USA TODAY International Edition
Navajo plant closure symbolizes demise of coal, human toll
Hundreds will lose jobs when facility shutters
NAVAJO NATION – The pending closure of a massive coal plant here isn’t measured only by better air quality or the cost savings for the power companies that own it.
The aftereffects include hundreds of jobs lost in an area where high- paying work is hard to find. The lives disrupted and families scattered.
The looming shutdown of the Navajo Generating Station forced hundreds of utility employees to relocate to new jobs and put most of the region’s miners out of work when the Kayenta Mine that fueled it closed in August. Most are Native American.
The Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribes had to patch gaping holes in their budgets. Page, with its largest employer departing, had to double down on tourism.
The demise of coal in the region brings environmental benefits but also requires years of remediation work at the power plant and the mine that supplied it.
The power plant’s closure, which is likely in November, signals a warning for other coal mines and plants, dozens of which are likely to close in the West in coming years. Despite the best efforts of politicians from the U. S. president to tribal leaders to keep the plant open, it couldn’t be saved.
The same economic forces that closed it are bearing down on other coal communities.
The mine, some 78 miles east of the plant, also provided crucial employment for the people living on the Navajo and Hopi nations. Another mine in the same complex supplied the long- closed Mohave Generating Station near Laughlin, Nevada. The closure of that power plant and its mine in 2005 only magnified the economic significance of the remaining plant near Page and Kayenta Mine.
Salt River Project runs the plant for the other owners, which include Arizona Public Service Co., Tucson Electric Power Co., NV Energy and formerly the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
SRP fought for years to keep the coal plant running while environmentalists argued for stricter controls to mitigate haze and other pollutants.
But a boom in cheap natural gas around the country, as well as increasingly low- cost renewable energy, prompted the owners to vote to close the plant by the end of 2019.
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said the closure of the plant and mine would reduce revenue by an estimated $ 30 million to $ 50 million.
“We utilized some of our reserve and some of the other funds available,” he said.
The mine and power plant employed about 750 people combined before they began to wind down operations in 2017.
Now, families and communities once sustained by the power plant and mine face a tough decision: leave their homes for work far away or stay and hope to find work in a land where jobs are scarce.
Marvin Russell, 29, didn’t want to move away from the Navajo Nation. He grew up in Whitegrass, Arizona, only a half- mile from the main access road for Kayenta Mine. It took him about 10 minutes to drive there.
His family relocated to Logan, Utah, as the closure was pending, and he joined them after the mine closed Aug. 26.
Russell is a certified diesel mechanic. He started working for the mine in 2014 as a driller and blaster, an ideal job because it allowed him to stay near his family.
Russell said he wants his 5- year- old daughter to grow up how he did – near livestock and surrounded by family rather than in a city, visiting the Navajo
Nation only occasionally.
“( I want her) to know where she comes from,” he said. “I wanted my daughter to be around her family.”
Russell wants his family to return to the Navajo Nation, but right now, he’ll continue to look for work in Logan while his wife goes to school.
Like many, Grace Antone, 50, hoped the Navajo Generating Station and the Kayenta Mine would never close. She wasn’t prepared for it, and she believes the Navajo Nation is still not ready for the effects of the closure.
“I didn’t really have a plan because I was really hopeful,” Antone said. “It was very disappointing to us how the Navajo Nation wasn’t really supportive of the mine.”
She advocated for the mine and plant to be kept open and was present the day the Navajo Nation Council voted on the purchase of the plant, which would also have kept the mine running. She said seeing the delegates vote against buying the plant felt like they didn’t care about the workers.
“We didn’t mean anything to them,” she said. “The Navajo Nation Council delegates didn’t care about the rest of us who are still here.”
Antone lives in the Whitegrass area with several family members who also work for the mine. Russell is her nephew. She took the same route to work every day for the nearly 21 years she worked at the mine. She was a contractor for 16 years before officially being hired by Peabody.
Her job at the mine allowed Antone to give her three children a comfortable life and support them as they went to college. It’s why she started working there in the first place.
“I was very comfortable, and I enjoyed the fact that we do have a place to live, and my children were comfortable,” Antone said.
“I wasn’t able to earn my pension,” she said. “Just a few more years and we could’ve had it.”
Jerry Williams wakes up at 3: 45 a. m. to get ready for work Monday through Thursday. He climbs into his truck and takes the hour- long drive from his son’s apartment near Phoenix to his job at SRP’s Mesquite Generating Station west of the city.
For about a year, Williams has worked in the Phoenix area as a planner and scheduler. He accepted SRP’s relocation offer after 38 years at the Navajo Generating Station.
Williams’ wife didn’t relocate, preferring to stay in Page. Williams returns home on weekends, usually Thursday to Sunday. Then he makes the nearly fivehour drive back to Phoenix on Sunday night.
As a chapter president for the tribe, he has to be back before 6 p. m. on the first and second Thursdays of each month for meetings. There are times when Williams is not able to do that because of the travel time.
“I’m always packed,” Williams said. He carries a bag with four days of work clothes. On Thursday morning, that bag is packed, ready for the drive home.
Michael Bigman walks through the shop area in the Navajo Generating Station and greets a half- dozen workers by name as he passes their stations.
Bigman plans to celebrate his 40th year at the plant in January. Because of his seniority, he expects to be able to stay on during the decommissioning. He will retire once the work runs out, rather than relocate.
He has deep connections to the plant – two of his sons worked there. One took a job with SRP in the East Valley, and the other moved to Buckeye to work at a gas plant in the Gila Bend area. Both of their families moved with them, Bigman said.
His sister- in- law worked at the Kayenta Mine for more than 30 years. His daughter once worked at the power plant and now works in the Phoenix area. He even has a grandson who worked at the plant. His son- in- law works as a lineman after being hired at the plant years ago to work on an overhaul.
He was first hired at the plant as an apprentice and has stayed since, raising five children and 11 grandchildren in the area.
He said many of his friends from work have taken new jobs with SRP.
“They had mixed feelings, but most of them redeployed,” he said. “The younger kids are well adapted. It’s us older folks who got used to the plant. The mine and the plant have been good for us. The plant gave us a lift.”