The Impending Demise of the Colorado River

As most people in the Western United States know, we are experiencing an extended drought. The aridness in the West has resulted in a severely diminished flow of water along the Colorado River. In fact, the river no longer discharges into the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. From that now dormant coastal estuary, most wildlife disappeared long ago. In 2022, with the advent of a limited pilot-program, a tiny amount of Colorado River water will flow again to the sea.

That is a hopeful sign during an otherwise bleak hydrological environment in the West. Ironically, humankind’s misplaced desire to control that once mighty river could result in a destructive wave traveling from Glen Canyon Dam all the way to the Sea of Cortez. Stay with me to the end of this article to learn how such an apocalyptic fate for the iconic river is possible.

Why is the Colorado River failing? Historical and updated river-flow data allows us to predict its demise. There is no longer an “if.” Now it is all about “when.” As less rain falls and the snowpack diminishes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, another phenomenon takes hold. For some it consists of blind ignorance. For many, it is the irrational human need to utilize and be wasteful of water. Either scenario raises demand for water, as if it emanates from an unlimited source.

One tankless water heater manufacturer promotes “endless hot water, which is now available” with their system. A nearby neighbor in Southern California defies current “one-day-each-week” outdoor watering limits. He runs his lawn sprinklers daily, often before sunrise to avoid detection, then follows up by hand-watering his entire front yard. Each day, almost ten gallons of potable water flows down the gutter past our house. Our front lawn is dead. His lawn is lush, green, and currently going to seed. In Southern California and now throughout the Southwest, a green lawn is the sure sign of a scofflaw. The attitude of many people throughout the Southwest, is one of entitlement. For them, cheating on their water budget or ignoring their legal limits is a way of life.

In the Upper Colorado River Basin, the drought now brings Lake Powell to its lowest elevation since initial filling in the 1960s. How low is it? In April 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), which operates the major dams throughout the Colorado River system made a surprise announcement. From Flaming Gorge Reservoir, Wyoming’s largest, they released 500,000-acre-feet of water. From there, the water flowed down the Green River, and then into the Colorado River. The plan was to replenish and stabilize the water level in Lake Powell.

The USBR has touted this plan as a prudent way to keep power flowing from the hydroelectric turbines at Glen Canyon Dam, at least through 2023. Ironically, the original public proposal for the Glen Canyon Dam, promoted it as a “flood control dam,” not as a lynchpin in the electrical grid. Because the reservoir was beautiful and grand when at least half full, Lake Powell also became an indispensable recreational resource. Few people realized that the reservoir rested on soft and porous sandstone. In addition to relentless evaporation, the reservoir “banks” about fifteen percent of its water volume each year.

For almost fifty years, the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station (NGS) operated near the Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona. Utilizing coal mined at Black Mesa, Arizona, its furnaces polluted the air, and its pumps withdrew vast quantities of water from Lake Powell. While wasting over ten percent of its power conveying its own cooling water and coal supply, NGS also broke records for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution. Although there was onsite wastewater recycling, losses due to both steam turbine generation and cooling tower evaporation made the NGS the largest single user of water in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

The main purpose of the NGS was to annually pump 50,000 acre-feet of “excess” Colorado River water over four mountain ranges to both Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. Along the way, Arizona diverted vast amounts of water into shallow desert aquifers near the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant. The idea was to later mine that water from the desert and supply it to Phoenix. Currently, a large aqueduct is under construction there. Since the scheme has no precedent, no one knows if or for how long this desert water mining will work.

Despite the excessive air, water and ground pollution associated with the NGS, for decades it was like the monster that would not die. Not until the vast over development of natural gas resources in the Four Corners Region did the NGS's economic costs outweigh its job-related or power production benefits. In 2019, twenty years into a regional drought of millennial proportions, the NGS finally shutdown. If we are looking for a culprit in the current desiccated condition of Lake Powell, the NGS would be a prime target for investigation. In fact, the same flawed arguments that allowed the construction of Glen Canyon Dam go hand in hand with the commissioning of the NGS in the mid-1970s.

In 2022, all of us who now rely on the Colorado River have both an environmental and an economic bill to pay. How long can we collectively afford to subsidize lush green golf courses in Page, Arizona, alfalfa fields in the Imperial County, California, cotton growing in Pima County, Arizona, or my neighbor’s green lawn? More importantly, do humans have the capacity to create and implement a plan that will save the Colorado River system? Taking shorter showers, eliminating public fountains and decorative turf will not be enough to turn that tide.

What we need now is a clear-eyed look at the entire Colorado Riverway, from the high mountains to the low desert and everywhere in between. Affected states still adhere to the outdated Colorado River Compact of 1922. A century ago, all the states touching the Colorado River watershed agreed to over allocate its resources for generations to come. Politics played its role, with water rights assigned according to historical usage and population density. As a result, the compact granted the irrigation district in Imperial County, California (population 180,000), the largest single claim on Colorado River water. Why? Because long before huge dams and hydroelectric power allowed for the long-distance pumping of river water, inventive farmers directly tapped the river. In fact, a Colorado River dike which broke early in the 20th century resulted in the forming of the Salton Sea. Near Blythe, California resourceful farming families have succeeded in transforming the desert into cropland.

The Colorado River Compact expires in 2026. Often acrimonious discussions regarding its replacement are already underway. The participants include the Upper Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming), the Lower Basin (Arizona, California, and Nevada), Mexico and several tribal nations. According to a 2019 federal Drought Contingency Plan (DCP), as Lake Mead falls below 1,045’ elevation, the USBR must now declare a “Stage 2b Water Shortage Emergency”. On August 8, 2022, the reservoir stood at 1,229’ elevation, only four feet above a DCP Stage 3 declaration.

As a temporary measure, Congress recently approved $4 billion for emergency drought mitigation within the Colorado River Basin. Much of that money will go to pay Indian tribes and alfalfa growers in the Imperial Valley not to plant crops. The various USBR shortage decrees have flown by so quickly, it is hard for even the experts to keep track of water allocations. As of August 16, 2022, a Department of Interior declaration cut 2023 water allocations to Arizona by 21%, with smaller cuts to Nevada and Mexico. Senior water rights in California assured that there would be no cuts to its water deliveries in 2023.

In a surprise move, the Department of the Interior also allowed the acrimonious and unfruitful negotiations among the signatories to the “Law of the River” to proceed. It is an election year, and no one wanted to restrict anyone’s water rights further than already agreed upon. While Nero fiddled, Rome burned. While recalcitrant negotiators wrangle over cutting the allocations of others, but increasing their own, the Colorado River is not participating in the discussions.

Protracted negotiations or litigation will extend any true solution until it is too late to save hydroelectric production at both Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams. Achieving the “dead pool” elevation of 3,370’ at Lake Powell and 895’ at Lake Mead, when water can no longer pass through either dam, becomes more likely over time. Prior to dead pool, there will be too little water in the reservoirs to send down the penstocks and spin the electrical turbines. The USBR interim plan to “balance the two pools” will delay the inevitable, but not change the outcome.

In 2022 and 2023, a physical danger lurks in the “minimum power pool,” coming soon to Lake Powell. With typical 20th century hubris, the designers of Glen Canyon Dam did not anticipate a future time when its hydroelectric plant would go offline. As of September 6, 2022, Lake Powell was at an elevation of 3,523’, or almost seventy-eight feet lower than two years prior. The lake’s elevation rests just thirty-three feet above minimum power pool. At minimum power pool, there will not be sufficient "head" for gravity to send water down the penstocks and spin the turbines.

Unless weather patterns and water usage change drastically, that critical level will come sometime in 2023. Below minimum power pool, the reservoir will still have millions of acre-feet of sequestered water. What it will lack is a safe method of releasing any of that water through the dam. To fully grasp this eventuality, picture the Grand Canyon becoming a permanent dry wash. Still, a potentially unsafe method of water release from Glen Canyon Dam does exist. It involves what are known as “diversion tunnels” or the “outlet works.”

To facilitate construction of the dam in the 1950s, engineers first bored two enormous tunnels through the canyon walls. They then constructed a coffer dam, which temporarily diverted river water through the new diversion tunnels. The resulting outlet works could divert and convey even a large spring flood safely downstream. Luckily, no major floods occurred until after the 1964 commissioning of Glen Canyon Dam. Upon completion, crews dismantled the coffer dam, and closed the enormous gates at the head of the diversion tunnels.

All went well until the spring of 1983. In anticipation of summer electrical generation needs, the USBR kept Lake Powell at an elevated level. As spring wore on, there were huge snowstorms in the Upper Basin watershed, followed by rainstorms and rapid snow melt. Quickly, water in Lake Powell reached the top of the dam. Only hastily constructed plywood and lumber bulwarks atop the dam kept it from a disastrous overtopping. Unable to divert sufficient water through the hydroelectric plant, the operators “opened the floodgates,” better known as the outlet works.

For weeks, enormous outflows subjected the unlined sandstone tunnels to unanticipated stress. As a result, the outflow ejected huge chunks of raw sandstone downstream of the dam. Contemporary reports by persons not authorized to speak publicly told of the dam humming or thrumming, as if in major distress. Soon thereafter, the water level of Lake Powell dropped far enough to allow closure of the outlet works and resumption of water release solely through the hydroelectric station. Chastened, the dam’s operators never again let the lake rise even close to capacity prior to the end of spring runoff. Ironically, this conservative approach to reservoir management meant that Lake Powell would never again approach “full pool.”

The 2022 emergency release of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir has bought the USBR one more year before the prospect of a minimum power pool at Lake Powell. In their version of Two Card Monte, dam operators are accepting 500,000 acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge and reducing deliveries downstream to Lake Mead by a similar amount. As Oz famously said in the Wizard of Oz, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” Likewise, should we pay no attention to the huge amount of water retained in Lake Powell?

If you were to write a disaster movie script, you would include a scene in which veteran Glen Canyon Dam workers face the prospect of reopening the compromised outlet works. In releasing any remaining water from Lake Powell to Lake Mead, they fear the cracking and ultimate destruction of Glen Canyon Dam. In the next scene, they would open the creaking gates of the outlet works. For a time, everything would work correctly. Then, they would hear a low harmonic sound emanating from the dam. Soon, the humming would become a roar. Too late to save themselves, the workers would run for the exits, only to have the dam disintegrate around them.

The result would be the immediate draining of the second largest reservoir in America. Almost immediately, the biggest flood on the Colorado River since the creation of the Grand Canyon would ensue. At Lake Mead, downstream, the wave would surge to a height greater than any tsunami in history. As the surge created by the wave would impinge on Hoover Dam, that too would disintegrate. Farther downstream, the remaining dams would fall one after another. Within hours, the once sequestered contents of the Colorado River would rush into the Sea of Cortez, creating a saltwater tsunami.

Such a catastrophe cannot happen, you say. In 1983, the dam almost failed. There is nothing to say that our next attempt to save the Colorado River will not result in its untimely demise. Thousands of years hence, descendants of survivors in the Southwest might tell tales of a Great Flood, from which their ancestors survived. Other than not including an ark full of animals, that story has a familiar ring.

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The Trading Post and Art Gallery at Cow Springs, Arizona Return to Their Sandstone Origins - 2013

 

The Trading Post and Art Gallery at Cow Springs, Arizona Return to Their Sandstone Origins

After witnessing the disappearance of Black Mesa Mine, I wondered what else might be fading away within sacred Navajo and Hopi lands. Thirty miles south of Black Mesa, for almost a century, Cow Springs Trading Post survived and prospered. The documented history of Cow Springs is spotty, at best. Most references to the place are in footnotes or old field-notes. Around 1970, when the last Cow Springs Trading Post closed, the place began its slow-motion disappearance.

In 1983, U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 27 stated, “The unusual light gray Entrada Sandstone in the area was named Cow Springs Sandstone by Harshbarger and others in 1951. They described it as, “a cross-stratified bleached sandstone that lies between the Entrada Sandstone and Dakota Formation”. It is entirely older than the Morrison Formation and the Romana Sandstone, found elsewhere in the Colorado Plateau.”

The Cow Springs sandstone occupies a considerable interval in the Jurassic Stratigraphic Period. The Jurassic period existed long before the Tertiary Stratigraphic Period, when most of earth’s coal deposits appeared. At more than 150 million years in age, Cow Springs occupies an ancient place in geologic history.

The earliest historical mention of Cow Springs involves the Spaniard, Vizcarra, during his 1823 campaign. In an obvious reference to the nearby Elephant's Feet pillars, Vizcarra and his compatriots named Cow Springs Wash "El Arroyo de los Pilares". For almost one hundred fifty years after Vizcarra's visit, Cow Springs disappeared from historical consciousness. Decades later, perhaps in the early twentieth century, someone again documented the existence of the place. “East of the sandhills, bordering Red Valley runs Cow Springs Canyon and Wash. Up this canyon from the springs, George McAdams set up a summer and fall trading camp 1882”.

During a brief period when Indian trader J. L. Hubbell Jr. owned it in the 1930s, Joe Isaac managed the Cow Springs Trading Post. Son of Joe Isaac, Lawrence Isaac Sr., ran the coalmine at Cow Springs from the 1930s until the 1950s. According to Geological Survey Professional Paper, Volume 521, the mine operated on coal-rich Black Mesa, seven miles east of Cow Springs. By the 1970s, coal extraction attributed to the old Peabody Western Coal Company would come to dominate the economies of both the Navajo and the Hopi tribes.

In 1889, David, George, William, Charles, and Edward Babbitt established the Babbitt Brothers Trading Company in Flagstaff, Arizona. Later, they owned a series of trading posts and other businesses in the northern part of the state. Babbitt's Wholesale, Inc. and the Babbitt family have been distributors of Pendleton blankets and accessories across the Southwest for more than one hundred twenty years. Some of the best-known Babbitt posts were located at Tuba City, Willow Springs, Canyon Diablo, Cedar Ridge, Tolchaco, Indian Wells and the ancient town of Oraibi.

Notably absent from that list is the Cow Springs Trading Post, first operated by the Babbitt's in 1895. “So by the time I became involved in our trading operations, it was already becoming a dying part of our family’s business. From the time I started in the business, we had five trading posts. Today, 1999, we are down to only two—Tuba City and Red Lake. We closed down Cedar Ridge Trading Post, we closed down Cow Springs Trading Post” - Jim Babbitt, Babbitt Brothers Trading Co. oral history.

On August 14, 1938, there were recorded bird sightings at “Cow Springs Lake”, which was not far from a similar sighting at Red Lake (now Tonalea, elevation 5010) in Coconino County, Arizona. Red Lake was another old trading post site, just south of the Elephant's Feet pillars on U.S. Highway 160. At that site today, there is a general store, which provides Pepsi and hay bales to local residents. Today, there is no flowing water at Cow Springs, nor is there much of a lake at Red Lake. Only a seasonal pond, which stands south of the highway at Tonalea, hints at Red Lake's historical status as a year-around lake. With the long-term drying of the local climate, Red Lake disappears into a dusty plain. Now, Cow Springs Lake faces the prospect of a similar fate.

At the crossroads of Begashibito (Béégashi Bito'), or Cow Springs, and the old road to Shonto, is the possible location for "Luke Smith's store". Even in the early days, traders looked to create catchy names for their trading posts. Begashibito plus Shonto morphed into the new Navajo word. In a larger version of the circa 1929 image (above right) on this page, “Begashonto” appears on the sign in front of the store.

In the early 1960s, highway engineers realigned old Arizona 264. The new U.S. Highway 160 bypassed the tiny hamlet of Cow Springs, thus forcing relocation of the old Cow Springs Trading Post. Even with its prominent new location on a busier highway, the trading post did not survive for long. Today, a pole-sign, some graffiti covered walls and a stone-topped chimney are all that remain. With its business lifespan cut short, there are no published pictures of the Highway 160 Cow Springs Trading Post while in operation.

With its imposing pole sign declaring “Standard Oil Products”, the ruin helps break the monotony along that stretch of highway. In 2009, I stopped at the Cow Springs Trading Post. Until they changed corporate colors in the 1960s, the old Standard Oil Company of California utilized white lettering on a brown background for signage on their west coast service stations. After decades exposed to sun, rain and wind, large portions of brown and white paint now fly away. Like the stratification record for the Cow Springs Sandstone, layers of paint intermingle as they erode through paint and primer. Completing a cycle, in 2013 the original words “Cow” and “Post” reasserted themselves at either end of the sign.
 
In the 1960s, improved highways and reliable automobiles meant that motorists had greater range and options. With its unusual name and remote location, tourists often bypassed places like Cow Canyon Trading Post. They might, however be attracted to an iconic brand name, like “Standard Oil Products”, thus stopping there for fuel and provisions. Even today, the size, height and immensity of the Cow Springs sign create an imposing sight. Only the height of its steel poles has prevented untold repainting with graffiti art.

At various times over the years, I have stopped to investigate the ruins of Cow Springs Trading Post. By the time I first stopped in 2007, there was no roof and various partition walls were missing. There were no signs of a fire, so someone may have removed and repurposed the roof beams elsewhere. Also absent was almost any form of scrap lumber. Known for its cold winter nights, local residents may have collected and burned any scraps of wood remaining at Cow Springs.

Despite the derelict nature of the building, a spray painted combination of angst-ridden poetry and high art filled various panels. With each subsequent visit, more holes appeared in the walls. Successively, additional hits of graffiti obscured or defaced many of the more artistic panels. Additional sections of block wall tumbled, some with their artwork still intact. In one case, wall art became floor art.

In order to topple walls or make new holes, ad hoc wrecking crews employed sledgehammers. With less space to express new poetry and art, the hope and pride expressed in the early artwork later turned taciturn and reticent. Visionary sights of a Navajo warrior and a Golden Eagle disappeared under gang-style monikers and random bursts of paint. In a stroke of spontaneous irony, a spray-paint cartoonist used several of the holes to elucidate facial features in his characters. Dystopian anger at the human condition ran through several muddled poems.

Just when artistic expression at Cow Springs reached an all-time low, a new artist with a new medium arrived on the scene. Almost overnight, he covered several walls with his wheat-paste photo murals. Hailing from Inscription House, elsewhere on the Navajo Reservation, that artist goes by the name of Jetsonorama. He selects photos from his collection, enlarges them at a print shop, and then cuts them out on his kitchen floor. Utilizing wheat paste - a mixture of Bluebird flour (favored by Navajo grandmas), sugar and water - he attaches them, pane by pane, to places like the Cow Springs Trading Post. His photo murals echo life on the land, almost as fleeting in the wind and weather as the moments captured in the photos themselves.

Although not a Native American, Jetsonorama is the only permanent physician at an Indian Health Service's clinic. In his blog and elsewhere Jetsonorama said, “I’m trying to present especially positive images of the Navajo on the reservation - to inject an element of beauty, an element of surprise and an element, hopefully, of pride." From the first moment I saw Jetsonorama’s Cow Springs work, it inspired me. His photo murals can be vibrant on one visit and completely gone on the next. In July 2013, when I last visited Cow Springs, not a trace of Jetsonorama’s original work had survived.

Although I have no problem visiting the ruins of Cow Springs Trading Post during the day, I would not stop at night. Apparently, a few latter-day graffiti artists still frequent the place, along with the ad hoc wrecking crews. Recent poetic evidence tells me that Cow Springs is now a hangout for the “down and out” or disaffected. Once, Cow Springs supported vibrant trade. Later, it supported highway art. With one wall after another now falling to ruin, soon the site shall support nothing more than spirits and pre-ancestral memories.

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By James McGillis at 03:47 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

As Colorado River Water Vaporizes in the Desert, Arizona Faces a New Energy Reality - 2013

 

As Colorado River Water Vaporizes in the Desert, Arizona Faces a New Energy Reality

Recently, the Navajo and Hopi Nations signed a controversial lease with the Arizona public utility, Salt River Project (SRP). Under that agreement, and for the benefit of SRP, the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) near Page, Arizona will operate until 2044. The primary function of NGS is to provide electrical energy to SRP’s Central Arizona Project (CAP). Using that power, SRP lifts 1.5 million acre-feet of water per annum from Lake Havasu. After pumping it over the Buckskin Mountains, CAP alternately siphons, pumps and uses gravity to transport the water east, to Pima, Pinal and Maricopa Counties.

While crossing Arizona’s Tonopah Desert, the aqueduct consists of a large, evaporation-trench. From Tempe to Tucson, the water remaining after a scorching trip across the desert might become mist at an outdoor restaurant. Burning eight million tons of Black Mesa coal each year, NGS generates more than enough power to pump a continual flood of Colorado River water across the Arizona desert.

In the event of a power shortage or a shortage of Colorado River water, CAP could economize by curtailing deliveries to both agriculture and its groundwater recharge stations. If CAP water deliveries were to fall below current per capita consumption, either new water connections would halt or consumers would face rationing and shortages. With that, Arizona’s fifty-year construction and population boom would end. With its economy reliant on new residential development and construction, Arizona's ongoing boom could quickly turn to bust.

If CAP water deliveries were to diminish significantly, the Maricopa County might face its second Great Disappearance in less than a millennium. In 899 CE, the Hohokam Indians experienced and then recovered from a flood that devastated their extensive water storage and delivery systems. In the late fourteenth century, major flooding again occurred in the Valley of the Sun. This time, recovery flagged. By 1450 CE, between 24,000 and 50,000 Hohokam Indians had disappeared from the archeological record.

Currently, the Phoenix-Tucson metropolis is living on borrowed time and borrowed water. By “borrowed time”, I mean that California, Arizona and Nevada currently withdraw Colorado River water faster than the watershed upstream can replenish it. By “borrowed water”, I mean that as shortages loom, Arizona’s CAP water rights are subordinate to those of California. Arizona’s current tourism motto is “Discover the Arizona Less Traveled”. In the years ahead, the less traveled part of Arizona may well include Pima, Pinal and Maricopa Counties.

Over mountains and desert, CAP’s borrowed water travels to an artificial oasis with a population of five million. Arizona's twenty-year development plans are a pipe dream. They call for a future Southern Arizona population of up to ten million. Long before that, the big pipe that is CAP may be running near empty. One does not need to be a climate scientist to see that sustained pumping from a declining Colorado River is not a viable long-term solution. In fact, supplying sufficient water to current users may yet prove unsustainable.

In order to transport their allotment of Colorado River water across the desert, Arizona dumps its environmental responsibilities on the Navajo Nation. From mining, processing, transport and burning of Black Mesa coal, the Navajo and Hopi Nations subsidize profligate water use in Phoenix and Tucson. When it came to producing additional power closer to home, no one in Phoenix wanted a coal-fired power station upwind. Instead, at its Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station (PVNGS), SRP utilized a “clean power source”. Standing in the Tonopah Desert, fifty miles west of Phoenix, the massive complex comprises the largest nuclear power plant in the nation. Tonopah derives from the word Tú Nohwá, meaning "Hot Water under a Bush". In fact, PVNGS is the only major nuclear power plant in the world not situated adjacent to a major body of water.

Owned by a consortium of utilities stretching from El Paso to Los Angeles, PVNGS’s biggest advantage is that it does not burn coal. Since its initial construction in the 1970s, PVNGS has been a magnate for nearby natural-gas-fired “peaker plants”. Each of those natural gas plants consumes cooling water, emits hydrocarbons and heat into the atmosphere. Both the Black Mesa Complex (strip-mine) to the north and PVNGS have a public relations advantage. Located in remote locations, both complexes are out of sight and out of mind. Few in Arizona realize that their lifesaving air conditioning depends on a 3,900 megawatt power plant called "Hot Water under a Bush".

Other than the inherent fragility of 1970’s nuclear power plant design, the main weakness of PVNGS is its cooling loops. As the sole source for their cooling water, all of the Tonopah power plants rely on treated effluent water from Phoenix and other cities. Reduced future delivery of Colorado River water will force conservation on Phoenix. As residents curtail non-essential water usage, demand for CAP water will harden at a lower volume. Inevitably, as Phoenix consumes less fresh water, sewage plant effluent will decrease as well. I do not know how much treated water Phoenix currently has to spare, but that would be an interesting statistic.

Although currently recharged with excess CAP water, the Tonopah Aquifer is finite. If Phoenix metropolitan sewage plants currently supply most of their outflow to Tonopah, any decrease in effluent could set off an unpleasant chain reaction. If treated effluent flow decreased, the power plants at Tonopah would resort to pumping from their local aquifers. To see the negative ramifications of such an act, one needs to look no further than to the depleted aquifers of Black Mesa, to the north. Not if, but when the Tonopah aquifers run dry, power production would decrease to whatever diminished level the sewage plants upstream could support.

Pumping of groundwater at Tonopah will only delay the day of reckoning. Even today, sixty percent of Arizona's population relies on groundwater for its domestic water needs. Thus, if history is an indicator, Arizona will soon tap its desert aquifers. When the aquifers make their final retreat, CAP customers will discover a new reality. With insufficient cooling water available at Tonopah, both nuclear and gas-fired generating stations will curtail output. Unless some of CAP's then diminished supply of Colorado River water is diverted directly to the power plants, a downward spiral of SRP power production will ensue.

Any decrease in water or power deliveries would strain the economy and ultimately, the population of Southern Arizona. In subsequent years, the price of both water and power could exceed many Arizonian’s ability to pay. Unable to revert to its former ranching, mining and semi-rural economy, the outlying suburbs of Maricopa, Pinal and Pima Counties would be the first to go. Old copies of Arizona Highways Magazine might look new again. Ghost towns, like Casa Grande, Arizona could feature both Hohokam ruins and abandoned regional shopping centers, which have gone to seed. Once again, a complete way of life could vanish from the Valley of the Sun.

This is Chapter 2 of a four-part series about coal and water in the Southwest. Whether in power plants or homes, the burning of Navajo Reservation, Black-Mesa-Coal degrades lasting environmental and health effects created by the burning of Black Mesa coal in both power plants and homes on the Navajo Reservation, Read Chapter 3.

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By James McGillis at 04:31 PM | Colorado River | Comments (0) | Link

Near Page, Arizona, the Navajo Generating Station, Burns Navajo Nation - Black Mesa Coal - 2013

 

Near Page, Arizona, the Navajo Generating Station, Burns Navajo Nation - Black Mesa Coal

The trip from Kayenta, Arizona to Tuba City on U.S. Highway 160 covers about seventy-five miles. Thirty miles south of Kayenta, is the Black Mesa crossroads. From there, Arizona Highway 542 heads west toward Navajo National Monument, nine miles away. Extending east from the crossroads is Peabody Coal Company Access Road, also known as Indian Route 41.

Peabody Energy is the largest private sector coal company in the world. Coal from Peabody mines accounts for almost ten percent of U.S. electrical energy production and two percent of worldwide electrical energy production. Although located wholly on tribal lands at Black Mesa, Peabody Energy has disingenuously renamed the largest strip mine in the Southwest as “The Kayenta Mine”. Peabody has a history of trying to distance itself from its own businesses. Someone in the marketing department must have decided that “Kayenta Mine” sounded better than “Black Mesa Mine”.

During the past decade, Southern California Edison closed and then demolished its Mohave Generating Station (MOGS) in Laughlin, Nevada. From its inception in 1971 until its closure in 2005, Peabody Energy loaded up to six hundred tons per hour of Black Mesa Coal into a slurry pipe destined for MOGS, two hundred seventy-five miles away. If run continuously, the pipeline had a capacity of over five million tons of coal per annum. With four 8-million-gallon storage tanks onsite, dewatering the coal and recycling the vast amounts of water used in transport were high priorities. What the Black Mesa aquifer lost, MOGS gained. At the plant, MOGS recycled and reused the slurry water in their cooling loops, thus achieving zero water discharge from the plant.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Office of Surface Mining, US Geological Survey (USGS) confirmed that Peabody Energy compromised the viability of the Black Mesa aquifer. “Since Peabody began using N-Aquifer water for its coal slurry operation; pumping an average of 4,000 acre feet, more than 1.3 billion gallons of water, each year; water levels have decreased by more than 100-feet in some wells and discharge has slackened more than fifty percent in the majority of monitored springs.” (Miller).

Near the intersection of U.S. Highway 160 and Arizona Highway 542, stands the architecturally imposing Black Mesa Coal Conveyor Belt and its storage silos. This is also the northern terminus loop of the Black Mesa & Lake Powell Railroad. The Navajo Generation Station (NGS) near Page, Arizona, owns the railroad and its attendant facilities. Between Kayenta and Tuba City, the loading facilities at Black Mesa Junction are the largest structures visible along the highway. From that northern terminus, dedicated coal trains travel south along the length of the both the Kletha and Red Lake Valleys.

Just south of Cow Springs Lake, the tracks leave the highway, bending northwest. In a series of sinuous arcs, the tracks then snake around buttes and mesas. At NGS, there is a second terminus loop, allowing the coal trains to dump their hoppers almost without stopping. Departing the NGS loop, the one-way trip back to Black Mesa Junction is about seventy-five miles.

Even in the desert, some things are too big to hide, and NGS is one of those things. From Highway 160, the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) is invisible, hidden behind a series of low mesas. Once again, out-of-sight makes for out-of-mind. In order to visit NGS, the average tourist would have to plan a special trip on Arizona Highway 98. Not seeking to become a tourist attraction, the remoteness of NGS from commercial and tourist routes is exactly how the utility likes it. Their goal is to keep a 2,250-megawatt, coal-burning power plant mostly off the consciousness of the American public.

Despite improvements over the years, contemporary coal-fired power plants are thermally and environmentally inefficient. In order to operate its plant and equipment, NGS consumes onsite fully seven percent of its own generated power. Pumping of water uphill from Lake Powell accounts for a large portion of onsite energy consumption. Electric train operation between Black Mesa and NGS is another net drain on transmitted power. Additional electrical power goes to run the Peabody Black Mesa Complex, including its many miles of coal conveyor belt. When all internal and infrastructure power consumption is taken in to account, NGS may well consume for more than ten percent of its gross electrical output.

The generating station draws about 26,000 acre-feet (32,000,000 m3) of water per year from Lake Powell. Under average conditions, it takes about 1/2 gallon (1.9L) per kWh of electrical output. Although most of the water usage at NGS goes to scrubbing and cooling, the remainder is stored in large adjacent ponds. Only through evaporation, can the ponds cool sufficiently to allow reentry of their water into the cooling loops. In the end, it is easier to waste the water onsite than to recycle it. With that in mind, systems are set to maximize evaporation and to reduce retention on site. Once retained water reaches a high enough temperature, it loses much of its cooling capacity. To ameliorate the environmental effects of its flue gas emissions, NGS uses massive amounts of cold, Lake Powell water. From June to August 2013, Lake Powell went from 3601 ft. elevation to 3590 ft. or a drop of eleven feet.

At that rate, Lake Powell will soon be much smaller and warmer. As the relict water in the depths disappears into the siphons connected to NGS, the ambient temperature of remaining lake water will rise. As the water warms, it will create inefficiency within the cooling system and scrubbers at NGS. The warmer that Lake Powell becomes, the more water NGS will have to pump in order to keep its coal fires burning at current rates.

Black Mesa and the Navajo Generating Station are two of the critical links within the water and power systems in the Upper and Lower Colorado Basins. Situated in the upper Colorado Basin, NGS transmits power to pump water across the deserts of the Lower Colorado Basin. This is Chapter 1 of a four-part series regarding coal and water in the Southwest. In Chapter 2, learn the consequences of too much power chasing too little water across the landscape of the Southwest.

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By James McGillis at 05:30 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link