For the Navajos, the looming construction of the $3 billion coal-fired Desert
Rock power plant on their reservation, about 25 miles southwest of Farmington,
New Mexico, raises troubling questions about the future of their tribe. From
one point of view, the Navajos – or Diné, or People – see
the plant as an economic opportunity for impoverished reservation families. From
another point of view, they see it as a powerful threat to their traditional
life ways, value system and homeland. Faced with uncertainty, they struggle
to reconcile the potential economic benefits with the possible cultural and environmental
consequences.
Dinétah
The Navajo
Reservation – called “the Rez,” by locals – spans some
27,000 square miles (a region 3,000 square miles larger than the state of West
Virginia) in northwestern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah. It
lies at the core of the traditional Dinétah, or the historic Navajo heartland,
bounded by four sacred mountains—San Francisco Peak in north central Arizona,
Mount Hesperus in southwestern Colorado, Mount Blanca in south central Colorado,
and Mount Taylor in central New Mexico.
A mix of arid
range lands and forested mountains, the Rez embraces a fabled landscape, on the
Colorado Plateau, where ancient campfires, canyon alcoves, Puebloan ruins, spellbinding
rock art, cultural flotsam and jetsam, and mummified burials speak to the lives
of early hunting and gathering peoples, village farmers, Spanish colonists, legendary
mountain men and explorers, and Navajo shepherds and agriculturists. It
also harbors a treasure trove of coal deposits, gas and oil reserves, uranium
and restless winds. It is already home to two large coal-fired power plants
and a network of gas and oil pipelines.
Diné
According
to a Health Care in the Navajo Nation Fact Sheet, published in 2004, approximately
180,000 Navajos live in some 70,000 homes, often traditional hogans, widely scattered
across the reservation. (By comparison, according to the U. S. Census Bureau,
about 10 times as many people live in about 10 times as many homes in West Virginia.) The
Navajo Nation – in effect, a nation within a nation – governs itself
through executive, legislative and judicial branches, passing and administering
laws that apply to the tribe within the reservation boundaries. It maintains
headquarters – its capitol – at Window Rock, in northeastern Arizona.
Sequestered
in remote locations, Navajos’ homes frequently lie beyond the economic
reach of commercial enterprise, jobs, utilities, paved roads, basic education,
basic health care and community services. Many endure daily hardship.
With per capita
annual income averaging just $6000 to $7000, more than half the Navajo population
lives below the poverty level. More than 40 percent have no regular employment. More
than 40 percent lack a high school diploma.
Nearly 80,000 reservation Navajos,
or 44 percent of the total, must haul water – that
most precious of commodities in an arid land – to their homes just to meet
everyday needs, according to Shaun McKinnon, writing recently for The
Arizona Republic. The Navajos lack complete kitchen or plumbing facilities
in nearly a third of their homes, according to the Fact
Sheet. They have
no electricity in 30 percent of their homes; no telephone service in 60 percent.
“In
Chinle, Arizona [in the northeastern part of the state], the Chinle Unified School
District…transports 4,100 students to school on 72 buses
that log a total of 1million miles a year,” said the National Indian Education
Association in its March 2005 newsletter. “Over 60% of the roads
that Chinle students must travel on daily are considered ‘unimproved roads’ meaning
dirt roads or ‘unengineered roads that do not have adequate gravel or other
aggregate surface materials applied and do not have drainage ditches or shoulders.’
“In addition to the extra mileage these school districts must bear, the
school buses must also drive on roads that require maintenance at levels that
urban areas do not even consider. It is not uncommon for buses transporting
students on the Navajo reservation to require four wheel drive, additional repairs
due to twisted bus frames caused by poor roads, and frequent replacement of shock
absorbers and ball joints.”
“On the Navajo Reservation, as on other reservations” said Ellen
Rothman in the Harvard Medical, Dental and Public Health Schools’ Focus
Internet site, “acute poverty and extreme geographic isolation combine
to produce daunting obstacles to receiving adequate health care. For instance,
the Navajo nation has the highest number of dialysis beds per capita of any area
in the country. Yet, because the distances are so huge, many of our patients
still have to travel 40 or 50 miles to reach their site. The lack of a
ride is the most frequent reason patients give us for the missed primary care
appointments. Instead, they come to the ER on whatever day they can find
a ride.”
In spite of
the hardships, the Navajos revere their homeland, Dinétah, viewing it
as a holy sanctuary, their cathedral. “…the land is the Earth
Mother, she who gives life to humanity,” said Raymond Friday Locke in his
The Book of the Navajo. “…there is nothing more revered
nor more loved by the Navajos than the land they call Dinétah.” Spiritually
bound to their land, the Navajos follow a continual quest for balance, harmony
and beauty in their lives, their artistry and their rituals. They give
visual expression to the quest in their textiles, ceramics and jewelry, vesting
them with rich and complex symmetry in design. They hold elaborate ceremonies
to restore balance and harmony should misfortune or disaster signal discord.
Locke said
that “From the beginning, the Navajos were repulsed by the European’s
disrespect for and misuse of the land… A society that would destroy
the source of life and worship an abstract god in a place set aside for that
purpose has, historically, had little to offer the Navajo.”
The Navajos’ Dilemma
With the grinding
poverty on the reservation on one side of the equation and their reverence for
their heartland on the other side, the Navajos face a dilemma: Should they
capitalize on the opportunities emanating from the Desert Rock power plant and
accept the
risk of cultural disharmony and environmental damage in the heart of their venerated
Dinétah? Or should they hold true to their traditions and values
and reject the plant? Navajo David Nez summarized the issue for Jeff Conant,
writing for the CorpWatch Internet site, “Is the goal of the Navajo people
to get rich?” asked Nez. “Because quality of life, even if
you’re poor, means clean air, clean water, beautiful scenery.”
The Desert Rock Power Plant
Under an agreement
between the Diné Power Authority and builder and majority owner Sithe
Global Power (a Houston-based power company), the plant, fueled by low sulpher
coal from an adjacent mine, will consist of “two 750 megawatt supercritical
coal boilers and steam turbines with an efficiency of 41%,” according to
a May 26, 2006, news release written by the Diné Bureau’s John Christian
Hopkins. The DPA and Sithe say that the plant will have a “natural
draft dry cooling tower,” which minimizes water consumption. It will
incorporate technology that will control 90 percent of the nitrogen emissions,
98 percent of the sulpher dioxide emissions and 80 percent of the mercury emissions. Moreover,
said the company in its Internet site, the plant will draw water from very deep
wells, from non-potable sources, and it will operate as a “zero-discharge” facility,
which means that no liquids other than storm runoff will leave the site.
The company
is considering various possibilities for controlling carbon dioxide emissions
but has so far been “unable to identify a commercially feasible means to
enable this technology… …an appropriate mechanism to recover
the cost of implementation, including the cost of development, installation and
operation, has not yet been implemented or discovered.” The cost
of the technology could reach a billion dollars. One possibility may include
employing the equipment necessary to capture the carbon dioxide and inject it
into wells, far beneath the earth’s surface.
Plans call for the four-year construction phase to begin in 2008. Sithe
expects to sell power to Phoenix, Las Vegas and other communities in the burgeoning
Southwest.
The Pros
The Desert
Rock power plant, said Navajo President Joe Shirley, Jr. in Hopkin’s release, “will
benefit the whole Navajo Nation.” Vice President Frank Dayish, Jr.,
said “Desert Rock makes sense for the Navajo Nation.” DPA Director
Tim Goodluck “offered his thanks to the traditional medicine men” for
their help in facilitating the agreement.
The Navajos would find opportunities to fill 1,000 jobs at the plant during
the construction phase, according to Hopkins. They could expect 400 new
job opportunities at the facility and the nearby coal mine once the plant becomes
operational. In addition to new jobs, the Navajos would realize annual
revenues of $20 million in plant taxes, $18 million for coal royalties, $8 million
in coal taxes and $4.5 million for water rights—a total of $1.25 billion
over the first 25 years of operation.
The Navajos can expect the company, according to its Internet site, to employ
the “most advanced, proven technology for a large scale coal fired power
plant available.” Additionally, “Desert Rock will be able to
be fitted for future deployment of carbon capture and storage technology when
the conditions exist to support its implementation.” The company
says that “All aspects of the construction and operation are being studied
to ensure local, state and federal regulations are met.” The plant,
according to a 2006 news release from the Environmental Protection Agency, will “set
a new level of performance for coal-fired plants in the United States.”
The impoverished Navajo Nation will experience “untold economic benefit,” the
company said. “It is estimated that 3 additional jobs will be created
in the region for every 1 job created at Desert Rock.” That would
mean 1200 new jobs for Navajos on the reservation. It might even mean electricity
and better living conditions for thousands of Navajo homes.
The Cons
While proponents
say that the Desert Rock power plant will “kick start” the Navajo
economy, others deride that claim. Navajo Hank Dixon told Jeff Conant that “This
is not just about one project. It’s about the people surviving as
Navajo. We have half a million Navajo [including both those living on and
off the reservation] and they’re proposing a plant that’s going to
employ 400 people. That’s not even a dent in our economic development
problems.”
With the reservation’s two older coal-fired power plants – disgorging
29 million U. S. tons of carbon dioxide per year – overshadowing the debate,
various Navajos and many others oppose the new plant on environmental concerns,
especially since it will lack the technology to control emissions of the carbon
dioxide. It would, in fact, emit 12 million tons of carbon dioxide per
year, adding some 40 percent to the already high total for the region. As
Dixon told Jeff Conant, “Our Navajo people give a blessing every morning
with corn pollen to welcome the dawn. With that smog [from the current
plants] blocking the sunrise, we can’t even see the dawn.” Some
Navajos, said Felicity Barringer in “The Energy Challenge,” New
York Times, view the plant as an “energy monster” that will desecrate “Father
Sky and Mother Earth.”
Their concerns
seem well founded. Some 15 percent of the population in the region already
suffers from lung diseases, most likely from emissions from the current two plants,
according to American Lung Association figures quoted by Conant. Their
soils and ground waters have been contaminated by toxic wastes from plant and
mining operations.
Navajos opposed
to the Desert Rock power plant have found support from various environmental
interests.
For instance, the Sierra Club’s Rio Grande Chapter, opposing the plant,
said in a recent news release in its Internet site, that carbon dioxide “emission
will end up in our air: 10 million metric tons [more than 11 million U. S. tons]
per year. Mercury emissions will end up in our water: 114 lbs per year.”
The
San Juan Citizens Alliance says, in its Internet site, that “The
proposed siting of the Desert Rock facility, as currently designed, would be
detrimental to citizens of the Four Corners region through increased emissions
levels of [carbon dioxide], mercury and pollutant contributions that result in
the formation of ozone.”
Governor of New Mexico and candidate for President
Bill Richardson opposes the Desert Rock power plant because its carbon dioxide
emissions would essentially offset his initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
[which contribute to global warming] in his state by 2012. “I am
gravely concerned about the potential environmental impacts of the proposed Desert
Rock Energy Facility,” he
said in a July 27, 2007, state news release. “I firmly believe, as
currently proposed, the Desert Rock Energy Facility would be a step in the wrong
direction.
“As planned, this new facility will adversely impact air quality,
exacerbate existing environment problems, and negatively impact scarce surface
and ground water resources.
“I believe we need to be moving forward, toward
new carbon capture ready technologies for power generation, not back to the old
dirty coal plants of the past.”
A Microcosm for the Broader Struggle
The
Navajos’ struggle to choose between relieving poverty on their reservation
and putting Dinétah at risk serves as a microcosm for the global tug of
war between new energy enthusiasts and environmentalists. Hopefully, scientists
and engineers can produce technology that can yield the energy necessary to lift
up impoverished peoples without destroying our environment. Hopefully,
too, the Navajos’ traditional medicine men will contribute to the effort. I
think that we’re going to need all the help we can get.
