As Navajo Generating Station Spews Nitrous Oxide (Laughing Gas) into the Air, Downwind There isn't a Chuckle - 2013

 

As Navajo Generating Station Spews Nitrous Oxide (Laughing Gas) into the Air, Downwind There isn't a Chuckle

The Navajo Generating Station (NGS), near Page, Arizona provides the electrical energy necessary to operate the Central Arizona Project (CAP). Thus, coal-fired power produced by NGS in the Upper Colorado River Basin enables Arizona’s CAP water delivery system to operate in the Lower Colorado River Basin.

As a byproduct of burning eight-million tons of Black Mesa coal each year, NGS currently sells about 500,000 tons of flyash to concrete block manufacturers. Land filled on site is an undocumented volume of scrubber byproducts, including bottom ash and gypsum. The remaining combustion gasses and solids enter into the atmosphere via three 775 ft. tall flue gas stacks.

According to EPA spokesperson Rusty Harris-Bishop, the Navajo Generating Station is one of the largest sources of nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions in the country. When processed for medical purposes, nitrous oxide becomes the benign sounding anesthetic, “laughing gas”. When drag racers inject N₂O into internal combustion engines, it acts as an oxidant, offering additional power and speed.

After departing the flue gas stacks of coal-fired plants like NGS, no one knows the effects of N₂O on lifeforms downwind. With an atmospheric lifespan of 120-years, the environmental effects of N₂O may last longer than any human lifespan. One wag asked, "Are the clouds of laughing gas emanating from NGS part of a scheme designed to keep nearby Navajo and Hopi tribes pacified?"

If the Bashar Assad regime in Syria were to conduct widespread dispersal of nitrous oxide (N₂O) gas among the people of Syria, would the U.S. object, calling it a war crime? Such is currently the lot of anyone living in the air shed downwind of NGS or other coal-fired plants within the Four Corners country. If the nitrous oxide emissions dissipate quickly, over a wide area, war crime questions may remain moot. Only with chemical-gas testing on the reservation shall we understand the effects of long-term exposure to N₂O and other emitted gasses. Unless changed, this complex set of environmental hazards will operate as usual. New cases of Black Lung Disease will surely continue among current and former Black Mesa miners.

Earlier studies found that NGS alone caused between two and seven percent of airborne winter haze downwind at the Grand Canyon. Not only does NGS siphon vast amounts of water from Lake Powell, its heat-island effect increases evaporation of the remaining lake water. Heat and greenhouse gasses emitted from the NGS stacks drive cool air and moisture away from the area. As part of an environmental death spiral, NGS directly robs CAP of what it needs most, which is an adequate water supply downstream.

Hydrologists, utilities spokespeople and federal regulators offer only lip service regarding interdependence between the Upper and Lower Colorado River Basins. Collectively, they have yet to admit that diminished input and too many outputs may soon drain the greater Colorado River watershed. Only when officials admit that there is a collective shortage shall they find better uses for our resources, including earth, water and fire.

In 2009, I drove past the Peabody Coal Company Access Road on U.S. Highway 160. There, a backlit sign featured the words, “Peabody Western Coal Company” and “Black Mesa Complex”. In recent years, plant owners at nearby Navajo Generation Station (NGS) and the Navajo Nation gave Peabody Energy a twenty-five year lease extension. That agreement yoked the Navajo and Hopi Nations to an environmentally destructive course. When some Navajo and Hopi threatened to shut down the Black Mesa Complex, Peabody Energy "doubled down", raising their annual royalty fee for Black Mesa coal from $34.4 Million to $42 million. Over Hopi Nation objections, the twenty-two percent increase in royalties was enough to secure Navajo Nation agreement.

No one knows how much profit Peabody Energy will reap from their continued strip mining of Black Mesa, but it will be orders of magnitude larger than any royalty fees paid. Succumbing to what some call a meager financial incentive, the Navajo Nation traded the health of its people for the benefits of Old Energy. In their marketing campaign, Peabody and the Navajo Nation raised the prospect of continued employment for the Navajo and Hopi workers. Skeptics say that strip-mine-jobs cause more health and environmental harm than any economic benefit that they may provide.

As the saying goes, “Those who ignore history are destined to repeat it”. In post-1984 America, companies that hide their history shall gain little benefit from their deceit. Since 2009, Peabody Energy has removed all references to “Peabody Western Coal Company” and “Black Mesa Complex” from their corporate communications. In line with their expunging of the historical record, Peabody Energy also removed all “Black Mesa Complex” informational signage from U.S. Highway 160. Under their current marketing scheme, Peabody Energy applies the innocuous moniker, “Kayenta Mine” to the largest strip mine in the West.

Out of sight and out of mind is where Peabody Energy wants their dirty little secret to lie. Luckily, for the company, destruction caused by their operation lies unseen behind the ridge of Black Mesa. Only with satellite photography can we see the extent environmental destruction occurring at Black Mesa. Despite Peabody Energy’s efforts to hide their mining operations, gray trails of effluvium lead down the canyons from the area. At the lower end of newly deepened gulches, that “gray matter” turns and runs north toward Kayenta. Even if the mines were to close today, the deep scars on Black Mesa would take several geological epochs to heal.

In a community minded effort, NGS and its owner, the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA) are now extending electrical power to sixty-two homes in the area surrounding LeChee, Arizona. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population at LeChee is ninety-eight percent Native American. Located less than two miles from NGS, many of LeChee's residents work either at the plant or as service workers in nearby Page, Arizona. With a 2010 population of 1,443, LeChee had lost 163 residents over the previous decade. How many of them departed because of chronic respiratory diseases, no one knows. Prior to electrification, how many of the LeChee homes burned coal for heat?

This is Chapter 3 of a four-part series regarding coal and water in the Southwest. To read Chapter 4, please click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 01:26 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