Ride the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad from Durango to Silverton, Colorado in 1965

 

Ride the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad from Durango to Silverton, Colorado in 1965 (Part One)

On August 12, 1965, my father, Dr. L.N. (Duke) McGillis and I arrived in Durango, Colorado. At the time, we were midway through a Grand Circle Tour of the Four Corners Region. Early that evening, we saw news reports that much of South Los Angeles was in flames. On our black & white motel TV screen, “The Watts Riots” were playing out live. Each evening, for the next several days, we watched our native Los Angeles represent racial, political and economic unrest in America. The contrast between the TV images and our idyllic sojourn to Durango was obvious.

In 1881, the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad had organized the town of Durango for business, not for pleasure. In fact, Durango, Colorado was named after Durango, Mexico, one thousand miles to the south. In keeping with the exuberance of the times, the company planned a rail link that would one day connect the two Durango towns. As with so many Steam Age plans, that route never came to pass. The southern branch line never extended beyond Farmington, New Mexico, fifty miles to the south. In Durango's heyday, tracks ran south to Farmington, New Mexico, east to Alamosa, and west to Mancos and Dolores, Colorado.

The original purpose of the railroad hub at Durango was to serve the San Juan mining district. For seventy-five years, ore trains, smelting and the transportation of refined metals dominated the Durango economy. Although both gold and silver mining played out by the turn of twentieth century, as late as World War II uranium was still the hot
mineral in town. In several of our 1965 Durango Depot photos, a large white mountain sits in the background. The old American Smelter tailings pile, along with its attendant chimney was still a dangerous reminder of the uranium business in Durango.

Until the early twentieth century, the Rio Grand Railroad and horse trails were the only ways to reach Durango. In fact, the first automobiles to enter Durango did so by train. Ringed by high mountains, watered by a perpetual stream, Durango fits nicely into the green and verdant Animas River Valley. From its beginning, Durango ranked as the dominant commercial and transportation center within the Four Corners Region. Despite its strategic location, Durango did experience trouble. In the 1950s, as rail transportation and mining crashed, only the tourist trade kept Durango alive. During the 1960s, the population of Durango slipped from 10,530 to 10,333.

By the time of our 1965 visit, there were three “must see” attractions in and around Durango. Thirty-six miles to the west on U.S. Highway 160 was Mesa Verde National Park. Stretching north, the “The Million Dollar Highway” (U.S. Highway 550) connected Durango and Silverton, Colorado. Third and most interesting to me was the narrow gauge railroad that also linked Durango and Silverton.

Often called simply the “Rio Grande”, the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad (D&RGW) was then a company in transition. By 1968, Durango lost both its eastern and southern rail connections. Only the Durango & Silverton line remained operational. With little ore to transport and the Million Dollar Highway replacing its passenger service, the precursor to today’s Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad struggled to survive.

After visiting Mesa Verde and driving the Million Dollar Highway, there was only one thing left for us to do in Durango. On our third day there, we traveled on the steam train from Durango to Silverton, and then back again. In those days, there was no motor coach alternative. Today, passengers can take the bus from Durango to Silverton and then ride the train back to town. Alternatively, they can ride the train up to Silverton and then return by bus. Stalwarts and diehards ride the train in both directions..

Although we had reservations on the second train that day, we arrived early to see Engine 476 preparing to pull the early train out of the Durango Depot. Pulling a line of mismatched passenger cars, the forty-two-year-old engine continued to serve its original purpose, which was to pull passenger trains. Until DRGW ended its Durango-Alamosa passenger service in 1968, Engine 476 likely served on both the Silverton and Alamosa lines.

In 1923, the Schenectady Locomotive Works built ten 470 Series (or 2-8-2 K-28) for the Rio Grande Western Railroad. With its 2-8-2 wheel-plan, the 470 Series engines had both a lower center of gravity and higher capacity boilers than is possible with older style 2-8 wheel-plans. Sporting a diamond chimney shroud, the locomotive evoked the style of the Orient. Thoroughly modern when constructed, in 1965 Engine 476 looked every bit the “Mikado” that it was.

The class name "Mikado" originates from a group of Japanese type 9700 2-8-2 locomotives, built by Baldwin Locomotive Works for the Nippon Railway of Japan in 1897. The Gilbert and Sullivan opera "The Mikado" had premiered in 1885, so the name was still on the minds of many in America, where the opera achieved great popularity. Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Modern Major-General’s Song”, in “The Pirates of Penzance”, had helped popularize the word “modern”.

With great optimism about the future, the 1920s represented the epitome of modernity in American Life. As soon as the ten new K-28 engines joined the DRGW fleet, those powerful, compact Mikados became the favored engines for short-haul passenger and freight routes throughout the system. In a nod to the nacient Streamline Moderne style, their forward mounted air-brake systems and their Japanese Mikado-style chimneys fit the modernity of their time.

It is sad to say that somewhere along the line; all three of the Durango & Silverton K-28 engines have lost their classic chimney shrouds. In each of their places now stand a vertical pipe and cylindrical black shroud. In the interest of historical integrity, it would be nice to see the D&SRR add historically correct diamond-stack chimney shrouds to all three remaining 470 Series Mikados. As these utilitarian engines approach their hundredth anniversary, the recreation of an authentic historical style should be a priority.

That day in 1965, as we waited for the early section to leave the Durango Depot, there was tension in the air. Upon arrival, we observed a steady stream of black coal smoke emanating from the chimney of Engine No. 476. Before we arrived that morning, the yard crew had attached the engine to the train. When the engineer finally climbed aboard Engine No. 476, we knew that the action was about to begin. With his Nikon F 35-mm film camera ready, my father stood astride the tracks. Standing behind him and to his left, I held my vintage Mamiya 16-mm film camera at the ready. Not wanting to miss the action, we soon walked across West College Drive and then along the tracks. From our new vantage point, we would see the engine coming toward us, almost head-on.

On that day in August 1965, Engine No. 476 appeared historically correct and ready to go. First, the steam powered whistle wailed. As the fireman stoked the firebox, the engineer opened the throttle valve, sending superheated steam into the cylinders, thus driving the pistons and turning the wheels. Another valve sent steam up the blast pipe and out through the chimney. That blast of steam increased the draft across the fire grate. As this powering-up took place, steam and coal smoke shot high into the morning sky. Already “up to steam”, the locomotive soon began to move along the tracks.

In order to capture the scene, my father had positioned himself astride the tracks. Not being as brave as he was, I positioned myself off the tracks, behind him and to his left. In those days, after snapping a picture, the photographer had to advance the film with a thumb-lever. Only after advancing the film could he snap his next picture.

Once the train began to move, it accelerated more rapidly than either of us had expected. To my surprise, my father stood his ground, snapping a photo of the train as it headed straight for him. Somewhere in all of that excitement, he was able to get one more close-up of the approaching engine. For my part, I got one shot of my father astride the tracks and another as he turned and ran. Although he was smiling in my second shot, he also appeared giddy with fear.

To this day, I am not sure how close Engine No. 473 came to my father and me. Being one who has observed the sheer power of a K-28 Mikado steam engine coming toward him on the tracks, I can say that the experience is enough to instill both respect and fear. Once we had calmed down, we sauntered over to the depot. There we boarded our own train, pulled by the venerable K-28 Mikado Engine No. 478.

This Part One of a two-part article. To read Part Two, Click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 03:30 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

The Old Red Lake Trading Post Begins Its Second Century - Along "The Rainbow Trail" - 2013

 

The Old Red Lake Trading Post Begins Its Second Century - Along "The Rainbow Trail"

In the first chapter of author Zane Grey’s “The Rainbow Trail”, he opens his 1915 novel at Red Lake, Arizona. “Shefford halted his tired horse and gazed with slowly realizing eyes. A league-long slope of sage rolled and billowed down to Red Lake, a dry red basin, denuded and glistening, a hollow in the desert, a lonely and desolate door to the vast, wild, and broken upland beyond. Red Lake would be his Rubicon. Either he must enter the unknown to seek, to strive, to find, or to turn back and fail and never know and be always haunted.”

One hundred years ago, Red Lake, now called Tonalea (Navajo for “gathering place of waters”) held great foreboding for the drifter named Shefford. Zane Grey, a master of mood, went on to describe the Red Lake Trading Post. “Suddenly, Shefford became aware of a house looming out of the barrenness of the slope. It dominated that long white incline. Grim, lonely, forbidding, how strangely it harmonized with its surroundings! The structure was octagon-shaped, built of uncut stone, and resembled a fort.”

Grey went on, “As he approached on horseback, no living thing appeared in the limit of Shefford’s vision. He gazed shudderingly at the unwelcoming habitation, at the dark, eyelike windows, at the sweep of the barren slope merging into the vast red valley, at the bold, bleak bluffs. Could anyone live here?”

In the book, Shefford soon meets Presbrey, the fictional trader who owns and runs the Red Lake Trading Post. Almost inadvertently, Shefford saves a young Navajo woman from an attack by a missionary who is visiting the store. From there, Shefford and the Indian woman travel separately toward Kayenta. Grey’s description of Kayenta indicates that it was then another trading post consisting of two buildings and a corral. To discover what happened next, along "The Rainbow Trail", one must read the novel.

In October 2013, as I approached Tonalea from the north, along U.S. Highway 160, I knew none of Grey’s story. Although I had often seen the dark and foreboding structure described by Zane Grey, I had no idea that its history stretched back more than one hundred years. I saw it as a somewhat forlorn convenience store, frequented by local Navajo residents and by tourists intrepid enough to enter the dark structure. Having never stopped there before, I resolved that day to do so.

The reason for my stop was to photograph the elusive Red Lake, which supposedly lay downhill from the old trading post and general store. While researching an earlier story about Cow Springs, a few miles north, I had found a Google satellite image of Red Lake. With its copyright date of 2013, I assumed that the map accurately depicted Red Lake, which appeared to be nothing more than a dry meadow to the east of the old trading post.

To my surprise that October day, I saw a shimmering pool of water at the bottom of the hill. A century earlier, Zane Grey described it thus: “In the center of the basin lay a small pool shining brightly in the sunset glow. Small objects moved around it, so small that Shefford thought he saw several dogs led by a child. But it was the distance that deceived him. There was a man down there watering his horses. Shefford went on with his horse to the pool.”

The only difference in my visit to Red Lake was the time of day and the passage of one hundred years. As before, the shallow pool, rimmed by a wide swath of wet sand shone in reflected light. With my travel trailer in tow, a trip to the far pool was out of the question. Although Indian Route 21 took off from the highway on the south side of the building, I knew that turn-around spots were rare on such routes. Instead, I contented myself with a few telephoto images of the far-flung, shimmering pool. After taking pictures of the lake, I had a decision to make. Should I enter the dark and foreboding building or travel on to Flagstaff, where I planned to spend the night? With the sun sinking low and no fellow visitors in sight, I decided to travel on.

As I swung my rig around the back of the building, I hoped to find an exit there. Although the way was not easy, there was an exit loop around the back. Before departing, I marveled at the huge water tank ensconced behind the building. It featured a Navajo language inscription and a Navajo maiden, with water flowing from her basket. Seeing the huge supply tank, I realized that Tonalea and the old Red Lake Trading Post were to this day a “place where the waters gathered”.

After taking a deep breath, I drove down a rock-strewn slope, with my travel trailer bumping slowly along behind. Turning back on to Indian Route 21, I spotted some street art on the door of an old metal garage. Although I could not discern what deity or devil the artwork represented, the panels that held the painting seemed to reflect each other from left to right. Upon further study, I realized that my impression of a mirror image was incorrect. Some details on the left side of the painting were different on the right.

As I departed Red Lake, heading south on U.S. Highway 160, I let out a sigh of relief. As I drove, I wondered who now ran the general store at Tonalea and what the place was like inside. Again, I turn to Zane Grey for his first impression of the trading post interior. “Shefford had difficulty finding the foot of the stairway. He climbed to enter a large loft, lighted by two lamps. The huge loft was in the shape of a half-octagon. A door opened upon the valley side, and here, too, there were windows. How attractive the place was in comparison with the impressions gained from the outside!”

Since I did not go inside the ancient building that day, I cannot describe it here. On my next trip along the “The Rainbow Trail”, I will stop at the Red Lake general store and see for myself. Meanwhile, wouldn't it be nice for the State of Arizona to honor a business that has operated continuously there for more than a century?

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By James McGillis at 04:04 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

Sledgehammers and Spray-Paint Now Dominate the Art Scene at Cow Springs, Arizona - 2013

 

Sledgehammers and Spray-Paint Now Dominate the Art Scene at Cow Springs, Arizona

In September 2013, I wrote about the state of the art at Cow Springs, Arizona. The term “Cow Springs” has a triple meaning. It stands first for the elusive springs once used to water cattle. Second, it stands for the small Navajo community that occupies a space between Cow Springs Lake and U.S. Highway 160, thirty miles south of Kayenta, Arizona. Third, the name is synonymous with the long defunct Cow Springs Trading Post and service station, which once stood across the highway from the settlement.

Being too small to rate its own U.S. Census district, no one knows how many Navajo actually live in Cow Springs. There are no discernible commercial services available in the settlement. With that, the “Cow Springs Head Start” nursery school appears to be the most prominent enterprise in town. To see for myself, in October 2013 I took a quick driving tour of Cow Springs. After looking around, I would guess the place has a few hundred residents.

After inspecting the ruin of the former Cow Springs Trading Post, I then drove across the highway, over a railroad grade crossing and into a tiny hamlet of mostly well-kept frame houses. Turning south on what appeared to be the major road in town, my path paralleled the highway. With my travel trailer in tow, I could not locate Cow Springs Lake, which I knew lay to my southwest. Although I could see the growth of a tree line upstream of the dwindling lake, I could not risk becoming stuck on some dead end road.

Despite the fact that the Cow Springs Trading Post closed over forty-five years ago, human activity in and around the ghost-building remains high. The two artistic implements of choice remain spray-paint and the sledgehammer. Almost equal in their usage, paint covers old art as the hammers continue deconstructing what little remains of the building. Since my previous visit, in the spring of 2013, the rate of destruction was astonishing. Even the paint on the old Standard Oil Products pole-sign appeared more flaked and baked in the sun.

When observing public art, most humans tend to like older, more traditional works. Although portraits of warriors and braves once adorned the concrete block walls of the ruin, most are now gone or covered with many layers of seemingly random words and images. If we can surmise any underlying theme within recent art at Cow Springs, it is that those in power will fall some day. Apocalyptic art and poetry, accented by the hammers of destruction create accidental cubist works.

Perhaps the best example of "sledgehammer cubism" is the Prophet, seen here in a time-lapse animated GIF image. Not many years ago, the Prophet appeared on a prominent wall of the ruin. Evocatively painted with both brushstrokes and spray-paint stencils, destructionist wrecking crews soon targeted the work. On my 2009 visit to the ruin, the concrete slab that held the Prophet’s image no longer stood. Although the image of the Prophet remained largely intact, it was now lying on the concrete floor. During my most recent visit, I noted that the visage of the Prophet had become a jumble of unrecognizable fragments. After an extensive sledgehammer attack, portions of one haunting eye and a bit of a skullcap were all that I could recognize. although rotated or tumbled into a chaotic pattern, most of the fragments remained in their places.

The dramatic spray-paint profile titled “Navajo Warrior” had suffered a similar fate. Over the course of a decade or so, the female warrior mythos had suffered various graffiti-induced indignities. On this visit, I found her image obliterated by elaborate graffiti monikers. In the afternoon sun, only her red-accented left eye shone through to me.

As recently as 2012, local artist Jetsonorama’s photo-mural depicting a young Navajo girl graced a prominent south-facing wall of the ruin. Resplendent in her finery, but with one eye torn mostly away, her youthful energy and optimism still shone through. A year later, beneath a welter of angry words and misogynistic art, her visage now hides from the world.

As I indicated at the beginning of this story, most people opine for the day when art was beautiful and easy to appreciate. A century ago, the likes of Pablo Picasso deconstructed beautiful images into their cubic components. Likewise, unseen hands continue to deconstruct the remaining walls and art at the Cow Springs Trading Post. Those works not yet obliterated, are festooned with colorful fragments of the deconstructionists' aching souls.

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By James McGillis at 06:50 PM | Fine Art | Comments (1) | Link

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

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 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