New Water Source Found for Peabody
by Jim Maniaci, Diné Bureau
Gallup Independent
12 December 2003

WINDOW ROCK — A potential water source for Peabody's Black Mesa coal mine and slurry line and the Hopi villages and Navajo chapters in the area was revealed Thursday.

A group represented by lobbyist Jeff Groscost, former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, visited Navajo officials Thursday to offer a potential water source which would allow Peabody Energy to keep its reservation coal mines open as well as solve Southern California Edison's problem with the water-dependent fuel supply for its beleaguered Mohave Generating Station at Laughlin, Nev.

Up to 15,000 acre-feet of water, about one-fifth more than is currently listed as needed, would come from the Sacramento Valley west of the Kingman, Ariz., suburb of Golden Valley. Groscost said it is along the existing right-of-way for the slurry line which runs about 275 miles.

Peabody would construct a new pipeline and increase its water use from 4,400 acre-feet to approximately 6,000 acre-feet a year, pumping the water uphill several thousand feet to Black Mesa, mix it with the ground coal and send it back downhill to Laughlin, about 20 miles west of the water's origin.

The existing pipeline would be relined and pressurized, pump stations added to force water uphill about 5,600 acre-feet for reservation residents. One acre-foot is around 325,000 gallons.

Groscost admitted there are many things "left to be fleshed out."

Changing laws

Navajo Nation Council Speaker Lawrence Morgan said Arizona law must be amended to allow an inter-basin transfer of the water, for example.

"We should know by March at the latest if we can be successful there," Groscost added.

The speaker also likes the idea that it is outside water being brought into Navajo.

"However," Morgan said, "the oversight committees, affected chapters and the Navajo Nation Council have to wade in and consider this proposal. This could be a dandy proposal, but it needs a lot of work. Right now it is only at the discussion stage and there is no commitment on our part. It is just one of many proposals we get here at the central government."

Groscost said a meeting with President Joe Shirley Jr. went well.

"The president had fairly direct and probing questions about what our proposal would and wouldn't do and our political chances of success," the lobbyist said.

Meetings with the two branch chiefs followed a lunch with the Resources Committee before whom the lobbyist said he expects his group will be asked to make another presentation.

Groscost said it all began last year when he was working with the Navajo Nation on a cement plant north of Prescott, above the Verde River headwaters, with fierce opposition from the Verde Valley's leaders making it almost impossible to succeed. However, the same attorney as now, Tom Connolly, was involved, so the lobbyist and his unnamed partners learned of the lawyer's unnamed client whose land by the slurry line right-of-way sits over a separately contained water basin, and thus is not endangered by fast-growing Kingman's aquatic desires.Perfect dynamics"The local dynamics are perfect," the lobbyist said.

Groscost said his proposed deal also would be in the best interests of Arizona's water giant, the Salt River Project. SRP operates the Navajo Generating Station. Some of the Black Mesa water goes to the bigger Kayenta Mine which ships its coal about 85 miles via an electric railroad to the NGS, east of Page in the Le Chee Chapter on the south shore of Lake Powell.

SRP has done a much better job of maintaining and upgrading the NGS, built about the same time with the same basic design by the same contractor, as Edison has the plant in which it owns 56 percent and therefore is the managing partner.

Groscost believes his project can be built, if everything else can be worked out, in a short time and at less cost since land does not have to be acquired for the right-of-way.

Edison, the Los Angeles-area electric utility, will have to shut down its ancient 30-year-old power plant in southern Nevada after Dec. 31, 2005, to meet a consent decree imposed by environment groups which objected to the lack of modern air pollution controls on the two-unit generating station. Tribal legislators recently were told this will be at least until 2009, even if Edison decides to spend about $600 million as its share of more than $1 billion needed to modernize the plant which is within a stone's throw of the nine Laughlin gambling halls.

About 300 high-paying jobs on the reservation are endangered, along with four-fifths of the Hopi tribal treasury and about one-fourth of the Navajo's general fund.

Tribal water officials currently are pushing for a well field west of Winslow in the Coconino "C" Aquifer to replace the eight deep Navajo "N" Aquifer wells, with an 11,600 acre-foot a year line to serve both residents and some expanded mining which will be needed to meet the demand of an improved Mohave station.

MGS is the only electric generating facility in the country supplied by a slurry line, which required an act of Congress to cross state lines.

Reprinted as an historical reference document under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html