CRISIS IN COAL COUNTRY
Shuttering power plant would hit Navajos hard; for Hopis, though, it could be crippling
BLACK MESA — The massive dragline bucket at the Kayenta Mine claws deep into the brittle rock, lifts and swings to the side, uncovering enough shiny black coal to bury a small house.
The coal from Black Mesa, a mountainous area straddling Navajo and Hopi land in the northeast corner of Arizona, is loaded into an oversized dump truck, crushed and placed on a conveyor belt arcing over hilltops into silos 17 miles away. Then, an electric train hauls the load 80 miles across the scenic high desert outside Monument Valley to the largest coal burner in the West.
The Navajo Generating Station consumes 240 rail cars of Kayenta’s coal every day, making enough electricity to power more than a half-million homes at once.
Some of it lights up the Las Vegas Strip. Some goes to Phoenix and Tucson. Still more of the coal power runs pumps along the Central Arizona Project Canal, pushing Colorado River water nearly 3,000 feet uphill across the state, enabling cheap water for agriculture, grass lawns and pools.
Together, the mine and the power plant employ 750 workers, nearly all Native Americans living on the two reservations, where unemployment approaches 50 percent. The operations support communities from Tuba City — a small enclave 60 miles west of the mine, with a grocery store, banks and a few hotels — to the non-reservation city of Page, on the shore of Lake Powell, and the Navajo town of Kayenta, with about 5,000 people.
But because there are cheaper alternatives for making electricity, the power plant’s owners voted to close it in two years.
If the generating station closes, the mine loses its only customer. It, too, will close.
Both tribes will lose jobs and income from the plant and mine. But the Navajo Nation, with about 170,000 members on the reservation, draws revenue from multiple sources. The 15,000-member Hopi Tribe has little else but the crops and livestock they cultivate in the surrounding canyons.
Changing economics
After spending years on expensive negotiations with the Environmental Protection Agency to keep the coal plant open, four of the five owners — Salt River Project, Arizona Public Service Co., Tucson Electric Power and NV Energy — decided in early February to give up the fight.
This time, the issue is not carbon emissions or haze at the Grand Canyon. It is economics. The utilities can get cheaper power from natural-gas-powered plants, saving each owner millions of dollars per year.
The fifth owner, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, uses its share to power the pumps on the canal and pay off debt from its construction. The agency wants to keep the facilities open but can’t foot the bill for the entire plant.
Combined, the mine and coal plant generate billions in economic benefit that spreads statewide. When they close, the Navajo Nation’s $173 million budget will shrink by about $40 million from lost coal royalties and lease payments from the power plant.
But the Navajos also have coal operations in New Mexico, as well as casino gambling and access to major highways to tap into tourism.
About half of the Hopis live on their reservation, which is surrounded by the Navajo Reservation, effectively cutting off the smaller tribe from most economic opportunities.
Hopi Chairman Herman Honanie has worked for the tribal government since 1977. He said tribal members are split nearly evenly between supporting the mine and wanting it closed because of environmental concerns.
He sides with keeping the mine open.
“The practicality is, we have a growing population and we have growing needs,” Honanie said. “We have one foot in our culture and the other foot on the other side of dominant society, and we are trying to mesh that together.”
Approximately 350 people who work for the tribe rely on the royalties from the mine for a significant portion of their paychecks. Those workers provide services from tribal courts to hospice care for the elderly.
The tribe anticipates $18.4 million in revenue this year, and more than $12 million of that will come from mining activities and from SRP for payments based on how well the power plant performs. Less than $2 million trickles in from court fees, business taxes and investments in the Days Inn Kokopelli in Sedona, Three Canyon Ranch near Winslow and Moenkopi Legacy Inn near Tuba City.
Like many people in coal country across the U.S., Honanie is hopeful President Donald Trump’s government will step in and ease regulations to make coal more competitive. Toward that end, the U.S. Department of the Interior has invited all stakeholders to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to discuss options for the plant.
“If we can manage to lobby effectively and bring this attention to their ear, to their minds, and hopefully in some effective unified front between us and the Navajo and whomever else, if we can get an audience with them, we hope that they can come to our aid in the best possible way,” Honanie said.
At the load-out
The coal seams running through the hills course through the region in other ways.
Both tribes depend on the free coal the mine’s operator, Peabody Energy of St. Louis, sets aside each weekend to heat their homes. Freezing temperatures are common from November through May, and tens of thousands of homes on the two reservations lie beyond the reach of electricity, water and natural-gas service.
Many also make use of the water depot at the mine, which allows them to fill cisterns in their trucks with water for homes and livestock.
For the free coal, some people drive hundreds of miles in the middle of the night to be first in line when the gates open at 6 a.m. at an area called the load-out.
On a recent Saturday, about 100 people swung picks, sledgehammers and hatchets to break off chunks of coal to be stacked meticulously into cars and trucks.
Darryl Sahema drove more than an hour from the Hopi village of Polacca. He rolled his pickup truck past frosted coal piles until he found one that hadn’t been picked over. Big, shiny pieces burn best in stoves, and they get scooped up fast.
“It burns slow and hot,” Sahema said, wool cap pulled down low, catching his breath in the morning chill between armloads. “It’s a good, reliable