After decades of activism, the Navajo coal mine was demolished

The two 2,750-megawatt Navajo Generating Station (NGS) chimneys of 775 meters – the largest coal plant in the West – were demolished on December 18, symbolically marking the end of coal dominance in a region where renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar, have become much cheaper.

The Salt River Project (SRP), the majority owners and operators of NGS, decided to close the plant in 2017 due to rising operating costs. Scott Harelson, a spokesman for SRP, told me: “Gas prices have been low for a long time and are much lower than coal. So the factory was essentially out of the market. “

The move to shut down the coal plant is part of a broader shift toward renewable energy in the United States and around the world. According to a report by the International Energy Agency, renewable energy sources will increase by about 7% in 2020, despite the economic consequences caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This change was partly driven by concerns about climate change – but also about growth questions about the potential impact of fossil fuels on health.

For more than four decades, the station on the Arizona-Utah border has been a critical local employer, providing more than 800 Indigenous people with jobs that have paid far more than the area average. Harelson said 90 percent of the plant’s employees were Navajo.

The station was officially closed in November 2019 once the remaining coal supply remained. The Kayenta mine, which supplied the plant, closed in August 2019 because it had no customers other than NGS. The jobs there were well paid: the average salary per worker was $ 117,000.

But for many members of the Navajo and Hopi tribes in the region, high salaries also came at a high price. Critics of the plant say its environmental problems are problematic – at one point it released more greenhouse gases in an hour than almost any other plant in the US – and claimed to have polluted the land and water used by Navajo farmers and ranchers. .

In a statement on Friday, members of organizations representing the Navajo and Hopi tribes hailed the disaster, while acknowledging that the plant has brought some financial benefits to their communities.

“The demolition of the chimneys at NGS is a solemn event,” said Nicole Horseherder, executive director of the Navajo environment. core group Tó Nizhóní Ání. “It’s a reminder of decades of subsidized exploitation of cheap coal and water from Navajo and Hopi.”

In particular, Horseherder argued that the economic benefits were outweighed by coal miners suffering from respiratory diseases and the land being contaminated by polluted water. The statement also said that many Navajo and Hops failed to take part in the electricity and water produced by the factory – that most of it was taken near Phoenix, Arizona.

But now that the station has been demolished, some Navajo and Hopi members have high hopes for a strong future without the coal plant.

Carol Davis, executive director of the Navajo Diné CARE core group, said in a statement: “We hope this marks the continuation of our transformation into a sustainable economy, which is based on fundamental Navajo and Hopi respect for air, land and water. it will have direct, measurable benefits for our communities, it will not exploit them ”.

A massive clean-up operation has begun

Now that the smoke has disappeared, the land occupied by the plant will be handed over to the Navajo nation – but first, the SRP will be forced to complete the complicated and costly process of cleaning up the remaining plant infrastructure and restoring the land to its original state.

“In conclusion, it is a $ 150 million effort to remove all the infrastructure that the Navajo nation does not want to keep,” Harelson said. “The warehouse, the administrative building, the railway, the lake pump, those facilities, will remain and become the property of the Navajo nation.”

There is also chemical cleaning – toxic compounds such as coal ash must be removed. “All hazardous chemicals must be properly disposed of and disposed of. And there is an extensive recovery project to restore the project to its original state, ”said Harelson.

SRP has promised to do so “in accordance with regulations and safety”, but some activists are concerned that there has been too little transparency about the company’s standards.

“We need to tell communities about the toxins that exist,” said Kim Smith, a scientist at Diné. “Just because the fumes are down, there is this mirage that everything will be fine, that we will get what we owe, that the ground will return to what it was.”

Smith’s comments recall that trust in the SRP is not universal, as the company has broken promises to the native community.

Cassie Scott, for example, told the Associated Press that her grandmother allowed part of her land to be used to build the plant in exchange for electricity. However, Scott said, that power never came and died without it in 2013.

“The plant generated massive amounts of electricity, yet many houses in the Navajo reservation did not have electricity despite the proximity of the plant,” Michael Hiatt, a lawyer for the environmental law organization Earthjustice, told me. In 2019, NPR estimated that 10% of people on the Navajo reservation live without electricity.

Activists have said they intend to closely monitor the restoration process.

“If the utilities do not comply with the letter of the law and do not clean or remedy, we will ensure that we bring any legal challenges or pressure to ensure that it is clean,” Hiatt said.

The cleaning of the factory is scheduled to be completed by 2023 – and the mine will also need recovery. This work could employ several hundred of those who no longer work in power generation, according to the Western Organization of the Resource Council, an environmental group, but it has not yet begun.

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