases out here near the power plants," he said.
"A kid would come in, barely breathing. They're
basically on the verge of death."
Air pollution is not the only problem.
Waste from the area’s two coal mines has destroyed ground
water with high sulfate content that kills livestock,
“wiping out ranching as a viable business on this part
of the reservation,” according to Jeff Stant, a consultant
with the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based non-profit
group.
Some “70 million tons of coal combustion
waste has been dumped in the Navajo coal mine, making
it the biggest dump of mine waste in the country,"
Stant continues. "Between this and the nearby San
Juan mine there’s 150 million tons of waste sitting
there. That’s more fly ash and scrubber sludge than
the entire nation generates in one year.”
This waste, heavily laden with cadmium,
selenium, arsenic, and lead – byproducts of coal-burning
– leaches into groundwater turning it poisonous to people,
livestock, and vegetation. A forthcoming EPA report
released to the national environmental group Earth Justice
indicates that groundwater contaminated with coal ash
leads to a cancer risk as high as 1 in 100 – 10,000
times higher than previous EPA estimates.
“When you look at the plan for
the Desert Rock plant, one of the first things it says
is that the sludge and ash will be dumped back into
the mine pit," says Stant, who directs the Safe
Disposal Campaign for the Clean Air Task force. "It’s
the same thing the other plants have done, and it’s
a disaster.”
Desert Rock Emissions
Sithe says that Desert Rock will be
a flagship for a new generation of “environmentally
friendly” coal-fired plants. According to Desert Rock
Energy vice-president Nathan Plagans, fly ash from the
plant will be sold to make concrete, reducing the plant’s
solid waste output dramatically, and the plant will
use as little water as possible.
Jeff Stant, who has studied the project
permit, disagrees. “Assertions of plans are one thing.
What the permit says is another.” Desert Rock’s pollution
permit application says: “Solid wastes produced by the
combustion of the coal and the air pollution control
system will be returned to the mine.”
Sithe has also made a voluntary agreement
to reduce mercury emissions by 80 percent above what
the pollution permit requires. But the Sierra Club,
another national environmental group, estimates that
the plant will put 114 to 555 pounds of mercury a year
into the local environment, along with tons of other
toxins. Regional waterways including the San Juan River
are already subject to fish warnings because of high
mercury content.
The plant will also emit an estimated
13.7 million tons of global warming pollution per year,
Sithe claims that it has designed the plant to function
at super-critical heat, to get more energy out of less
coal. Yet Sandra Ely, environment and energy policy
coordinator for the New Mexico Environment Department,
told the Farmington Daily Times that the plant would
raise statewide greenhouse gas levels by 25 percent.
While it is a leading cause of global
warming, the EPA currently has no restrictions on carbon
dioxide.
That may change soon. California utilities'
strict emission standards mean that state will not buy
power from coal-powered plants, and other states may
soon follow.
Carol Oldham of the Sierra Club
is sanguine. “It’s just a matter of time before carbon
is heavily regulated,” she says. “A number of industry
groups have called for an 80 percent carbon reduction
by 2050. So we could end up with a lot of empty plants
paid for by our taxes.”
Who Gets the Power?
The energy companies, for their part
are also optimistic in assuming that there will be no
change in current energy demand, and no plan for energy
conservation or increased reliance on renewable sources
of energy such as wind and solar.
As the largest Indian indigenous reservation
in the U.S, with land spanning four states, the Navajo
Nation is rich not only in coal, uranium, and other
valuable minerals, but in some of the country’s best
potential for generating wind and solar power. Nonetheless
according to Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, some 18,000
Navajo homes still lack any electricity whatsoever.
“You cross that dirt road over there,”
says Nez, “and there’s a little Hogan [traditional Navajo
house] and a little sheep corral, no running water and
no electricity, and in the backyard there’s a big behemoth
power plant sending electricity down to Tucson, down
to Phoenix, or Las Vegas.”
Instead of inviting power plants, "the
tribe could look into putting up windmills and solar
panels, and set aside land with the okay of the people
who hold the grazing permits.”
Standing outside a trailer at the Dooda
Desert Rock vigil, Elouise Brown is hopeful. Looking
out at the dust cloud rising from the coal mine nearby,
on land that her people have grazed for centuries, she
says “Something tells me these power plants aren’t going
to happen.”
“This is not just a local issue,” says
David Nez. “This is a worldwide issue. We need to stop
global warming now, and we need to start right here.”
This article was made possible
by a generous grant from the Hurd Foundation
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