Mohave Power Plant’s Future a Thorny Dilemma

It puts out as much energy as Hoover Dam, lights up more than 1 million homes in California and two other states and represents the largest source of private income for the Hopi and Navajo Nations of Arizona and New Mexico.

But the Mohave Generating Station is also a giant polluter. Towering over the Colorado River in Laughlin, Nev., the power plant is the biggest uncontrolled source of sulfur dioxide in the Southwest, one of the nation’s leading producers of gases that contribute to global warming and, according to federal officials, a prime contributor to the gaseous haze that clouds visibility over the Grand Canyon.

Moreover, the pipeline that moves coal to the plant drains 1 billion gallons a year of drinking water, imperiling an aquifer that is one of the arid region’s most important water sources, critics say.

Now, the plant’s continued existence is in question as a coalition of environmental groups go to court to demand a cleanup that could cost more than $200 million--more than the plant is worth, its owners say.

The conflict potentially pits the interests of the environment against the economic needs of some of the nation’s poorest citizens--the Native Americans of the Southwest. The implications of that debate go far beyond the region.

As the world’s nations seek to curb pollution--particularly the carbon dioxide emissions that may fuel global climate change--conflicts between the environment and the economy are certain to recur.

The Mohave case “gives you a sneak preview of the dilemmas to come as we try to grapple with the implications of global warming and air pollution in developing nations that depend on the energy industry,” said S. David Freeman, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The DWP is one of the four utilities, including Southern California Edison, that own the Mohave plant.

Environmentalists gave formal notice in December that they would sue the plant’s owners in 60 days over the generator’s impact on air quality over the Grand Canyon and near the plant.

They insist that they are not trying to shut Mohave down. But coal-fired power plants, built in an era when other fuels, such as natural gas, were more costly, may now be less profitable than they once were. With other sources of power available, and with the electric power industry moving toward a new, fiercely competitive era of deregulation, cleaning up Mohave may not be worth the cost.

In the United States, coal-fired power plants such as Mohave account for 25% of the nation’s output of the greenhouse gases that stoke global warming. There are 900 such plants, and the Mohave facility is among the top 6% of greenhouse-gas generators, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Utility officials are seeking a compromise way out of the dilemma. But if that fails, the case could set up a conflict in which impoverished Native Americans are forced to bear the economic burden of cleaner air--something that could backfire on the environmental movement.

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Even as the Mohave generator releases 40,000 tons of pollutants into the air each year, the power plant and the coal mine that fuels it pump $30 million a year into the two reservations. Indeed, 80% of the Hopis’ annual budget comes from the plant and related mining operations.

Environmentalists want the plant’s owners to install scrubber technology to clean the generator’s emissions. But doing that would increase the cost of the plant, something Freeman argues against.

“My instincts would be to shut it down and to cut down on the burning of fossil fuel in general,” he said. Even if he wanted to keep the plant open, “I ain’t got the money to pay for scrubbers,” he added, referring to the DWP’s $4-billion debt.

At Southern California Edison, whose 40% ownership is the biggest single stake in the 27-year-old plant, officials also say that they doubt it would be competitive if forced to install scrubbers.

“Our costs without scrubbers are already as high as most plants with scrubbers,” said Nader Mansour, Edison’s manager of environmental regulation.

Environmentalists question those assertions, as do some federal officials.

“Our best guess is that the plant can remain competitive even with scrubbers,” said Christine Shaver, chief of the National Park Service’s air resource division.

Utility officials say that the plant is expensive in part because the cost of the coal that the plant burns reflects a share of the $1.2 billion in royalties and taxes paid over the years to the Navajo and Hopi. Some costs also are due to the operations of a unique coal slurry that supplies the plant.

The only one of its kind in the country, the slurry delivers coal mixed with water from the Black Mesa mine, which straddles the Navajo and Hopi reservations 273 miles to the east.

If the plant were to shut down, the pipeline would have no purpose, and the remote mine would have no other means of getting coal to market, say officials of Peabody Western Coal Co., which owns the mine.

Closing the mine could end a way of life for hundreds of Indian families who have depended on work at Black Mesa for the last 27 years, Peabody Coal officials warn.

Mine jobs pay an average of $55,000 a year in a region where unemployment hovers around 40% and poverty-level wages are common.

Peabody says it has worked hard to be a good neighbor. The company has paved roads, opened a 24-hour health clinic, provided drinking water and distributed free coal to nearby families. It has equipped local schools with computers and paid out $350,000 in scholarships.

“We can afford luxuries, like the latest vehicles and new appliances, that in the past Indians around here could only dream about,” said Phil Russell, a Navajo who has been working at the mine for 20 years.

“Peabody has utilized our skills and given us self-confidence,” said Darlene Chester, a 21-year employee whose grandfather discovered the first coal seam mined at Black Mesa.

Navajo leaders say that they have asked officials of the Sierra Club and the Grand Canyon Trust to hold off on their threatened lawsuit until the results of an EPA study on plant emissions are released in the summer.

The Navajo Reservation, with nearly 150,000 residents, is the most populous in the country. Isolated from major population centers, it has always relied heavily on natural resources. But the collapse of the uranium industry in the 1980s and a decline in oil and gas prices has increased its dependency on coal.

Edison officials concede that the plant is a major source of sulfur dioxide pollution, but they argue that its contribution to haze over the Grand Canyon, 50 miles away, is minimal, and predict the forthcoming EPA study will prove it.

The plant is among many contributors to Grand Canyon haze, including refineries, smelters, automobiles, fires and dust.

Meanwhile, Edison has offered a compromise pollution control plan that would cost a lot less than installing scrubbers. The company proposes to spend about $4 million a year paving dirt roads that are the source of some of the pollution over the Grand Canyon.

Environmental groups have found Edison’s proposal wanting, as has the Park Service, which has urged the EPA to begin taking steps to force the Mohave plant to install scrubbers.

“I would challenge Edison to show how they could get the same amount of control from paving roads that they could from installing scrubbers,” said Shaver, who pointed to government studies showing the plant produces 4% to 10% of haze-forming chemicals over the canyon. That would make Mohave the largest stationary source of pollution.

Even if road paving did reduce haze, it would not affect the plant’s production of greenhouse gases.

Located near the juncture of California, Nevada and Arizona, the plant is well situated to serve some of the fastest growing markets in the West.

Besides Edison and the DWP, the other owners are the Nevada Power Company and Arizona’s Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District.

Environmentalists have been skirmishing with the Mohave plant for 25 years--ever since the Nevada Legislature began granting a series of variances, easing clean air requirements at the facility.

Environmentalists accuse the plant owners of using the Hopi and the Navajo as an excuse to continue polluting. And they point out that some tribal members, including a former chairman of the Hopi Tribal Council, have no use for the power plant or the coal mine.

Vernon Masayesva, Hopi council chairman from 1989 until 1994, leads a faction of the tribe that believes that the coal slurry, which uses nearly 4,000 acre-feet of water a year, is drying up springs and jeopardizing Hopi farms.

“If we lose the water we could no longer live on the land that has been ours for thousands of years,” Masayesva said.

Edison and Peabody are supporting a plan for a new pipeline that would use water from Lake Powell, but Masayesva says the Hopi share of the project cost would all but bankrupt the tribe.

There are also Navajo dissidents who believe that the mine has disturbed hundreds of sacred sites and that mine runoff has polluted ponds, killing scores of sheep.

Many of the harshest critics live near the mine, their primitive living conditions a stark contrast to the modern households of neighbors who work for Peabody.

“Before the mine, the land up here was beautiful. Now, it is scarred and ugly and the air is full of coal dust,” said Maxine Kescoli, speaking through an interpreter.

Kescoli lives at the end of five-mile dirt track, in a one-room house with a bed, a table, a loom, an old gas stove and a winter store of potatoes piled on the floor.

Kescoli says that she gets her only income from weaving rugs; the wool comes from her small flock of sheep. She says modern conveniences are corrupting, and she is famous among her neighbors for her club-wielding refusal to allow the mine to expand onto her land.

But in her way, even Kescoli is dependent on the power that the coal fuels.

Too frail to take her sheep out to pasture every day, she must summon volunteers every summer. Smiling, she mouths one of the few English words she knows to explain how she recruits her helpers.

“Internet.”