Below is just one article that provides information about DIRTY COAL.
PLEASE remember, we are all DOWN WIND of DIRTY COAL.
Power Generation on the Colorado Plateau
The coal-fired Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona
The Colorado Plateau's economy, air quality, and water resources have all been affected by the development of the region for power generation. In the last 25 years several major power-generating facilities have been located atop the Colorado Plateau, mainly to provide electricity for metropolitan regions on the periphery including Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada. The Four-Corners Power Plant in New Mexico and the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona are the largest of the coal-fired power plants now operating in the region. Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River is easily the largest hydroelectric producer.
Power generation via coal combustion has had a significant effect on the Colorado Plateau's once famous air quality. The sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulates emitted from these plants have in some cases been reduced by the recent installations of "scrubbers" and other environmental control equipment, but these measures have so far been inadequate to restore the region's air quality. Currently, the largest single source of pollution affecting visibility at Grand Canyon is the Mohave Power Generating Station near Laughlin, Nevada along the lower Colorado River on the eastern edge of the Plateau. Pollutants from as far away as southern California may also be affecting air quality at the canyon.
Some facilities use a tremendous amount of ground water for coal transportation in slurry lines, consuming a valuable resource in this arid region. In 1968, Peabody Coal Company began strip-mining operations on land leased from the Navajo and Hopi Tribes on Black Mesa. Of the 11 to 13 million tons of coal that are extracted each year, an average of about 5 million tons are transported as slurry by a 273-mile-long pipeline from the coal-lease area west to the Mohave Generating Station. Transporting the coal in slurry form consumes, on average, about 3,800 acre-ft of water annually. The slurry water is provided through a network of 8 wells that tap the confined parts of the D and N aquifers underlying Black Mesa. Most of the slurry water is pumped from the confined part of the N aquifer which also is the primary source of water for municipal users within the 5,400-square-mile Black Mesa area.
The Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe became concerned about the long-term effects of industrial withdrawals from the N aquifer on the availability and quality of water supplies for domestic and municipal purposes. These concerns led to an ongoing investigation of the water resources of the Black Mesa area begun in 1971 by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Research:
Native Americans and the Environment. A comprehensive survey of twentieth century environmental issues facing Native Americans on the Colorado Plateau and throughout the Southwest, including discussions of agriculture, logging, mining, grazing, water rights, and tourism.
Resources:
Ambler, M. 1990. Breaking the Bonds: Indian Control of Energy Development. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence.
GAO. 1994. Air pollution: regional approaches are needed to protect visibility in National Parks and Wilderness areas. GAO/T-RCED-94-102. General Accounting Office, Washington, D.C., 7 pp.
Goetz, C. L., Abeyta, C. G. and Thomas, E. V. 1987. Application of techniques to identify coal-mine and power generation effects on surface-water quality, San Juan River basin, New Mexico and Colorado. Water-Resources Investigations Report 86-4076. U.S. Geological Survey.
Gottlieb, R. and Wiley, P. 1982. Empires in the Sun. Putnam, New York, NY.
Jorgensen, J. G. 1984. Native Americans and Energy Development II. Anthropology Resource Center & Seventh Generation Fund, Boston, MA.
Lewis, D. R. 1995. Native Americans and the environment: A survey of twentieth century issues. American Indian Quarterly 19.
Littin, G. R. 1999. Monitoring the effects of ground-water withdrawals from the N Aquifer in the Black Mesa area, northeastern Arizona. <http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/FS/FS-064-99/> 9/29/00.
Marion, K. and Wallick, D. M. 1991. Glen-Canyon Dam operation authority: Producing electricity and protecting the Grand Canyon environment. Land and Water Law Review 26: 183.
McGuire, T., Lord, W. B. and Wallace, M. G., editors. 1993. Indian Water in the New West. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Nies, J. 1998. The Black Mesa Syndrome: Indian Lands, Black Gold. Orion, Summer issue. Also available online at <http://www.orionsociety.org/nies.html>.
Reisner, M. 1993. Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water. Second Edition. Penguin Books, New York, NY.
Ringholz, R. C. 1996. Paradise Paved: the Challenge of Growth in the New West. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. 1995. Operation of Glen Canyon Dam: Final Environmental Impact Statement. USBR, Salt Lake City, UT.
Wright, A. G. 1997. Tall order in Arizona: scrubber retrofit at the Navajo Generating Station of electric utility Salt River Project. ENR 238: 30-33.
http://cpluhna.nau.edu/Change/power_generation.htm
Anyone who has traveled near Page knows how DIRTY and POLLUTING this Dirty Coal Burning Plant is - the SOOT PLUME is visible for miles.
US Government tax dollars going to work for DIRTY COAL ENERGY?
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Aren't you tired of being a SHEEP following the Judas' Goat to slaughter?
Traditional Navajo economy is based on sheep. (photo: North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy)
U.S. Government Harasses Navajo Sheepherders on Behalf of Mining Companies
By Shannon Speed and Hallie Boas, Al Jazeera America
28 December 14
Pressure from big mining interests behind government crackdown on the Navajo
n late October in a remote area of Arizona called Black Mesa, federal SWAT teams dressed in military flak jackets and wielding assault rifles set up roadblocks and detained people as helicopters and drones circled overhead.
The response made it seem as though police were targeting dangerous criminals — terrorists, even. But they were actually detaining impoverished Navajo (Dine’) elders accused of owning too many sheep.
For the past month Hopi rangers and agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) have been entering people’s land and holding them at gunpoint, with few warrants and little respect for due process. Community members say they live in fear because of this extreme intimidation in the Hopi Partitioned Lands in northern Arizona.
The Hopi tribe and the BIA say that over four dozen people have exceeded their permitted limit of 28 sheep per household, which will lead to overgrazing. Even if that were true — and many people doubt the claim — it would hardly justify the excessively intimidating approach to the problem. So far, three people have been arrested and more than 300 sheep impounded. Exorbitant fees are levied for people to recover their sheep, which the elderly Navajo residents depend on for their livelihood.
The residents of Black Mesa believe this most recent assault on their livelihood is being funded and instigated by the federal government through the Department of Interior and the BIA as part of an ongoing effort to maintain access to vast coal reserves on their ancestral homelands.
The 1974 Navajo and Hopi Settlement Act made almost a million acres of shared Navajo-Hopi land in northern Arizona exclusive Hopi territory, called Hopi Partitioned Lands. Black Mesa was crisscrossed and split by barbed wire fencing designating boundaries. The Department of Justice undertook a plan to relocate more than 14,000 Navajo and 100 Hopi.
Couched as an effort to resolve what was called the Navajo-Hopi land dispute, the act was actually the result of an ongoing effort to exploit mineral resources in the area. The Navajo and Hopi had peacefully coexisted in the area for decades until the discovery of coal led to policies that created corporate-backed tribal governments and divided the tribes over resource exploitation.
The relocation conveniently cleared the way for two of the largest coal strip mines in the country. In its 30 years of operation, Peabody Coal’s 103-square-mile Black Mesa mine left a toxic legacy along a 273-mile abandoned coal-slurry pipeline, the source of an estimated 325 million tons of climate pollution discharged into the atmosphere. It ceased operations in 2005.
The still-operating Kayenta mine supplies approximately 7.5 million tons of low-sulfur thermal coal annually to the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona. In 2013 the mine sold 7.9 million tons of coal.
Many Navajo resisted relocation. The federal government responded with a war of attrition to undermine their ability to remain on the land. It implemented a building moratorium that included repairs on existing structures and a livestock-reduction program that limited the number of animals a family could own.
Because traditional Navajo economy is based on sheep, these programs represented a direct threat to survival. If they cannot raise sheep, they must relocate to areas where they can find some other way to make a living. This will clear the way for further mining concessions, with no one in the area to protest the pollution and dislocation more mines will bring.
Black Mesa resident Louise Benally suggests that the grazing question is a red herring. “I believe overgrazing comes from the air and water pollution [on] Black Mesa. This is the front lines. The atmosphere is so toxified that it is killing everything,” she told us in a recent phone interview.
She argues that if sheep grazing is the real concern, a different approach should be taken. “Twenty-eight sheep is not enough to sustain a family. If Hopi care about the land, help us with land management education. We need someone qualified who knows the plants and animals to oversee the rotation of animals in these areas,” she said.
Shirley Tohannie and elder Caroline Tohannie had their herd of 65 sheep impounded on Oct 22. The
Tohannies’ neighbor Jerry Babbit Lane was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for attempting to intervene on their behalf. Officials claimed that the grazing permit held by Tohannie’s late husband was no longer valid. In order to get her livestock back, she had to sign a complaint stating that she was trespassing and will have to appear in Hopi tribal court.
In September the U.S. government signed a settlement with the Navajo Nation to pay over half a billion dollars in compensation for the government’s mismanagement of tribal trust resources. At the signing, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell cited President Barack Obama’s desire to improve the nation-to-nation relationship between tribes and the federal government. While this public relations move made national headlines, the simultaneous harassment of Navajo elders and the deliberate effort to deprive them of their ability to remain on their lands did not.
If the federal government really wants to improve its relationship with American Indian tribes, it should start by ending its historical collusion with energy corporations to displace people from their lands for natural resource extraction. The BIA and Department of the Interior should immediately stop impounding Navajo sheep and terrorizing the residents of Black Mesa.
The federal government should then work to forge collaborative nation-to-nation relationships that honor all Native people’s right to decide for themselves how to live on and develop their ancestral lands.