Grand Canyon Pollution Cleanup

One of the great environmental victories of the 1960s saved the Colorado River from the construction of two dams--one of which would have backed water into the Grand Canyon. Now in the late 1980s, one ironic, unintended consequence is unacceptable air pollution in the canyon.

Bridge and Marble canyon dams were proposed on the Colorado to generate the electricity needed to pump Colorado River water to the new Central Arizona Project. With the dams dead following the classic battle led by David Brower, then of the Sierra Club, Central Arizona Project sponsors had to find another source of energy.

The compromise solution was to build the Navajo Generating Station about 80 miles northeast of the center of the Grand Canyon and to burn coal mined from sacred Hopi Indian grounds on Black Mesa. Now, according to a National Park Service study, the 2,250-megawatt Navajo power plant is a major source of air pollution in Grand Canyon, accounting for as much as 70% of the smog in the canyon on the worst air-quality days in the wintertime. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed that the operators of the project install scrubbers or other technology costing several hundred million dollars to clean up the emissions. The EPA has until February to recommend specific reductions in the gunk coming from the plant.

Like so many western resource issues, the dispute over Navajo threatens to pit one arm of the U.S. Department of the Interior against another. Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan Jr. will either have to side with the Bureau of Reclamation and dispute the validity of the study, or back the National Park Service in insisting that emissions from Navajo be cleansed at considerable cost. Lujan should not have to lose much sleep over this one: The pollution-control equipment should be installed.

Navajo project sponsors are quibbling. Officials of the Salt River Project, which manages Navajo for the bureau, claim the pollution equipment would cost as much as $1 billion. They want more study, acknowledging that Navajo causes some pollution, but not as much as the Park Service contends. They argue that this is a matter of aesthetic judgment and not of specific visibility requirements.

Navajo is not the only culprit. In summer, pollution from Los Angeles and Mexico obscures Grand Canyon vistas. But the park study claims that the power plant is responsible for 40% to 50% of the winter pollution on the average, and more on smoggier days. It is absurd for a federal project to be causing any more pollution than absolutely necessary in a national park.

The federal government is not the only sponsor of Navajo. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power controls more than 20% of the Navajo plant. The city thus may be liable for its share of any pollution-control facilities that must be installed at Navajo, possibly leading to higher electric bills. The city has gone outside the South Coast area for years for electric power, largely because of tough air- pollution controls in the basin. It must also be willing to share the cost of cleaning up the pollution it causes elsewhere.