Navajo and Hopi Nations Remain Locked in an Old Energy Dance with Peabody Energy - 2013

 

Navajo and Hopi Nations Remain Locked in an Old Energy Dance with Peabody Energy

In their homes, the Navajo and Hopi often burn coal for heat, which leads to a prevalence of respiratory illness. With coal at an average price of $90/ton, it would take $875 worth of wood to obtain the same amount of heat. With electrical transmission lines absent over much of the reservation, electrical heating is not an option. Even if available, electricity would cost far more than coal, wood or sparsely available propane.

The artist Jetsonorama lives in Inscription House, in northeastern Arizona. There he is the only permanent physician at the Indian Health Service's Inscription House Health Center. Although not a Native American, his wheat-paste photo murals periodically appear on crumbling or abandoned walls throughout the Navajo Reservation. Several years ago, at the ruin of the Cow Springs Trading Post, multiple copies of the artist’s work appeared.

A memorable series of Jetsonorama’s posters featured a beautiful Navajo baby. Shown with a large lump of coal looming over its head, the Navajo baby represents Jetsonorama's message that energy from coal contributes to climate change. At the time, he called it, "a metaphorical black cloud over the head of future generations, if we keep burning fossil fuels."

As part of the agreement between Peabody Energy and the Navajo Nation, the Black Mesa Complex is obligated to provide free coal to any local Native American family. In the fall and winter, when residents seek coal for their stoves, trucks and trailers often clog the road up to Black Mesa. Fully twenty-five percent of residential coal stoves on the Navajo Reservation began life burning something other than coal. Free coal or not, unacceptable levels of smoke and ash often enter the living areas of coal-heated homes.

With its three 775 ft. tall flue gas stacks sending coal smoke into the upper atmosphere, local residents may not notice emissions emanating from Navajo Generating Station (NGS). The heat island effect created by NGS keeps a near-permanent updraft operating in the immediate area. Depending on the prevailing winds, however, NGS coal smoke and its nitrous oxide haze may settle near or far, anywhere in Four Corner Region. In summer, coal smoke from NGS and other Arizona coal-fired plants affects cities as far away as Durango, Colorado.

The burning of coal near ground-level is more detrimental to the health of local residents than the NGS stack emissions. Burning slowly, but continuously over the winter months, each residential coal stove is a constant source of air and water pollution. It takes relatively few inefficient coal stoves to affect an entire community. In winter, when the air is often cold and still, residential coal smoke pools near its source. Thus, residents of places like Cow Springs, which sits in a depression midway between Black Mesa and NGS, may experience both residential and NGS coal smoke.

I have a proposal for Peabody Energy and its partners, the Navajo Tribal Energy Authority (NTUA), NGS and the Salt River Project (SRP), which owns the Central Arizona Project (CAP). Instead of removing all outward signs of Peabody Energy’s existence from the Navajo Reservation, the coal mining company and its partners should provide relief to the Navajo who need and deserve it most.

At a minimum, the utility consortium should provide pollution controls for any residential coal-burning stove from Kayenta to LeChee. If no such emission-controlled stoves are available, the consortium should provide propane-heating systems to all current coal-burning families. Although they deny it, Peabody Energy has a record of misuse and abuse of the Navajo Nation and its resources. To make up for their excesses, providing subsidized, clean heat and electricity to several thousand Navajo families is the least that they can do.

When writing about coal, water and the Southwest, it is easy to become morose and believe nothing in our fossil-fueled political environment will ever change. However, there is some good news. According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, college students from all over the U.S. are raising their consciousness regarding the effects of fossil fuels. In one college or university after another, groups and individuals now step forward to assert their power. Students who have never seen a coal plant or choked on coal smoke realize that their actions can make a difference to all who breathe.

Student campaigns such as “Fossil Free UC” have made their mark on policy. Recently, the fundraising foundation for San Francisco State University committed to selling stocks and bonds of companies with significant coal and tar sands holdings. If all three hundred colleges and universities targeted by the “fossil free” advocates join in, the true cost of coal mining and coal burning would become obvious. As our collective investment in Old Energy wanes, that capital can migrate to development and construction of new energy alternatives.

The Navajo and Hopi reservations exist within a desert region. Why not use home-based solar on the reservation to decrease dependency on coal fire? If every Navajo home were to feed power back into the electrical grid, "reverse carbon credits" could allow cleaner propane heating to replace residential coal stoves. The result would be a construction boom unlike any ever seen in the Four Corners Region.

No worker ever contracted black lung disease while installing solar panels or a propane heating system. With excess energy flowing back into the grid, NGS could power-down to a lower level. As a result, we could save Navajo and Hopi land, water and air resources for the use of future generations.

This is Chapter 4 of a four-part series regarding coal and water in the Southwest. To return to Chapter 1, please click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 12:56 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