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
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