“This is pretty black and white. There are going to be layoffs,” Supervisor Percy Deal told the Navajo County Board of Supervisors Monday regarding a letter he received from Peabody Western Coal Company.

According to the letter, all employees of the Black Mesa Mine, both union and non-union, will be laid off on Dec. 16. The letter identifies 127 employees Peabody anticipates will be included in the layoffs.

The letter states, “As you are aware, the operations of Peabody Western Coal Company’s Black Mesa Mine are significantly impacted by the anticipated suspension of the Mojave Generating Station as of Dec. 31.

“The owners of the Mojave Generating Station are in ongoing discussions to reopen the Mojave Generating Station as early as Jan. 1, 2010, which we expect would trigger restarting the Black Mesa Mine on or before that date.

“This letter hereby serves as notice that Peabody Western Coal Company anticipates commencing the temporary suspension of the Black Mesa Mine and certain operations that support the Black Mesa Mine, located at Navajo Route 41, as of Dec. 16, 2005. Peabody Western Coal Company hereby notifies you that the suspension will result in job losses for employees.”

Deal noted that the loss of 127 jobs is a major blow to the area, and will also have an impact on surrounding areas and businesses. He asked Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Director Gail Sadler whether the county will be providing any assistance services to the displaced workers.

Sadler explained that the Navajo Nation has a WIA program for workers who live on the reservation, and Navajo County WIA will be assisting workers who live off of the reservation. She noted that she recently attended a rapid response meeting with Navajo Nation WIA regarding the anticipated layoffs. Sadler learned that all of the workers at the mine live on the reservation and will be served by Navajo Nation WIA. However, workers in positions that support the mining operation are also likely to become unemployed following the layoffs, and approximately 15 percent of those workers do not live on the reservation.

According to Sadler, a statewide response is already being organized to address the situation, and she is prepared to begin providing services to displaced workers immediately.

“We will all be working closely with Peabody,” she said. “There will be no intervention, there will be layoffs. Those workers will be eligible for dislocated worker services.”

Deal noted that Peabody has been seeking new customers for coal from the Black Mesa Mine, but has not yet been successful. He also noted that Peabody’s other mine on the Navajo Nation, the Kayenta mine, will continue to operate.

A town hall meeting is scheduled at 3 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 24, in Kayenta to provide an update on the layoff and mining situation. A tour of Peabody’s mining facilities will also be included. Deal encouraged all members of the board to attend the meeting.

orignally posted at the Arizona Journal

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"Hopis optimistic over plant staying open
Cost, demand may be the key

Native American Times and Associated Press 10/25/2005

Soaring natural gas prices and energy demands are pressuring Southern California Edison to keep the Mohave Generating Station operating, the Hopi Tribe is reporting.

The plant was built in the early 70’s to generate revenue for the Hopi and Navajo and today both tribes feel that closing the operation will be extremely damaging. Energy for the plant comes from the Black Mesa Mine, which is located on land jointly owned by the tribes. The Hopis, for example, estimate they would lose $6.5 million per year in royalty payments- a major blow to a community with a high rate of unemployment.

“The recent sharp run-up in natural gas prices … underscored the high importance and value of Mohave to fuel diversity,” SCE, majority owner of the power plant, said in a recent filing with the California Public Utilities Commission. “SCE believes it is important that it have maximum flexibility to explore, and not be foreclosed now from pursuing, continued Mohave operations.”

SCE said California state officials were concerned about the effect of shutting down a reliable supply of power, and cited "improved prospects" for an agreement allowing the station to remain open while required pollution controls are installed. Company officials have estimated the cost of upgrades at $1.1 billion.

The fate of the operation is in danger because of environmental violations. Plant operators were accused in a lawsuit of contributing to the majority of haze that hovers over the Grand Canyon. Plant officials agreed to $400 million worth of repairs by a deadline of 2006. That deadline is now considered impossible to achieve, and led to fears that the station would be shut down. Work on the upgrades has not even started yet, and SCE said it would need a “modification” of the ordered improvements to enable the plant to keep operating uninterrupted.

Those charging plant owners with violations - the Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust and National Parks Conservation Association - have said they won't agree to a deadline extension.

They say the plant, which is about 100 miles south of Las Vegas, emits high amounts of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and mercury, and say it contributes to haze in the Grand Canyon, about 75 miles to the northeast.

Las Vegas-based Nevada Power Co. is a 14 percent owner of the Mohave plant, which burns relatively inexpensive coal and has a 1,580 megawatt generating capacity. One megawatt is enough to serve 700 homes a year, a Nevada Power spokeswoman said.

It cost about 1.5 cents to generate a kilowatt hour of electricity at Mohave in August, compared with 8 cents for a kilowatt hour from an efficient gas-fired power plant, documents filed with federal regulators show.

Edison owns 56 percent of the Mohave plant. Other partial owners include the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Salt River Project, a municipal power agency serving the Phoenix area.

Coal purchased from the Black Mesa Mine is mixed with water and transported to the plant in a 273-mile slurry pipeline.

Southern California Edison has said it wanted a binding agreement for a continued supply of water and coal before agreeing to the expensive upgrades.

“It appears Edison's filing with the [public utilities commission] is intended to give Edison the maximum amount of flexibility to preserve Mohave,” said Hopi attorney James Ham, an associate with Arnold Porter of Los Angeles. “What Edison has advised the PUC is that planning on the assumption that Mohave will continue to operate, perhaps with only a very short shutdown period, is the best way to ensure that, if an agreement in satisfactory form is reached in the near future, the substantial fuel diversity and power generation benefits of Mohave to California ratepayers can be protected.

“Edison clearly states that any of the three outcomes is still possible: permanent shutdown, temporary closure or continued operation. But Edison recognizes, as do most policymakers in California, that Mohave is an extremely valuable asset and that all reasonable efforts should be undertaken to install state-of-the art pollution controls and maintain the plant in operation.”

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Power plant shutdown bringing gloom to N. Arizona

Mark Shaffer
Republic Flagstaff Bureau
Oct. 30, 2005 12:00 AM

As Black Mesa Mine sends layoff notices, and the Mohave Generating Station seeks workers to do mothball work, the stark reality is setting in throughout the Hopi and Navajo reservations and the Bullhead City area.

The region, representing a good chunk of northern Arizona, is on the verge of a major economic hit beginning Dec. 31, with what is expected to be at least the temporary closing of the huge power plant in Laughlin, Nev.

That will mean the loss of nearly a third of the Hopi's $21.5 million operating budget and huge slashes in programs affecting the elderly and young. It will mean the loss of more than 600 jobs - some directly tied to the plant, some not - in the Bullhead City area and the loss of about 500 jobs in the north-central Navajo region.

The Mohave Generating Station provides nearly 20 percent of the electricity that Southern California Edison delivers to its customers, said Gloria Quinn, an Edison spokeswoman.

The economic storm has been brewing for six years, since Southern California Edison agreed to install more than $1 billion of equipment to clean up emissions at its Mohave Generating Station by the end of this year. It was the culmination of a lawsuit that claimed the plant, which often blankets Bullhead City in soot, violated the Clean Air Act.

The anti-pollution devices the company agreed to put in take at least 1 1/2 years to install. Southern California Edison has done no work on them.

Unless the company violates the consent decree, wins an extension or works out a compromise, Mohave will close as the rest of the world rings in the new year. The ripple effect will be huge.

Black Mesa Mine, which supplies the coal the generating station uses to make electricity, will have no reason to operate. Peabody Energy Co., which excavates and pulverizes Black Mesa Mine's coal, mixes it with water and slurries it 273 miles to Laughlin, also will shut down. Both have exclusive contracts with Mohave.

Hopi's limited options

The effects of a shutdown would be most profound among the Hopi.

The northern Arizona tribe of about 10,000 - many living in high-desert, mesa-top villages, where they conduct ancient religious ceremonies - has limited economic options since tribal members twice rejected proposals to build casinos.

The reservation is located far from major transportation corridors and has only a limited tourist industry centered around its finely carved kachina dolls. It also owns a few businesses in Flagstaff and Sedona and ranch land in the Winslow area.

Much of the mine tax money has been funneled into the tribe's 12 villages to propagate the traditional customs and combat the rapid loss of the Hopi language among young people.

But 18 percent across-the-board cutbacks of what Hopi tribal officials said are all programs go into effect Jan. 1 to help deal with the revenue shortfall.

It's almost too much to bear for residents of Shungopavi village, where adobe homes cling to the side of a mesa top 500 feet above the desert floor.

When Delores Komaquaptewa, 77, shuffled into the community center for the monthly meeting for the village on Second Mesa, her handmade shawl was pulled tightly around her stooped shoulders and her ire was up. She slumped into her seat as she listened to the big item on the agenda: why the budget was cut from $30,000 last year to $20,000 this year to $6,000 next year for the Shungopavi elderly center.

"We'll be lucky if that even pays for the lunches next year and forget about socializing with other towns," Komaquaptewa said.

Carrie Watahomigie, a Hopi tribal member, said that each village should be asking for "18 percent more" from the tribal government rather than accepting the cutbacks for next year.

"We are just now getting our youth and elderly programs going across the reservation, and this is the first thing the tribal leaders have decided to cut out of the budget," she said. "This is creating unbelievable stress on families."

But Perry Honani, leader of Sipaulovi village on First Mesa, said he would just as soon see the coal money go away and Hopi society revert to its foundations before World War II.

"We were self-supporting then, and today all you hear is bickering over this coal money," Honani said. "The problem is that coal money should come to the villages and not the tribal council because it just adds to all the controversies. We need peace for our religious ceremonies."

Meanwhile, the Hopi Reservation is full of second-guessers about why the tribe is so vulnerable to the outside economic forces.

"This should have been dealt with eight years ago and bold decisions made," said former Hopi Chairman Ivan Sidney, administrator for Sichomovi village. He is running against Hopi Chairman Wayne Taylor Jr. in Tuesday's tribal primary.

Sidney said the tribe should have taken a "good-faith effort" from a Japanese corporation in the early 1990s to build a railroad line from the mine to link into the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad track east of Flagstaff and wean the coal from water transportation.

"Then, four years ago, there was a proposal to build an electric generation plant on site, which also died on the vine," Sidney said. "Now, here we are in the 11th hour, with potentially devastating effects to our culture. This certainly didn't have to happen the way that it did."

Taylor, however, said all the current problems could be resolved quickly and that Hopi, Navajo, Peabody Energy and Southern California Edison could reach an accord by mid-November.

"If we can reach that milestone, Edison would then be amenable to go to the state of Nevada and the environmental groups and ask for an extension, and it would give them the ability to move forward to get the money for the smokestack scrubbers," Taylor said.

Keeping hope alive

After years of sending mixed messages about the future of the power plant, including filing a request with the California Public Utilities Commission last year to begin the process of shutting down Mohave, Edison now wants to keep the plant open.

"The most appropriate Mohave scenario is the continued operations scenario," wrote Russell G. Wordan, Edison's manager for regulatory policy and affairs, in a filing with the commission last month.

Worden wrote that sharp price increases in natural gas and the lack of reliability in other electricity producers in Southern California "has underscored the high importance and value of Mohave to fuel diversity."

In testimony this month before the commission, however, Edison official Harold Ray said that there are no plans to keep the plant open in violation of the consent decree. Miners at Black Mesa also have begun receiving layoff notices effective Dec. 15.

Beth Sutton, a spokeswoman for Peabody Energy, said all of the company's employees had received the notices, along with tribal leaders, and "we are transitioning into at least a temporary closure of the mine at the end of December."

Even if Southern California Edison pushes to keep the plant open or to reopen after a temporary closure another problem could force Mohave out of business.

For years, water has been pumped from the "N" aquifer, beneath the Hopi and Navajo reservations, to move coal to Mohave. But that has been criticized as causing the drying up of Hopi springs. It will cease by the end of the year, along with the lease for the Black Mesa mine.

A proposal is being examined to build a water pipeline 120 miles across the Navajo and Hopi reservations from pumps between Flagstaff and Winslow in the Coconino aquifer to the coal slurry preparation plant at Black Mesa.

But Navajo and Hopi officials have had snags in negotiations during the last month on the route of the pipeline, and intense negotiations continue concerning the price paid for the coal. They already have resolved lingering issues over the quality and quantity of coal.

Ultimately, environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Grand Canyon Trust hold the future of the plant in their hands. They say that unless there is an ironclad agreement to install the anti-pollution equipment, there will be no deal.

"The only thing satisfactory is for them to install the scrubbers. That has to be a concrete proposal," said Richard Mayol, a spokesman for Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff.

Rob Smith, a representative of the Sierra Club in Phoenix, said he would be "skeptical" if Edison would honor any more agreements to install the anti-pollution equipment.

"They've got tens of millions of dollars of sulphur dioxide credits and can make money running that plant or doing nothing," Smith said. "Plus moving the coal that way has always been a Rube Goldberg kind of scheme, which no one else has done, for good reason."

Smith also speculated in a memo to Sierra Club members that Edison would offer "some environmental goodie" in an attempt to extend the deadline of the consent decree.

"I don't know if they'll have a done deal to present or simply be seeking to buy more time while they haggle out the rest of the details with Peabody and the tribes," Smith wrote.

Originally found in the Arizona Republic

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Closing power plant is first step in new era of energy

Vernon Masayesva
Nov. 3, 2005 12:00 AM

Contrary to the gloomy news article Sunday regarding the adverse economic impacts of Mohave Generating Station's imminent closure, many Hopis see it as an unprecedented opportunity to cut our umbilical cord to Peabody Energy and take control of our resources ("Shutdown of power plant bringing gloom to N. Arizona," Republic, Sunday).

Since its creation in 1998, Black Mesa Trust has conducted an aggressive, ongoing campaign to protect the Navajo Aquifer - the wellspring of life and heart blood of culture for the Hopi and Diné (Navajo) peoples.

We demanded an end to 40 years of ecological damage and spiritual disrespect. We demanded that Peabody Energy end its devastating drawdown of our waters and the transportation of that water from Arizona to Nevada to slurry coal. (The company draws down 1.2 billion gallons annually. Compare this to Rio Salado Lake in Tempe, which contains 900 million gallons of renewable water.)

Miraculously, we are close to winning.

On Dec. 31, our small Hopi grass-roots organization will have accomplished something quite extraordinary: We will have forced the world's largest coal company to end its plundering of our waters. When the pumps stop, a beautiful silence will descend upon our sacred land, and we will rejoice.

In our small way, we changed history. Those who have and would continue to turn our ancestral homes into lands of national sacrifice were brought to a halt.

Our voices were heard and, against all odds, the power of our teachings and our faith in our religion and science prevailed.

We will win - and, as with all victories, there is a price. We cannot again shrink from our responsibilities; we cannot simply return to business as usual.

We cannot again fall asleep. We must continue to speak out for balance and sustainability, for the well-being of a living and sacred Earth. We fully realize the closures of Mohave and the Peabody coal mine will cause severe economic consequences for our people.

In anticipation of this, Black Mesa Trust has proposed several economic alternatives that will make it unnecessary to lay off any Hopi employees and at the same time increase revenues for village governmental services.

One ambitious alternative is the Colorado Plateau Clean Energy Initiative, a proposed consortium of various organizations dedicated to bringing clean, renewable energy to Northern Arizona, and the development of regional global-warming reduction plans.

New opportunities include:

• The development and construction of a 1,000-megawatt solar power plant on Hopi and Navajo land. The construction and operation of the plant will employ more than 1,000 workers and could generate annual revenues of more than $10 million. The solar plant will provide much-needed "peaking power" to Phoenix, Los Angeles and other metropolitan areas in the Southwest.
  
• The production of high-value-added biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.
  
• The gasification of coal to produce syngas that can be methanated into a natural-gas substitute for coal combustion, using only a fraction of the water needed to operate coal-fired plants.
  
• A significant increase in tribal education, training employment and revenues.
  
• The establishment of an international clean-energy showcase that honors the stewardship responsibilities of indigenous peoples.
  

In March 2006, 15 Hopi runners will help celebrate our victory by bringing a gourd of water gathered from our sacred springs to the Fourth World Forum on Water in Mexico City. We will tell the world government ministers that all waters are one, a singular life-sustaining living organism, the source of life for a living earth.

Along the way we will meet with tribal groups and elders who will add their spirit and blessing, their energy and hope, to our Run of Respect for Water and All Life.

They will add words to the messages and prayers, and we will invite them to run with us.

The writer, a former chairman of the Hopi Tribe, is founder and executive director of Black Mesa Trust. Further information on the mission of Black Mesa Trust and the Hopi Run is available at www.h2opirun.org and www.blackmesatrust.org.

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Originally appeared in the Arizona Republic.

Deal May Be Near on Power Plant

• Edison is negotiating for a continued supply of coal from a mine on Indian land.

November 8, 2005

Southern California Edison Co. is close to reaching a deal with two Indian tribes and the world's largest coal company that would bolster the utility's effort to keep open a Nevada power plant that provides cheap electricity to Southern California ? but is a major source of air pollution.

Closed-door talks among Edison, the Hopi and Navajo tribes of northern Arizona and mining giant Peabody Energy Corp. are aimed at resolving water-use issues that threaten the future of Peabody's coal-mining operations on Indian land, tribal leaders said. The Black Mesa mine is the only source of coal for the giant Mohave power plant near Laughlin, Nev., and is a vital pillar of the Hopi economy.

"Essentially, the parties are very near to some agreements" on how best to share the region's scarce water supply and other issues related to the mine, Hopi Chairman Wayne Taylor said.

Ensuring a steady supply of coal and water is crucial to Edison's attempt to keep the 1,580-megawatt plant open despite a court-ordered Jan. 1 deadline requiring the utility to either install costly pollution-control equipment or shutter the 34-year-old generating facility.

Edison declined to discuss details of the negotiations. "We are working hard on all reasonable options that could make possible the continued operation of the plant," the company said in a statement.

Environmentalists, who can veto any deal to keep the plant open, were noncommittal Monday about Edison's efforts. They said the utility must fulfill its obligations to cut pollution but said they were "open to a viable proposal" that both cleans the air and boosts tribal economies.

To date, Edison has done little to significantly reduce emissions from the plant since settling a lawsuit brought by environmental groups under the U.S. Clean Air Act in 1999.

Until recently, Edison had told the California Public Utilities Commission that it expected to close the Mohave plant at the end of 2005. That also signaled the end of the Black Mesa mine because its only customer is the generating facility.

But on Sept. 26, Edison, a unit of Rosemead-based Edison International, reversed itself, telling the commission that it wanted to keep the plant open or shut it only temporarily.

One reason cited by the utility: Skyrocketing natural gas prices have sharply increased the cost of operating more modern, gas-fired power plants, making power produced by Mohave's coal-burning generators cheaper by comparison.

Edison, which owns 56% of the plant, also noted that regulators were concerned about the reliability of Southern California's supply of electricity. The Mohave plant provides about 7% of the electricity used by the utility's 13 million customers, many of them in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

The remaining plant ownership is split among several utilities, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Edison has repeatedly told California regulators that it wouldn't spend the $1 billion needed for pollution controls and other equipment at the plant until it secured agreements from the Hopis, Navajos and Peabody that would guarantee a long-term supply of coal and water that is required.

Those commitments could be close at hand, Hopi leaders said. They are backing a proposal that would allow Peabody to continue mining at Black Mesa and would ensure a new source of water to carry the coal to the power plant via a 270-mile slurry pipeline.

Edison and the tribal leaders then hope to persuade the environmental groups to give them a waiver to operate the plant for at least three years until the pollution equipment and pipeline improvements can be completed, Hopi leaders said.

According to data gathered in 2002 and 2003 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Mohave plant spewed an average of 19,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, 40,000 tons of sulfur dioxides and 2,000 tons of fine soot a year into the air above Laughlin, a Colorado River resort and gambling town. Emissions from the plant also have contributed to reduced visibility around the Grand Canyon to the east of the plant, environmentalists said.

Environmentalists accuse Edison of sending mixed signals to the Indians, California regulators and the plaintiffs who won the consent decree. "They're playing a game of chicken up to the end of this pending deadline," said Rob Smith of the Sierra Club in Phoenix.

Environmentalists remain frustrated at what they describe as Edison's six years of foot-dragging, said Roger Clark of the Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff, Ariz. Nevertheless, he said his group would be "happy to
listen" to any proposal from the utility.

"Our hope is that we can find a solution that not only cleans up the pollution but also leaves the tribes in a much stronger economic position in the future," he said.

Rob Hammond, Peabody's Southwest group executive, declined to comment on the talks. Navajo leaders didn't return calls seeking comment.

Hopi leaders said they wanted to protect the environment but needed an extension of the pollution-control deadline to make sure that tribal economies weren't harmed by even the temporary loss of coal royalties and, in the Navajo's case, hundreds of high-paying jobs at the Peabody mine.

What's more, the development of a new source of water for the mine from an underground aquifer about 100 miles south of the Peabody open pit could be crucial to economic development of the 7,000-member Hopi tribe and the 250,000-member Navajo Nation.

The Hopi, a tribe of farmers and artisans that has lived on the same desert mesas for the last 1,000 years, has a 50% unemployment rate. A shutdown at the mine would suck as much as 40% out of the $20-million Hopi operating budget for 2006.

"This could be disastrous for the tribe," said Taylor, the chairman. "We can be considered today as an endangered species."

The environmentalists are sympathetic but remain distrustful of Edison.

"We are unwilling to excuse further violations of the law," they told the tribes in a May 25 letter signed by representatives of the Grand Canyon Trust, the Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Assn.

Consumer advocates said that closing down the Mohave plant shouldn't leave Edison short of power because the utility would open its new gas-fired, 1,054-megawatt Mountainview power plant in Redlands early next year.

And even if it's retrofitted, the plant at most can operate only 20 more years, said Bill Marcus, a consultant for the Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco-based ratepayers' advocate. Edison's permit to take water from the Colorado River to operate the generators expires in 2026, he said.

The best scenario would be for Edison to give up trying to keep Mohave open and, instead, invest in alternative energy projects and transmission lines that would help the Hopi and Navajo exploit their potentially abundant wind and solar power resources, said Clark of the Grand Canyon Trust.

"With California wanting to invest in cleaner forms of energy," he said, "why buy another 20 years of inefficient, old coal-fired generation?"

originally posted in the Los Angeles Times

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Mohave plant deal may be coming

Coal company, tribes, utility in talks to keep power station open

Nov. 09, 2005

By JOHN G. EDWARDS
REVIEW-JOURNAL

The Mohave Generating Station, a coal-fired plant at Laughlin that provides Southern Nevada with low-cost power but is a major source of air pollution, may get a new lease on life.

The Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Southern California Edison and a coal company are near an agreement that could keep the plant open -- if three environmental groups back off a Dec. 31 deadline requiring the installation of pollution-reduction equipment, Hopi Chairman Wayne Taylor said Tuesday.

The agreement between the power plant owners and the tribes is "going to be really soon," Taylor said.

"We hope to conclude the negotiations by the end of the year," Taylor said.

Then, the parties hope to persuade the Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust and National Parks Conservation Association to permit the Mohave power plant to keep operating while plant owners install pollution-control equipment.

The environmental groups otherwise support a 1999 court order that will require the plant to close at least temporarily on Dec. 31 if pollution reduction equipment has not been installed by then.

However, Taylor said the plant will need to be shut down for four years if the environmental groups don't agree to extend the deadline and insist on having pollution controls in place before operations resume.

"We're still obviously very hopeful (the environmental groups) will be able to work with us so that we don't see an economic disaster occur," he said.

If the plant and the Peabody Energy Corp. coal mine that supplies the plant are shut down, the tribes will lose millions of dollars in royalties from Peabody and coal mining jobs for tribe members.

In a May letter to the tribes, the environmental groups refused to extend the deadline, but the groups seem to have softened their position with comments Tuesday.

"We're always open to proposals. We don't want to be unreasonable," said Roger Clark, a spokesman for the Grand Canyon Trust. "To date, we have not seen any such proposal. So we have no further comment."Edison issued a statement Monday saying it continues to negotiate privately with the tribes and Peabody.

"At this time, it appears likely the plant will shut down for some period on Dec. 31, 2005, but we hope to minimize any such shutdown," Edison said.

California officials are concerned about having adequate amounts of power "in coming years, making Mohave's 1,580 megawatts more important to our customers than ever," Edison explained. "And the skyrocketing cost of natural gas, the fuel used to generate approximately half of California's power, make fuel diversity a valuable electricity price stabilizer."

Nevada Power Co. executives and state regulators also worry about relying only on natural gas for electricity generation.

Nevada Power spokeswoman Sonya Headen said the utility gets about 3.4 percent of its peak demand powerfrom the Mohave plant. Southern Nevada also benefits from the 340 jobs at the Mohave plant.

The key sticking points to an agreement with the tribes have been finding a new water source and setting a price for coal from a mine on Hopi and Navajo land. Taylor said water could come from the Coconino aquifer near Winslow, Ariz.

The Hopi hope to develop new economic engines, such as "clean-coal" technologies, but those changes will take eight to 10 years to execute. In the meantime, though, the tribes want to rely on revenue from royalties on coal burned at the Mohave plant, Taylor said.

Originally found in the Las Vegas Review-Journal

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Mohave Power Plant Operation Future in Dark

USA: November 10, 2005

LOS ANGELES - An agreement could be near on coal and water supplies needed to keep the 1,580-megawatt Mohave power plant in Nevada open
past Dec. 31, but even if such accords are reached, the outlook for uninterrupted operation of the plant is murky, several parties involved said.

Southern California Edison, the operator and majority owner of the coal-fired plant near the intersection of Nevada, California and Arizona, is close to agreement with two Native American tribes and the world's largest private-sector coal company regarding coal and water supplies, said Wayne Taylor, chairman of the Hopi Tribal Council.

"We are very close to a settlement," Taylor said. "In fact, we hope to have this settlement in hand by the end of the year."

But even if the parties can agree, the plant will shut at least temporarily at year's end unless three environmental organizations can
be convinced to push back a deadline for So Cal Ed to install about $1 billion of upgrades to Mohave's pollution control system.

Involved in coal and water talks are representatives for So Cal Ed, a subsidiary of Edison International, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribal Council, Peabody Energy Corp. and the Salt River Project, an Arizona public utility and behind So Cal Ed, the second-largest owner of the Mohave power station.

The three environmental groups -- Grand Canyon Trust, Sierra Club, and National Parks Conservation Alliance -- have a court-sanctioned consent decree in hand that was reached in 1999 ordering the plant to shut unless the pollution upgrades were in place by Jan. 1, 2006.

With less than two months until the plant's possible shutdown, So Cal Ed is likely going to seek an extension to the deadline from the environmental groups, Taylor said.

So Cal Ed officials would not comment whether it would try to change the deadline.

"Any request to extend the deadline is a nonstarter," said Roger Clark, air and energy director for the Grand Canyon Trust, based in Flagstaff, Arizona. "We've allowed them to violate the law for some time now. (Any request) would have to be quite compelling."

A So Cal Ed spokesman said that the company did not wish to pursue the upgrades while the coal and water issues were not solved.

"SCE is working hard on all reasonable options that could make possible the continue operation of the plant," said Southern California Edison in a statement. "At this time, it appears likely the plant will shut down for some period on Dec. 31, 2005, but we hope to minimize any such shutdown."

But Clark of the Grand Canyon Trust said the company has had years to fix the water and coal supply issues. He pointed out that So Cal Ed wanted to sell the plant and when it entered the consent decree did not think it would still have to deal with Mohave by 2005.

In a unique situation, Mohave runs on coal that is shipped by pipeline 273 miles from the Black Mesa mine owned by Peabody and on land owned by the Navajo and Hopi. The coal is shipped by crushing it and then mixing it with water to create a slurry that is then shipped via the pipe to the power plant near Laughlin, Nevada.

The two tribes say the underground aquifer source of the water Peabody is now using needs to be preserved for their drinking supply. An alternate aquifer -- also under land owned by the tribes -- can be used, but a 100-mile pipeline will have to be constructed.

Taylor of the Hopi tribe said So Cal Ed has agreed to pay $200 million to build the new pipeline, but company officials declined to confirm that.

Taylor said the Hopi can agree to allow Peabody to use the current water source until the new pipeline is built.

Clark said the owners of Mohave "have had six years" to renegotiate water and coal rights with the Navajo and the Hopi and with Peabody. The coal and water rights agreements were set to expire at the end of 2005 long before the environmental groups filed suit against Mohave's owners in 1997, Clark said.

Peabody, the biggest nongovernmental coal company in the world, is a major employer of both tribes, which have unemployment rates of 50 percent or more.

In addition to So Cal Ed's 56-percent ownership of the Mohave station, owners are the Salt River Project (20 percent), Las Vegas-based Sierra Pacific Resources Corp.'s Nevada Power Co. (14 percent) and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (10 percent).

Story by Bernie Woodall

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

originally posted at Planet Ark

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Northern Arizona power plant closure has impacts on Indian reservations

By The Associated Press
Sunday, November 13, 2005 12:17 AM PST

PHOENIX -- As Black Mesa Mine sends layoff notices and the Mohave Generating Station seeks workers to do mothball work, the stark reality is setting in throughout the Hopi and Navajo reservations and the Bullhead City area.

The region, representing a good chunk of northern Arizona, is on the verge of a major economic hit beginning Dec. 31, with what is expected to be at least the temporary closing of the huge power plant in Laughlin, Nev.

It will mean the loss of nearly a third of the Hopi's $21.5 million operating budget and huge slashes in programs affecting the elderly and young. It will mean the loss of more than 600 jobs -- some directly tied to the plant, some not -- in the Bullhead City area, and the loss of about 500 jobs in the north-central Navajo region.

The Mohave Generating Station provides nearly 20 percent of the electricity that Southern California Edison delivers to its customers, said Gloria Quinn, an Edison spokeswoman.

The economic storm has been brewing for six years, since Southern California Edison agreed to install more than $1 billion of equipment to clean up emissions at its Mohave Generating Station by the end of this year. It was the culmination of a lawsuit that claimed the plant, which often blankets Bullhead City in soot, violated the Clean Air Act.

The anti-pollution devices the company agreed to put in take at least 1 1/2 years to install. Southern California Edison has done no work on them.

Unless the company violates the consent decree, wins an extension or works out a compromise, Mohave will close as the rest of the world rings in the New Year. The ripple effect will be huge.

Black Mesa Mine, which supplies the coal the generating station uses to make electricity, will have no reason to operate. Peabody Energy Co., which excavates and pulverizes Black Mesa Mine's coal, mixes it with water and slurries it 273 miles to Laughlin, also will shut down. Both have exclusive contracts with Mohave.

The effects of a shutdown would be most profound among the Hopi.

The northern Arizona tribe of about 10,000 -- many living in high-desert, mesa-top villages, where they conduct ancient religious ceremonies -- has limited economic options since tribal members twice rejected proposals to build casinos.

The reservation is located far from major transportation corridors and has only a limited tourist industry centered around its finely carved kachina dolls. It also owns a few businesses in Flagstaff and Sedona and ranch land in the Winslow area.

Much of the mine tax money has been funneled into the tribe's 12 villages to propagate the traditional customs and combat the rapid loss of the Hopi language among young people. But 18 percent across-the-board cutbacks go into effect Jan. 1 to help deal with the revenue shortfall.

It's almost too much to bear for residents of Shungopavi village, where adobe homes cling to the side of a mesa top 500 feet above the desert floor.

When Delores Komaquaptewa, 77, shuffled into the community center for the monthly meeting for the village on Second Mesa, her handmade shawl was pulled tightly around her stooped shoulders and her ire was up. She slumped into her seat as she listened to the big item on the agenda: why the budget was cut from $30,000 last year to $20,000 this year to $6,000 next year for the Shungopavi elderly center.

"We'll be lucky if that even pays for the lunches next year and forget about socializing with other towns," Komaquaptewa said.

Carrie Watahomigie, a Hopi tribal member, said that each village should be asking for "18 percent more" from the tribal government rather than accepting the cutbacks for next year.

"We are just now getting our youth and elderly programs going across the reservation, and this is the first thing the tribal leaders have decided to cut out of the budget," she said. "This is creating unbelievable stress on families."

But Perry Honani, leader of Sipaulovi village on First Mesa, said he would just as soon see the coal money go away and Hopi society revert to its foundations before World War II.

"We were self-supporting then, and today all you hear is bickering over this coal money," Honani said. "The problem is that coal money should come to the villages and not the tribal council because it just adds to all the controversies. We need peace for our religious ceremonies."

After years of sending mixed messages about the future of the power plant, including filing a request with the California Public Utilities Commission last year to begin the process of shutting down Mohave, Edison now wants to keep the plant open.

"The most appropriate Mohave scenario is the continued operations scenario," wrote Russell G. Wordan, Edison's manager for regulatory policy and affairs, in a filing with the commission last month.

Worden wrote that sharp price increases in natural gas and the lack of reliability in other electricity producers in Southern California "has underscored the high importance and value of Mohave to fuel diversity."

In recent testimony before the commission, however, Edison official Harold Ray said that there are no plans to keep the plant open in violation of the consent decree. Miners at Black Mesa also have begun receiving layoff notices effective Dec. 15.

Beth Sutton, a spokeswoman for Peabody Energy, said all the company's employees received the notices, along with tribal leaders, and "we are transitioning into at least a temporary closure of the mine at the end of December."

Even if Southern California Edison pushes to keep the plant open or to reopen after a temporary closure, another problem could force Mohave out of business.

For years, water has been pumped from an aquifer beneath the Hopi and Navajo reservations to move coal to Mohave. But that has been criticized as causing the drying up of Hopi springs. It will cease by the end of the year, along with the lease for the Black Mesa mine.

A proposal is being examined to build a water pipeline 120 miles across the Navajo and Hopi reservations from pumps between Flagstaff and Winslow. But Navajo and Hopi officials have had snags in negotiations during the last month on the route of the pipeline, and intense negotiations continue concerning the price paid for the coal.

Ultimately, environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Grand Canyon Trust hold the future of the plant in their hands. They say that unless there is an ironclad agreement to install the anti-pollution equipment, there will be no deal.

"The only thing satisfactory is for them to install the scrubbers. That has to be a concrete proposal," said Richard Mayol, a spokesman for Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff.

originally posted at Napa Valley Register Online

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Race for Hopi chairman turns on coal and water

originally posted at Arizona Daily Sun

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Wisdom of the Ancestors
A Hopi leader fought a lonely battle to stop a mining company from stealing water that helped build Phoenix. He succeeded. Finally
By John Dougherty

I first met former Hopi tribal chairman Vernon Masayesva in December 1992, when my then-wife and I were publishing a weekly newspaper in Flagstaff.

Masayesva called one afternoon and said he wanted to tell me a story of great importance to his tribe. A few days later, we met at a restaurant in old downtown Flagstaff.

Over the next few hours, Masayesva spun an amazing tale of the Hopis' battle with the world's largest coal mining company over the tribe's most important natural resource: water.

It's tempting to dismiss tales of corporate rape in Indian country as another sappy song pandering to our guilt over America's treatment of the Indian nations that once occupied this land. But Masayesva never played that card.

Instead, he dispassionately laid out the facts of his case while making it clear he was committed to protecting the oldest continuous culture in North America. Hopi fortunes have ebbed and flowed on the arid mesas northeast of Flagstaff for thousands of years.

The Hopi society, Masayesva said, is based on its intimate relationship with water. The tribe's songs, dances, art, secret ceremonies, language, economy and religion all revolve around water.

But in modern times, Masayesva explained at the restaurant, water on Hopi land was seriously threatened. And if the water that for ages has flowed from washes, springs and seeps (which nurtures corn, beans, squash and souls) disappears, so, too, would the Hopi.

It was that simple to him.

You may be thinking this is an old story, but it is far from it. It is an ongoing tale that affects Arizona and Phoenix, and there are striking new developments. But first a little history on the Hopi vs. Peabody Coal Company (now Peabody Energy):

The threat to Hopi water began when Peabody obtained leases to mine coal on Hopi and Navajo land in the 1960s, Masayesva said. There were 100 square miles of low-sulfur coal reserves on the reservations, perfect for fueling power plants needed to feed the growth frenzy and economic bonanza sweeping the Southwest.

Coal from Peabody's Black Mesa Mine was sold to the Mohave Generating Station operated by Southern California Edison near what was then the remote outpost of Laughlin, Nevada. Rather than trucking or shipping the coal by rail, Peabody decided to build the world's longest water-slurry pipeline to move five million tons a year of pulverized coal 273 miles from the Black Mesa Mine to the 1,580-megawatt power plant.

Peabody began pumping 4,000 acre-feet [an acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons] of pristine drinking water a year from beneath Black Mesa. The water was mixed with the crushed coal and injected into the slurry pipeline. The water taken from beneath Hopi land was initially sold to Peabody for the astonishingly low price of $1.67 per acre-foot.

Peabody essentially stole the Hopis' water. And the company did so with the approval of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. This theft of the tribe's water, Masayesva said, was just the beginning of a massive rip-off of the Hopis' natural resources.

The heist went unnoticed by the outside world. In fact, the coal and water spirited off the Hopi reservation over the next 40 years helped fuel the spectacular economic growth of Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

The wealth and riches of the cities came at a huge cost to the Hopi. Within two decades, Masayesva said, Hopi farmers and spiritual leaders noticed a precipitous decline in the amount of water flowing from Hopi springs, washes and seeps. Peabody denied that its groundwater pumping had any effect on the surface flow, claiming that it was taking water from the deep Navajo Aquifer that was not connected to the surface.

But Masayesva told me that he and other Hopi leaders were convinced there was a connection between groundwater pumping and reduced surface flows. Masayesva said the risk to Hopi culture was too great to ignore.

"I really want us to go back to honor, respect and trust [in] the ancient wisdom, go back to our relationship with water," Masayesva said. "Water is sacred."

Our dinner concluded and we went our separate ways. Masayesva's term as Hopi tribal chairman ended in 1994, but he continued his lonely fight to force Peabody to stop mining groundwater.

In early 1997, Masayesva called me again with startling information that had been recently discovered by a law professor researching the history of the Peabody coal mining operations on Hopi land. By this time I was working at New Times.

Professor Charles Wilkinson of the University of Colorado had discovered documents that revealed the Hopi were betrayed by the tribe's most trusted attorney who had negotiated the original Peabody coal and water contracts on the tribe's behalf.

"[John] Boyden violated his high duty to the Hopi by working concurrently for Peabody Coal during the decisive years of the mid-1960s," Wilkinson wrote in a lengthy paper published in the Brigham Young University Law Review in 1996.

Boyden was double-dealing. He was working for Peabody at the same time he was representing the Hopi in negotiations to sell coal and water to Peabody. The deal Boyden struck enriched Peabody while forcing the Hopi to be dependent on paltry coal royalties.

Even worse, Boyden's deal was threatening to destroy the Hopis' crucial link to surface water flows.

I soon found myself touring the Hopi mesas with Masayesva and meeting with Hopi spiritual leaders who shared their songs and insight about water.

Masayesva had scraped up funds to help finance independent hydrological research that was providing support to the Hopis' contention that the groundwater pumping was depleting Hopi surface water. The U.S. Geological Survey was also conducting independent studies supporting the Hopis' concerns about groundwater reduction.

I broke the story about Boyden's betrayal of the Hopi in New Times ("Dark Days on Black Mesa," April 24, 1997), and soon Peabody was on the defensive. Masayesva founded a nonprofit organization, Black Mesa Trust, and began gathering national and international recognition and financial support.

Meanwhile, a coalition of environmental groups -- including the Grand Canyon Trust, the Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association -- launched an attack on the recipient of Peabody's coal -- the Mohave Generating Station.

The environmental groups sued Mohave Generating Station's owners in 1998 alleging the power plant was in violation of clean-air standards. The power plant's owners were looking at the potential of billions of dollars in fines. (Southern California Edison owns 56 percent of the plant, followed by the Salt River Project, with 20 percent; Nevada Power Company, 14 percent; and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, 10 percent.)

Mohave's operators entered into a consent decree in 1999 with the environmental groups agreeing to either sharply reduce emissions at the power plant or shut it down by December 31, 2005. Mohave's owners, led by Southern California Edison, were then faced with a crucial decision:

Were they willing to invest $1 billion worth of improvements necessary to clean up the power plant's emissions while at the same time continuing to rely on Peabody's controversial coal slurry pipeline that appeared to be depleting springs on the Hopi reservation?

Masayesva saw an opportunity to bring tremendous pressure on the utilities, as well as on Peabody. He enlisted the help of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a powerful environmental group, as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Waterkeeper Alliance.

The pressure on Peabody to find another way to transport the coal to Mohave became so great that the company finally announced it would find another water source for the pipeline by the end of this year.

"Because of the international uproar over what they were doing, Peabody was losing a big public relations war," Masayesva told me the other day. "They agreed voluntarily that they would cease using the Navajo Aquifer."

So far, Peabody has been unable to find an alternative water source for its pipeline. But it increasingly appears that it doesn't matter because it is virtually certain that Mohave will shut down this December 31 rather than install anti-pollution controls.

The imminent closure of the power plant also means Peabody will close the Black Mesa Mine. Hundreds of jobs will be lost not only at the power plant but at the mine.

The Hopi Tribe is expected to lose about $7 million a year in royalties -- which accounts for about one-third of the tribe's annual operating budget. The news of the closure of the mine and power plant is being portrayed as a devastating financial blow to northern Arizona and, particularly, to the Hopi. The Arizona Republic ran an October 30 story with the ominous headline: "Power plant shutdown bringing gloom to N. Arizona."

Masayesva says there is no need for panic. Far from it.

"The Hopi Tribe has $100 million in liquid assets," he says.

The assets, Masayesva says, come from a land-dispute settlement the Hopi reached with the federal government in the mid-1990s that allows some Navajo to remain on Hopi land. The Hopi have invested the money in real estate and businesses.

"There is no need for the Hopi Tribe to be saying they are going to suffer grievously economically," Masayesva says.

The Hopi and Navajo also have an opportunity to obtain significant financial relief from Mohave's closure. Under complex air-pollution-control rules, Mohave's owners will reap a huge windfall after they close the plant through the annual sale of tens of millions of dollars' worth of sulfur-dioxide-emission credits.

Environmentalists want regulators to force the utilities to provide the money derived from the sale of pollution tax credits to the tribes and others who will need financial assistance.

"The owners [of Mohave] should provide economic transition funds to the tribes, and have the money to do so," the environmental groups said in a May 25 letter to the Hopi Tribe.

Masayesva argues that the federal and state governments should also contribute funds to the Hopi and Navajo tribes to soften the financial blow from the closure of the mine. Arizona, which has a huge budget surplus, has benefited immensely from the mine and power plant. The state has received more than $20 million a year in taxes generated by the mine, and the state's entire economy has benefited from low-cost power generated for decades at the Mohave Generating Station.

In addition, the federal government has a responsibility to compensate the Hopi for failing in its trust responsibility to protect the tribe's resources by approving the unfavorable water and coal contracts negotiated by Boyden.

Masayesva maintains that closing the power plant also opens the door to a tremendous opportunity for the Hopi to transform its reservation into an economic powerhouse based on renewable energy. He's already helped establish the Colorado Plateau Clean Energy Initiative that is seeking to develop clean energy sources, including wind farms, solar and coal gasification.

The Black Mesa Trust is working with Phoenix-based Stirling Energy Systems to design and build two 500-megawatt solar-electric-generating stations on the Hopi and Navajo reservations.

Earlier this year, Stirling signed contracts to build two separate solar-generating stations of similar size with Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Company. The Hopi/Navajo plants would cost about $1.6 billion, take two to four years to build and employ between 500 and 1,000 workers during construction.

While dark days still loom in the immediate future on Black Mesa with the imminent closure of the mine, it appears that the future for the Hopi is exceedingly bright, thanks to the vision of Vernon Masayesva.

"I have done my best," he told me. "I have accomplished what I set out to accomplish, which was to stop [groundwater] pumping."

In the early years of this epic struggle, Masayesva walked alone. One man versus the world's largest coal company. Now, miraculously, victory is at hand.

"There are lessons to be learned that I would like to share with the outside world," Masayesva said. "Never doubt the power and wisdom of our ancestors. That is how we made the difference with Peabody."

originally posted at Phoenix New Times

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An uncertain new year Black Mesa workers face layoffs, upheaval after decades of labor

By Marley Shebala
Navajo Times

BLACK MESA, Ariz. – New Year’s Eve will mark the end, not the beginning, of another year for the Black Mesa Mine and the slurry line that moves its coal to market.

Measured in jobs, the cost will be 150 mine positions and another 31 on the slurry line. In dollars, the loss will be $90 million a year including employee compensation and payments to the Navajo and Hopi tribes.

Peabody Western Coal Co. is the largest private-sector employer on Navajo land and its workers, 95 percent of whom are Native American, earn more than 10 times the average per capita income of either tribe.

Averages, however, do not capture the impact of job loss on individual workers and their families, and generalities are misleading.

According to Beth Sutton, spokesperson for Peabody, about 60 percent of the mine’s 240 employees face permanent job loss. Many older workers will retire, while some with seniority will be transferred to the company’s Kayenta Mine, she said.

A handful of people will continue working on mine suspension and reclamation activities, Sutton said.

While older workers may be able to coast into retirement, younger workers, particularly those with children still in school, may have to relocate if they are to find another job that pays $80,000-plus in wages and benefits.

Reactions are equally varied. Some, like local union leader Marie Justice, still rage at the circumstances – a lawsuit forcing the mine’s single customer to clean up or close down – that led to the Black Mesa closure.

Closure anticipated (sub)

Other workers say the customer, Mohave Generating Station in Nevada, long signaled its intention to close at the end of 2005.

They ask why neither the tribes nor Peabody acted to sever Black Mesa’s lethal attachment to the aging power plant, and find another customer for the coal.

Justice, who was among the first wave of 24 mineworkers to be laid off Dec. 1, declined to talk about how mineworkers would be affected by the mine closure.

“It’s nobody’s business what happens to us,” Justice said. “This has been before everyone for five or six years. It’s too late to talk now.”

According to a Sept. 23 letter from Peabody to the Arizona Department of Economic Security, the layoffs are being phased in, with another 127 mineworkers to lose their jobs tomorrow, Dec. 16.

At the Black Mesa Pipeline, 31 workers will lose their jobs on Dec. 31. Four welders have been told they will remain on the job for about six more months.

Everett Calnimptewa, slurry line supervisor, is among those leaving at month’s end.

For more than 29 years, he’s been making the 172-mile round trip from his Moencopi, Ariz., home to Black Mesa.

Calnimptewa, 53, laughs as he recalls how the commute “drove five cars into the ground.”

But it was worth it, he said, because he put two kids through college on money he earned on the pipeline.

“I’m really grateful for that. They deserved that,” Calnimptewa said, adding proudly that both hold professional jobs, one as an architect and the other as an electrical engineer.

He said the slurry line workers are proud of the work they did keeping the 273-mile line in operation around the clock almost every day since it started running in 1970.

Peabody sold the slurry line to an Enron subsidiary in 1997, but the workers’ fortunes are tied to Black Mesa because the slurry is used solely to transport coal from the mine to Mohave.

The slurry line sends about 250,000 tons of coal a month to Mohave, Calnimptewa said.

“It was a powerhouse for everybody,” he said. “I hate to let it go down. But we all knew the contract was ending this year.”

Calnimptewa sighed and said, “To be honest, both tribes didn’t react right away like they should. They knew it was going down.”

Action needed 7 years ago (sub)

Calnimptewa said tribal leaders should have started working on ways to keep the Black Mesa mine and slurry line open seven years ago, when it became clear Mohave’s future was in jeopardy.

In 1998, after years of pushing federal regulators to investigate Mohave emissions, the Grand Canyon Trust filed a citizen suit alleging that emissions from the power plant were polluting the Grand Canyon.

A year later the EPA released a study confirming that Mohave’s pollution was reducing visibility at the Grand Canyon. Mohave’s owners, a consortium of four utilities headed by Southern California Edison, chose to settle with the environmentalists instead of going to trial.

The 1999 consent decree allowed the plant, by now almost 30 years old, to continue operating but required its owners to reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and particulates released into the air.

The utilities were given until Dec. 31, 2005, to accomplish the cleanup, either by installing scrubbers or shutting down the plant.

Southern California Edison claimed the retrofit would cost about $340 million – now estimated at about $1 billion including repairs to the slurry line – and did not make financial sense. It also cited uncertainties about coal prices and legal issues between Peabody and the tribes.

A second problem arose when the slurry line lost its assurance of a water supply. The Hopi and Navajo councils, again after years of pressure from local residents and environmental groups, passed resolutions insisting that Peabody stop using water from the Navajo Aquifer by the end of 2005.

Under terms of its lease, Peabody pumps three million gallons of water a day to slurry Black Mesa coal to Mohave. Its total groundwater use amounts to 4,000 acre-feet of water a year.

An acre-foot is enough to cover a football field in water one foot deep.

Calnimptewa, a Hopi, blames both tribes for waiting until the last minute to tackle contract, environmental, and water issues.

He is philosophical about his own layoff, but worries about the younger workers.

“Us guys who’ve been here for a long time, I think we did our part and it’s time for us to go anyway,” Calnimptewa said. “I just wish all the young guys going out that gate find a job somewhere.

“I’ll stay around for a few months and then decide what to do,” he said. “I’m okay at this point. It’s not the end of the world.”

No job, kids in college (sub)

But 57-year-old Lee Tracey of Kayenta feels lost after spending 33 years working for the slurry line.

“I don’t want to be where I’m now at,” he said slowly. “There’s a lot of things going on. I have to have a job.”

He smiles as he remembers the exact day he was hired – May 8, 1972 – and how he learned his welding skills on the job, working his way up from odd jobs to his present position as a repairman/welder.

Tracey has a family – a wife, five sons and one daughter – including two in college.

“I mainly support two (children) now,” he says, adding that one attends Yavapai College in Prescott, Ariz., and one is enrolled at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Tracey and other Black Mesa workers have been making too much money for their kids to qualify for federal or tribal college aid. Like most middle-income parents, he shoulders the entire burden of putting a child through college.

He clings to the hope that something will happen before midnight Dec. 31 to keep Black Mesa in operation.

“I guess I’m the lucky one,” added Tracey, one of four welders being retained to perform maintenance on the slurry pipeline after operations cease.

The rest of his co-workers, including supervisors, will lose their jobs permanently.

Among them is maintenance supervisor Jones Grass, 67, of Shonto, Ariz.

Grass, who also serves as Shonto Chapter president, said he plans to retire after putting in 35 years of service on the slurry line.

Grass said he enjoyed the work. His only regret is the loss of jobs by his fellow workers.

“These people have been working, supporting their families,” he said. “And most of them live from payday to payday. A lot of them travel a great distance to get to work.”

“These people are working people,” Grass emphasized. “They are wage earners. They work hard and pay their taxes and stay away from welfare assistance programs.”

He recalled the 1960s, before the mines on Black Mesa opened, and said local elders supported the development because there were no other jobs on the reservation for their children.

“(The elders) knew that you have to sacrifice something precious for a greater return to benefit a greater number of people,” he said. “They knew that good water was beneath them but they would never see it and use it unless somebody with lots of money and knowledge about how to drill for it brought it to the surface.”

Editor’s note: Other stories in this series will examine what is being done to help the displaced workers, the impact of closure on surrounding communities, what role the two tribes are playing in resolving obstacles to the mine’s reopening, Peabody’s record as corporate citizen and guest of the Navajo Nation, and what is needed to return the mined land to a state of spiritual balance.

Originally posted in the Navajo Times

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